How do you take an established style and destroy it to expand it further?
You've sometimes had Buddhist themes, and now Nirvana has appeared.
I planned on making a large painting, so I simply started to paint reclining figures of giant Buddhas such as the reclining Buddha and Wat Pho. At first, I thought about painting something else. But as I painted, I was at a loss as to what to paint.
As I was desperately thinking of what to paint, I happened to have a long canvas so I got the idea to paint a reclining subject. A reclining Buddha then came to my mind. However, the finished painting doesn’t really look like it's reclining. So it probably wasn't necessary to go so far as titling it nirvana.
But if you look at her facial expression and how the hair looks, we could assume that she's reclining. Is this your largest painting so far?
No, I have made a larger painting. At the Idol! exhibition at the Yokohama Museum of Art in 2006, I showed a square painting with the same width as the length of this painting.
I see.
I chose this size to match this exhibition space. However, I discovered that forcing myself to make a large painting just because the exhibition space would be large would result in failure.
I failed twice painting on a large, similar-sized canvas. This set me back by about a month. I then talked with Koyama-san about canceling this solo show.
When you say you "failed," what do you mean? At what point do you stop? Is it because you can’t finish the painting?
It's usually a hit-or-miss kind of thing. I start painting without any preliminary or precise sketches on the canvas, and just think that I will manage it somehow. That's the way I work. The canvas was also large, and the intended picture kept changing as I painted. The more I painted, the more it strayed from the final picture I had in mind. The image declined to be a fixed thing.
You didn’t want to make fixed decisions, but instead maintain some leeway.
I erased paintings and had little time left for the show (due to the time loss caused by the failed paintings). So I felt very rushed. I tried to come up with a solid idea, but I thought I had better do something about my inability to paint. I didn't clearly know what I wanted to paint. The more I painted, the more I felt at a loss. It was the first time that I felt so panicky. I just couldn't paint!
In recent years, you've had many exhibitions. Ten paintings of the same size at Art Tower Mito (Life in 2006), a large painting which you painted in public at the Yokohama Museum of Art (Idol! in 2006), and a show in South Korea (Kukje Gallery in 2007). You've been working continuously. Was there something different about this exhibition?
People viewing the works might think they are seeing the same thing. But I incorporate subtle differences that in turn become another motivating force. For this show, it seems such little ideas are lacking. I didn't have enough time, and did all I could to finish. It was quite tough.
But I think the works are really good.
Well, I don't know whether they’re good or not. The show's title, wavering, refers to this undecided condition. If this show had been postponed, I would then have been asked when I could be ready to hold the show. That would actually have caused more pressure for me. So, showing the works I have now could be a springboard for the next show.
Not knowing or not deciding what to paint is also experienced by artists in various genres of creative expression. Particularly in your generation or the one below you.
For this show, you initially said that you would create facial expressions and paint while distancing yourself from the work. So I imagined quite highly developed figures. But when I look at these works, they remind me of your mutability show (Tomio Koyama Gallery in 2005) at our old Shinkawa location. Since that time, the work has evolved and yet I see a connection.
For example, the Idol! exhibition had pop idols as the theme. You had halos, roses, etc., in the works, trying to define what an idol was. I imagined that you would also include such gimmicks in this show, but you seem to have returned to the simple forms found in the mutability show.
Yes, it is basically the same(as mutability). The mutability exhibition featured a style that was pretty much established. And based on that, I've continued to make my recent work. This current show is also a continuation of this style. But perhaps maybe now I won't continue it.
You know, I think it's better not to give interviews. I'd rather just present my work. I look at my work only in the way I think about it. I don't think about how I want other people to look at it. It often turns negative, it seems.
But that's what we want to find out. What the artist thinks or feels about his or her work.
Your theme continues to be faces, so I think it will naturally evolve and focus on facial expressions, color variation, backgrounds, and other elements. Of course, it might be difficult for you to answer if I asked what you will tackle next. As an extreme example, if it were a Nirvana painting, you wouldn't add more peripheral elements. You might just stop here as it is now.
I've been whittling down the elements myself subjectively. For the Yokohama show, I painted things in the backgrounds. But elements other than the faces become explanatory. Even with this nirvana painting, I first thought about filling up the canvas. Specifically, I thought about painting bubbles. But I thought doing something like that would be sneaky. I would be leaning too much on the word "bubble." Bubbles might suggest that everything is evanescent.
The meaning becomes determined.
Instead of wanting to paint bubbles, just the word "bubble" was needed. And so I decided to have nothing in the background. However, if I whittle it down like that, I wind up with less to paint and the thing becomes more iconic. The question is, how do I destroy it and at the same time expand on it further?
For this work, I thought about the composition somewhat. For example, should I avoid painting it at the center. Instead of making it a symbolic image, I tried to make it a single scene like a manga cell. It has been composed so that a dialogue balloon could be inserted in the image.
I get it.
I could also include the body and hands and paint an ordinary person. While preparing for this show, I also made paintings that had proportionate body and shoulder lines. But they came out awful and I felt that I couldn’t show them like that. Also, when I painted like that, it had so much of my style that it almost felt like it was no longer my own painting.
I don't think I'll ever start painting something totally different. But I don't think the status quo is fine either. It's quite agonizing.
Is there any change in your sense that your subjects are all self-portraits?
At first, I painted faces without referring to anything and somehow was able to do it as I proceeded. But lately, I haven't been able to do this anymore. I then started to spotlight photos in fashion magazines and began to wonder what actual human proportions looked like. I could no longer create my own self-serving character. So perhaps I should have a model posing in front of me and try to paint her.
When I painted a lot in the beginning, it was not an ideological thing like a self-portrait. I think it was more like painting a character. Instead of being someone's likeness, it was my own character.
