Mr. Yoshitomo Nara’s exhibition, “for better or worse,” was held at the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art in Aichi prefecture from July 15th to September 24th, 2017.
Mr. Nara created a powerful exhibition, writing in the exhibition pamphlet: “The history of my painting started in the 80s. I decided to bring together here what I think of as my representative works, which are scattered across the globe. To these, I’ll add in my newest works and create a show. 2017 is exactly 30 years since I started my journey in 1987, when I graduated from the Prefectural University of Art’s graduate school. To me, this show also feels like a long-overdue graduation project. It’s my declaration of determination to live my artist life from here on out with confidence and pride.”
Studio Ghibli has had a relationship with Mr. Nara since the publication of “Tori he no Aisatsu” (Pia 2006), in which director Isao Takahata translated and collected the poetry of Prévert with Mr. Nara’s paintings. Mr. Nara’s works have evolved further since then; his newest pieces have the power to make viewers look deep within themselves.
At this milestone of 30 years as an artist, we interviewed him about the exhibition, his newest works, and the future.
Expanding the part of me that isn’t living just in the art scene.
EXHIBITION STYLE COMES FROM SUBCONSCIOUS CHOICES
EDITOR: In your all of your shows, it’s not just the works themselves but also the exhibition design itself that contains fresh surprises. At this show at the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, there is first a room containing record albums and books that influenced you, and other thoughtful details. When you design an exhibition, what is your process for imagining the space?
NARA: When I paint or create something, it’s just me alone in the studio, but when it comes time to show those works, I design plans that are tailored for each individual space. With the building’s unique characteristics in my mind, I visit the space, preferably when it’s closed and empty, and walk around, imagining where to put what. Once I go the space, I come up with an exhibition plan pretty quickly. After that, I work out details on paper.
E: When faced with the empty building, what kind of exhibition plan do you first think about?
N: I don’t think at all about details like lighting, or how many centimeters from the floor – I start with a general image and it’s kind of like, this goes basically here, that goes around there. Then, once the works are in the room and laid out roughly, it’s like, “Please lift it up a higher,” “Yep, right there.” I just make swift decisions and don’t measure things out too much.
Captions on pg. 5
Top: Mr. Nara’s LP record collection. “I like the texture of the album covers, how they are like objets.” This is on the wall of the first room.
Bottom: Items that Mr. Nara likes are lined up: kokeshi dolls, stuffed dolls, other dolls, picture books, photo books, etc. Exhibited as if to show how these influence his works. Mr. Nara’s ceramic pot is displayed in the glass case on the left.
E: Is your perspective the criterion?
N: Yeah. So from someone else’s point of view, it must look like I'm not doing it very meticulously. This exhibition has quite a lot of pieces, but it was basically done being put up in 2 days, and the planning was done in one day. It really looked like I’m doing it very easily… well, in fact, I am actually doing it very easily. Except, before it became easy, there were many years of experience. When I first started showing my work, I went through a phase where I’d worry; should it be a little bit more to the right, or is it to the left? Or actually should it be a tiny bit higher? But then one day when I really thought about what’s important, I realized that one or two centimeters don’t matter that much, and since then I became really decisive.
E: I understand that one of the reasons this exhibition at the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art came together is because of the appeal of the architecture designed by Mr. Yoshio Taniguchi. What makes the building appealing to you?
N: I think the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art is a representative piece of 90s architecture. Put very simply, it’s not just a regular rectangular building; it has lines that flow. I’m using the first, second, and third floors, but the flow moves when you go from the first floor to the second. Going from the second to the third floor they also move. Going further up from the third floor, the flow circles around. The way it’s nested like this feels good. And the largest space is right in the center of the second floor. I knew that would be the main focus, so I started with just the simple idea to put the largest piece in there, so decided to exhibit a little house.
E: That’s amazing that you were able to put together such a show in just two days.
N: For me, the most important thing is not about making an exhibition perfect; I think there’s something that matter more. So in a sense, I don’t get too caught up in lots of details so putting together an exhibition goes really swiftly.
E: What do you think that most important thing is then?
N: That’s something that’s already accomplished in the studio when I’m creating the painting. It’s something that won’t change whether the painting is in someone’s living room, or in an alcove, or in a museum. If I’m able to create something powerful enough to have that, then it shouldn’t make a difference whether it’s moved over 10 cm, 20 cm in an exhibition.
E: In this exhibition, I felt that you were very conscious of the overall rhythm of how each room, each space’s balance flowed together.
N: In the first rooms, I intentionally left a lot of space on the walls and the paintings are sparse and spread out, but this isn’t just negative space. I’m showing the “absence” of the paintings. Kind of like, by showing what isn’t there, bringing focus to what is there.
