Hyperart Thomasson
[1] The term Thomasson comes from the professional baseball player Gary Thomasson, who was signed by the Yomiuri Giants for a record-breaking sum of money, and spent his final two seasons with the team (1981–1982) failing to score any hits for the team, coming close to setting the league strikeout record before being benched.
[2] Akasegawa viewed Thomasson's useless position on the team as a fitting analogy for "an object, part of a building, that was maintained in good condition, but with no purpose, to the point of becoming a work of art".
[3] In Japanese there is no differentiation between singular and plural versions of the noun Tomason, therefore in English too, Thomasson can refer to one or many of these objects.
The following year, Akasegawa discovered a boarded up ticket window at Ekoda station on the Seibu Ikebukuro Line.
The artists gave these objects names such as "The pure staircase of Yotsuya", "The useless window of Ekoda" and "The useless gate of Ochanomizu" and referred to them collectively as "hyperart": their similar characteristics being "an object which, just like a piece of art, has no purpose in society, but also, just like a piece of art is preserved with care, to the point where it appears to be on display.
The name was decided upon during a discussion between Akasegawa and his students during his class on "Modernology" (a concept created by Wajiro Kon).
The concept of Thomasson was introduced to the general public in 1982, via a series of articles in the magazine Shashin Jidai (Photo Times), published by Byakuya-Shobō.
The early Thomasson articles featured in Shashin Jidai were published by Byakuya-Shobō as a book entitled Chōgeijutsu Tomason.
The Thomasson boom after the publication of articles in Shashin Jidai had a big effect on students and young people interested in arts and the avant-garde.
The cover of Chōgeijutsu Tomason featured a lost neighborhood of Minato-ku in Tokyo, Tani-cho, which vanished due to land redevelopment.
[7] Although Street Observation did appear to be something of a boom, it was not the same type of movement that had surrounded the activities of Akasegawa, his students, and their magazine articles.
[8][9] In 2010 the Chikuma Shobō edition of Chōgeijutsu Tomason was translated into English by Matt Fargo and published as Hyperart:Thomasson.
The posts were shared widely, and a special form was made available for download to fill out with details of newly discovered Thomasson.
[citation needed] Historian of modern Japan Jordan Sand's 2013 work, Tokyo Vernacular: Common Spaces, Local Histories, Found Objects, also discusses the Thomasson phenomenon in its third chapter, entitled "Deviant Properties: Street Observation Studies".
In 2013 "La Poussière de soleils", an exhibition in Brooklyn gallery Real Fine Arts, featured Thomasson in the form of a photocopy of Akasegawa's photograph of a door handle sticking out of a cement wall.
[14] Based on the categories in Chikuma Shobō's "Thomasson Illustrated Encyclopedia" (Tomason Daizukan トマソン大図鑑)[15] (Japanese: Muyō kaidan 無用階段) Also known as a Pure Staircase.
(Japanese: Atago アタゴ) An object sticking out at the side of the road, with no clear purpose, possibly used to stop cars parking.
(Japanese: Chisō 地層) A patch of ground that is different in height from that around it, usually where multiple construction works have taken place.
The name refers to the Abe Sada Incident; a famous case from 1930s Japan in which a woman strangled her lover and then severed his genitalia with a kitchen knife.
(Japanese: Jōhatsu 蒸発) The fading of color on a sign, or a monument with parts missing: an object whose meaning has become hard to work out.