For example, is it not a likeness of the Buddha or the Virgin Mary?
I thought it might be so in the works I've done so far. I did say things like that before. But when I develop a style, I eventually get tired of it. The Buddha is an artistic form. Since it was not created from scratch, it doesn't go as far as creating a Buddha image.
It's a world where religious art has been well established. So if we put it in the context of modern art, would it be totally different?
Religious art has such a formal beauty; if you boldly decide to work within it, then I think it's easier to forge ahead. When you try to instill your own ego, it can become agonizing instead.
For example, being fearful of painting an ordinary portrait. You might think that someone else could paint such a portrait. It's that negative thought. The creed of maintaining your originality. The intimidating belief that you must have something different from other people.
For an artist creating work for a long time, where does the motivation come from?
The Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture catalog (2005, edited by Takashi Murakami, Yale Univ. Press) for the Little Boy exhibition (2005, New York) mentions Seiji Togo. What do you think about him?
I think he was cited to contrast his work with my symbolic-looking female portraits. I didn't know much about Seiji Togo so after seeing his name in the catalog, I looked at his books. I came across a photo of him painting a nude model standing in front of him. When I saw that painting, I thought that he could have painted it without having that model pose in front of him. The photo might have been included just for illustrative purposes, so it might differ from his actual method of painting. However, if he had a live model in front of him as shown in the photo, could he paint methodically and look closely at the model and still find something to paint?
I haven't painted like that in a long time. Perhaps I should try it. I gradually developed my own style and have been working with it ever since. However, I can't continue doing it for ten or twenty more years. I have a great interest in knowing where other artists get their long-term motivation.
Have you ever heard someone say something to which you thought, "Aha, I see."?
In the process of creating a work, ironically there's no such thing as simply painting something just because you actually want to paint it. For example, if there's a deadline or if there was some disappointment that spurred you to paint, it might turn out to be a masterpiece. That's why when I look at my work from my viewpoint, it becomes something I have difficulty painting. But the people seeing this show don’t see the parts that I couldn't paint, so they view it as is from the outset. In the end, I'm best when I'm feeling defeated and can’t paint anything. Well, I think that that's just fine.
It would be good if it gives you the chance to move forward. Is it somehow reassuring when you hear that other people are in the same boat?
Yes. That’s right. About the pressure of deadlines as I mentioned earlier, I thought about it while watching the Osamu Tezuka documentary. He had so many deadlines to meet and was creating multiple comic strips at the same time. When he was drawing one comic strip and got a call from the editor of a another comic strip, he often didn't make sense on the phone and the editor would start arguing with him. It's amazing that he was able to make comic strips under such conditions.
But we enjoy reading the work he has left us. It’s power has continued. When you think about the conditions under which he worked, he was incredible. On the other hand, even if an artist is happy with a work he creates, it might not be well-received by people. The work might be considered boring. As for the works in this show, I feel that a lot of things didn’t go well. But to the people viewing the works, that in itself might make it more interesting.
Regarding conclusion in this show, it's unusual to see it painted in the center with symmetry on the left and right.
This was the last picture I painted. I had run out of ideas. Though I had prohibited myself from painting at the center and making it symmetrical…
It's interesting that when you look at it close up and then from farther away, the impression you get changes. When you look at it from here, the face jumps out at you and it looks totally different.
I try to paint the eyes last. If I paint the eyes sooner, I am drawn to them and get swallowed up. Once the eyes are painted, the painting looks complete. I think when you put something in the eyes, it seems like it resides there.
What about your use of colors?
I'm bad at colors. I basically use monotones. It's because I'm not good at using many colors.
Overall, the colors look light. Perhaps lighter than before. While the tones look basically the same, there appears to be a variety of complex colors used.
No, they are not that complex. The light, diluted colors may be layered. The white and diluted colors are raw colors from the tube.
The subjects in glance, anxiety, etc., have worried faces.
They even have eyebrows.
I had been consciously avoiding eyebrows; once you paint them, they lend a lot of expression to the face. Since eyebrows add narrative, I always thought it was better not to paint them. But then things became too iconic and inflexible. I was getting too serious.
Adding eyebrows made the overall proportion of the face look more realistic. I can't help thinking that. My earlier paintings had very large eyes. I think such paintings look more ordinary. Even in these paintings, the facial proportion are not real. I drew in and erased facial parts such as the ears. Recently it's been kind of agonizing to have the style I've created. How should I start destroying it? I wonder...
When you paint something like floater with a serene expression, do you feel serene as well?
… On the whole, it's depression. It's based on depression.
For example, anxiety on the right was painted after I got drunk and fell and broke my front tooth and got cuts all over my face. It happened after Naoki Koide's opening party in January. I felt prickly emotions, but the painting surprisingly did not come out that way. I erased what I had painted over a week and painted it again. It took about a week to finish it. At that time, whenever I looked at the mirror, I wanted to die. My face had cuts all over it and my front tooth was missing.
On the left of anxiety is glance which I worked on right until my accident. Koide's opening party was when ART@AGNES (Art Fair) was being held. Before leaving for the opening party, I finished glance. And a few hours later, I broke my front tooth. Afterward, I started to paint anxiety, which is on the left. When I look at it now, the style seems to come on too strong. It's probably not that raw looking.
So are you that concerned with style (laughter)? Did you also paint cool toward the end?
After erasing a large painting twice, I painted cool and impossibility. I thought I could paint them if they were smaller. But that also caused me some agony.
Do you always decide on the title after finishing the painting?
Yes. The title impossibility refers to my inability to paint it. A face whose expression I couldn't paint.
So that's why the eyes are crying and looking upward. It's saying, "I can't paint anymore!" like in a dialogue balloon on the side.
Yes, that's the concept: "I can't paint."(laughter) I think I've talked and revealed too much.
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