Artwork by student sells for $11,340 at Christie’s

Jiji Press

17:18 JST, September 21, 2022

NEW YORK (Jiji Press) — A folding screen with a painting created by a Japanese student of a Tokyo University of the Arts graduate school fetched $11,340 at an auction held in New York by Christie’s on Tuesday.

Kenta Takahashi, 26, described a scene in a city as a work of modern art using techniques of traditional Japanese painting.

It is believed to be unprecedented for Christie’s to have auctioned a work by a student in New York, an official of the auction house said.

Highly acclaimed for representing the fusion of techniques of traditional Japanese painting and modern art, Takahashi’s work, A Piece of the City,” created last year, was put up for auction as part of a series of Japanese and Korean artworks including antiques.

Using mineral pigments, made of powdered minerals and traditionally used in Japanese-style paintings, as well as natural glue, Takahashi drew the street art-style painting on the folding screen covered with silver leaf.

Takahashi, who grew up in the city of Miyoshi, Aichi Prefecture, central Japan, studied under a Japanese painting teacher for three years at the art course of a prefectural high school in Aichi and brushed up his skills at Tokyo University of the Arts.

“Art has a role to express the present in history for the future. Cities are symbolic in that they represent the times,” he said.

While noting that creating works with the use of Japanese painting materials requires a lot of labor, Takahashi said that “I will keep pursuing my favorite modern art expression” without ceasing to use such materials.