In my earlier works, I did things that I could only do because I was young, but looking back at them now, I'm honestly a little bit embarrassed. There’s something good that comes from the youthfulness, but I can’t help but see some immaturity in places; so in that sense, I want viewers to experience the space as a whole as opposed to focusing on each painting individually. So, instead of it being a one-on-one experience, more like one-on the space as a whole.
E: The room where all of your drawings from your student days are concentrated all together really feels like the space is a single piece of work.
N: Exactly. I don’t know how other people will see it when they come, but I’m a little embarrassed so I’m trying to pull it off in this way. With the recent paintings in the very last room, I felt like I was able to create works that can really sit with a viewer on its own, so I set up the space so that each person can have one-on-one encounters with the works.
That said, I’m able to explain all of this looking back at it now, but at the stage when I was actually planning the exhibition, it’s almost entirely subconscious. I think because I've been doing exhibitions for 30 odd years now, my subconscious just takes care of it.
E: At the stage when you are selecting works for an exhibition, what metrics do you use to make your choices?
N: Right now, this moment that you’re in is the most forward point in your life, right? I select pieces that the person I am, in this moment, doesn’t find embarrassing. If I was 30 years old, I’d use a different sensibility to select pieces that make me think, “this is the one!” I choose pieces that I could only make in that time, or just happened to be able to create in that time. Pieces that make me feel this way are like “the very first painting.” Not the second, or third one.
E: I like that, “the very first painting.” Like taking everything that makes your work the way it is, and having that all in one piece.
N: People often say that I paint the same things over and over again, and yes, I keep painting children and dogs over and over again, but if you compare the newest ones with the oldest ones, they’re completely different. I had in mind an exhibition that would show that difference. Like, it’s the same era but this painting and that painting are completely different, for example. This later painting has the same composition, but everything’s all different, kind of thing. My intention was to select pieces so that people can perceive these changes.
I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO DESIRE TO HAVE MY WORKS SEEN BY AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE
E: You said earlier that looking at your early works was embarrassing. Do you think going through your old paintings and making selections from them is not so psychologically healthy?
N: That may be so. For example, my early work often featured kids with knives or angry kids, and people who haven’t updated their information about me still want that. So when an old painting turns up at some auction, the price goes up just because it’s “a girl with a knife in her hand.” The flipside of this is that if I kept painting those kinds of things, they would keep selling. But still, there was a time when I could paint those but now is not that time, so I can no longer make those paintings.
E: When you say that you can no longer paint those, do you mean that period is over?
N: I’ve matured at least a bit. I’ve learned patience, I’ve learned not be impulsive when I really want to rebel, and I’ve learned to resolve things by talking through them seriously. Looking back now, I realize that I would think through things as I was painting, and grew up little by little into an adult. So of course, there are things that I can no longer paint. But I don’t think it’s because my talent is drying up, or anything like that.
E: In your painting that director Isao Takahata used as the CD cover art of (Jacques) Prévert’s collected poetry, “Je suis comme je suis,” the girl also had a knife. That painting is also shown in this exhibition, isn’t it?
N: That I also painted in the early 90s. I have no memories of struggling with the act of painting back then. It was like letting my emotions scream; there was nothing technical, I just held the brush impulsively and those works were born.
E: That style of painting, is that one of your ideals?
N: No, it’s more that at the time I was young, so I just ran with my emotions when I painted. In everything I did then, I wasn’t thinking about the future; I just painted all over my life.
E: In the 2007 documentary film “Traveling with Yoshitomo Nara,” you were packing up your belonging to leave Tokyo, and you said, “It’s been really fun working with other people, but somehow it’s made me soft, complacent, and I’ve lost the opportunity to pull myself together firmly, and that isn’t great.” This left a strong impression on me.
N: I still kind of think that.
E: That thought, and what you just said about not being able to paint girls with knives anymore, aren’t exactly the same thing but I feel like there’s some overlap. After finishing major exhibitions in Yokohama and Hirosaki in 2007, you went in the direction of ceramics. I get the impression that you’re constantly moving back and forth between your sociability and the isolation, alienation that give birth to your work.
N: When people help out, things partly become easier because you can rely on others, and the scale of work can become larger. It became possible to build little houses and to create a huge exhibition space, and so on, but when push comes to shove, I’m of course the one who is working most seriously. Obviously everyone else is also working hard, but for them, it may have been more about enjoying some beers at the end of the day, like “We’re done for the day, cheers!” Or, they didn’t know what they were getting into, and came to help out on a project like this because they were in the process of trying to find themselves.
For me, one mistake by anyone could mean that everything I’ve built up to that point could come crumbling down. But for everyone else, they’re not thinking like that at all. No matter how hard they’re working, there’s no way they take on that kind of responsibility. That was where I felt that, if there’s a next level for me as an artist, I wouldn’t be able to get there continuing on like this. When I was able to really grow personally, it was through absorbing writing and films and music, all on my own and raising myself up. Not by having someone else lead me by the hand.
