It is already early evening but you just have enough time to jump on that bus and get your favourite spray cans from your local art supplies shop.
Should the shop be closed by the time you get there, Bombing Science online shop will be there to the rescue, you happily reassure yourself.
You like painting on trains, very much so. But the Genbi Shinkansen train is not or should not be one of them since artists have already been there and have made it beautiful.
The world’s fastest art appreciation
“The world’s fastest art appreciation” is what East Japan Railways, the train operator running the service, calls it.
The high-speed Genbi Shinkansen opened last year on the Jōetsu Shinkansen railway line but we only learned about it recently.
The train carried out three round trips daily on most Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays, and while speeding through Japan (up to 210km/h), it gives its commuters displays of prominent contemporary artworks throughout its carriages.
Seven of the carriages in fact are used as “rolling art spaces”. All seven show a different artist and which gives passengers a vast choice of material to enjoy.
Even better, not only the indoors are used to display art. Indeed the windowless carriages of the Genbi Shinkansen’s are wallpapered with striking photographs of Niigata’s Nagaoka Fireworks Festival by photographer Mika Ninagawa
Art on display in each carriage
You can enjoy art throughout the entire train. Lose yourself from one end to the other and enjoy modern art created by prominent artists.
Kids have not been forgotten and should find joy in the specifically designed playroom where they can interact with modern art first hand.
We have included below photographs of our favourites carriages
Car #11
The artwork on display was conceived by incorporating the unique space, light and speed of the Shinkansen, and built around the themes of bountiful harvests, festivals and light. Take a seat and experience an amazing moment of change in which you discover the immensity of the light that surrounds us in the world.
Car #13
We selected this carriage because the art is mainly about landscapes and here at Art-Pie, we appreciate very much the subject. Sip on a coffee while looking at artworks inspired from the GENBI SHINKANSEN route, a traditional thoroughfare in use for centuries around the city of Joetsu with Mikuni Kaido being the name of an ancient highway in Japan.
Ross M Brown’s work channels the experience of architectural space through the medium and history of painting. Exploring subject matter found within abandoned Modernist architecture, the artist layers disparate approaches from the history of painting producing a palimpsest of diverging and converging painterly approaches.
If you strolled in Central London recently, you must have come across these unusual looking phone boxes and maybe wondered what all this was about.
