TOKYO (AFP) – In the year since Japan’s northeast coast was torn apart by a massive quake-tsunami and ensuing nuclear crisis, artists have searched for new ways to come to terms with the disaster.

The so-called “Post-3/11” movement has taken its inspiration from images of tsunami-ravaged townships and grief-stricken victims in the aftermath of the worst tragedy to hit the nation since World War II.

From activist performance art to the creation of a memorial, artists have found new ways to either make a statement against nuclear power or simply remember the thousands who perished.

“Practically every exhibition and art event held after the … earthquake has implicitly or explicitly responded to these life changing events,” says Emily Wakeling, a curator and art researcher working in Tokyo.

“The majority of artists’ responses have been emotional,” she says.

For 27-year-old installation artist Tsubasa Kato, a trip to Fukushima for volunteer work to clear up the mountains of rubble provided him with the inspiration to leave a lasting memorial.

Kato recently completed a three-storey lighthouse built from the collected ruins of houses destroyed by the tsunami, with the help of 300 local residents whose lives were wrenched apart by the disaster.

While his usual approach with large works is to drop them into place, ensuring a noisy landing, he decided his Fukushima work should be lifted quietly, as a mark of respect.

He was initially reluctant to become involved creatively, but his experiences working alongside the locals soon changed that, he said.

“In Fukushima, they were pulling buildings down, clearing the ruins. Yet there I was, with the opportunity to build something new for the community,” he told AFP in a Tokyo gallery.

He says the optimism of the thousand or so who gathered to watch the lighthouse pulled upright was palpable.

“Japanese people have a shared culture of rallying together after natural disasters, and the project was a way audiences and victims could communicate on an emotional level,” he said.

Manga artist Moeko Fujii, 25, says the disaster means she and her colleagues have had to change the way they go about their work.

“As artists we’ve had to rethink how we would present such a terrible story, and whether it was necessary to do so,” she says.

“Manga is so familiar and can be read by people of all ages, it’s a good way to understand others’ earthquake experiences,” she said.

However, while many of the artistic responses have been emotional, six-member art collective ChimPom have taken a more confrontational approach, using public anger at the country’s reliance on nuclear energy.

The group has produced a video called “Real Times” in which they travel into the middle of the exclusion zone around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi and hoist a white flag above the ruins of the plant.

They paint it with the red sun of Japan’s national flag, before transforming it into the warning symbol for radioactive material.

In a separate project, they added a panel to a mural by Taro Okamoto in Tokyo’s fashionable Shibuya district that depicts the fallout from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs.

Aping the the style of Okamoto’s original, the ChimPom addition shows the smoking Daiichi nuclear plant.

Although the panel—for which they did not have permission—was swiftly removed, group leader Ryuta Ushiro insists it contributed to “renewing the history” of Japan and nuclear energy.

Ushiro rejects some Post 3/11 artists’ view that there is a distinction between emotional and political responses to the disaster.

“When you try to create something, sharing one experience together, the action inevitably takes on a political aspect,” he said.

“The issue is not really whether it is political or not, but whether it was made with the intention of communicating with other people.”

ChinPom videos can be viewed at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/the-atomic-artists/chimpom-art/

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ROME (AFP) – An exhibition honoring 16th-century Venetian master Tintoretto opens in Rome on Saturday, following the painter’s career from his days as an ambitious disciple of Titian to a bitter old age.

“Tintoretto was the most controversial painter of his time,” Melania Mazzucco, one of the organisers, told reporters in the Italian capital.

“His experimental way of painting, the speed with which he worked and his prolific aspect, his aggressive and competitive character evoked very strong reactions among his contemporaries,” said Mazzucco, a Tintoretto expert.

Tintoretto, whose real name was Jacopo Robusti, owed his nickname to his father who was a manufacturer of dyes (“tinta” in Italian). He became one of the greatest practitioners of the Venetian style.

The exhibition, which runs until June 10, begins with one of his monumental works The Miracle of the Slave (1548), measuring 4.16 metres by 5.44 metres (14 feet by 18 feet) and normally jealously guarded in Venice.

The choice of putting a slave at the center of the painting instead of the saint who is rescuing him was considered scandalous at the time.

Another masterpiece in the show is The Theft of the Body of Saint Mark (1564) showing a group of Christians in Alexandria taking away the saint’s body from a bonfire that has been miraculously extinguished by rain.

Apart from religious and mythological subjects, Tintoretto also painted hundreds of portraits—a source of revenue from aristocrats, writers and celebrities that he used for contacts and protection.

Tintoretto’s pride was legendary. He once turned down a knighthood from French king Henry III because he did not want to kneel down and he refused to allow his beloved daughter Marietta to leave his home.

His final years were cruel to the painter. Marietta died in 1590, followed by his son Giovanni Battista. His last self-portrait shows a somber and humbled Tintoretto, his face marked by the harshness of life.

His last child died in a convent in 1652, leaving him without descendants.

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ROME (AFP) – Italian art sleuths announced on Friday they had successfully authenticated a painting of the snake-haired Medusa from Greek mythology as the work of 17th-century master Caravaggio using X-ray technology.

“The X-rays allowed us to see some sketches under the surface. This is therefore a creation, not a copy,” Caravaggio expert Mina Gregori said in Rome at the presentation of a book about the project which has lasted several years.

The round painting has a diameter of 50 centimetres (20 inches) and is a smaller, earlier version of a Caravaggio Medusa in Florence’s Uffizi Gallery.

The legend of the Medusa monster being slain by the heroic Perseus was popular among Florence’s famous ruling family and art patrons, the Medicis.

Gregori said the painting could be dated to between 1597 and 1598, making it “the most important work from the youthful period” of the artist.

The painting, which shows the decapitated head of the Medusa, is held by a private Italian collector and is currently kept in a safe in London.

Michelangelo Merisi (1571-1610), or Caravaggio, is known as one of history’s most tormented painters. He was involved in frequent brawls and

vicious beatings and fled Rome after being sentenced to death for killing a love rival.

He died of fever as he was returning to Rome and was buried in a mass grave.

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