When I’m with other people, I can have them do a lot of things for me. But for me, doing something pointless by myself gave me the time to really think. Like how a calligrapher begins their process by grinding their own ink, I’ve always stretched my canvases by myself. It’s probably similar to an athlete warming up before a game.
That said, I don’t dislike collaboration itself, and I’m really happy when I get to meet people who are serious about what they do, even if it’s in another field. So I’m drawn to a life where I can interact with people like that. It’s just that I don’t think it’s good to fall into a rut.
E: Is this exhibition a type of milestone for you? Considering that Aichi is full of memories for you, from your days as a student here. I also heard that you stayed in this prefecture for a long time as you were recovering from the trauma of the earthquake.
N: How this exhibition came together is really all a coincidence. I was first approached by another museum inside the very impressive Aichi Arts Center right in the middle of Nagoya, and I really, really didn’t want to do it (laughs). When I turned that offer down, I mentioned that I’d be more interested if it was in a place like the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art. It just came into my head as a nearby museum that had some distance from the city and was a wonderful piece of architecture.
E: And then that’s what happened.
N: The head of that museum I turned down ended up moving, and going to work at the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art (laughs). And he said, I remember what you said before! But really, the architecture of the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art is wonderful, and I wanted to show in a place not in a major city.
E: Does that mean that you don’t really want to do exhibitions in a place like Tokyo?
N: I don’t. Up to now, the only exhibition I’ve really done in Tokyo was in 2004 at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in Shinagawa, which is a conversion of a residential house. If I’m creating my own world in my exhibitions, it needs to physically fit with my personal sensibilities.
Still, since the mid-90s when I started painting in the old factory space in Germany, the size of my paintings keeps getting bigger. The place I live now, where I paint has a ceiling height of 6 or 7 meters; it’s huge. Because that’s my daily life, my works also come to fit that. So I do want to show large paintings, but choosing a museum just because it’s large -- that’s not quite right.
E: So in a way, do you mean that you don’t necessarily want more people to come; you don’t want to have your work seen by as many people as possible?
N: I have absolutely no desire for that. Say, if 1000 people come, if 500 of them had already come to an exhibition before, I’d be more into that. In fact, this exhibition in Toyota has a large number of repeaters. That’s the kind of thing that makes me happier. I understand that from the museum’s perspective, it matters how many tens of thousands of visitors come, but it’s not all about numbers. My ideal is that, people who are really interested somehow catch the signal through their own antennas even if there’s no advertising, and come. When people come because everyone else is going, or because their teachers told them to – I’m not so into that. Or when people come because their favorite actor or musician said they liked my work, that also feels not quite right.
E: What would be your ideal relationship with the people who come to see your exhibitions?
N: I’ve met all kinds of people, not necessarily through painting but in my travels and such. If those people found out about my exhibitions, and are kind of like, “Oh, so this is what that guy does,” and came to see my work – that would be my ideal, if I had to describe it. It’s hard to explain though (laughs).
E: So, rather than coming because of a societal concept of “Yoshitomo Nara,” people being motivated by as personal and pure interest as possible, and then the relationship deepening through that?
N: I’m not good at explaining with words, and when I start explaining, I often get confused what I’m talking about. That’s why I make paintings and sculptures. There are all kinds of forms of expression like dance and music, but for me, the one that most feels like, “Oh, that’s me,” is creating paintings and sculptural objects. One piece of art is greater than a thousand words to have people understand me. There are people who will never understand no matter how many words you use, and there are also those who don’t want to understand, and others who want to reject. But if there are people who want to understand even a little, and they see my paintings in person, they’ll understand me. At the same time, those people who look at my paintings in that way also rediscover their own selves. I’d like it if I could create that kind of relationship.
PAINTING LIKE IT IS ASCETIC TRAINING
E: This relates to what we were just discussing, but looking at 30 years of work at this show, I feel that the communication that your paintings ask of your viewers has gotten deeper and deeper.
N: Right. I think it’s gotten very deep. The early paintings where they’re holding a knife or glaring – I guess they’re catchy, but then that’s all they are sometimes. For those paintings, the viewer instantly reacts, “I used to be the same way,” or “I get it, I get it,” but then it ends there. My paintings now have no posing, and most of them simply face straight on. And then it’s a question of if people are able to get into it or not. If they’re able to enter into that painting, it’ll also connect them to seeing deep within themselves, and I think something might even change a little too.
E: This exhibition had a gift shop so I bought some postcards. Your earlier paintings were reproduced with little difference. But with the recent painting, “Miss Spring” (2012), and the painting hung at the end, “Midnight Truth” (2017), the reproduction of these onto postcards isn’t good. Even if they reproduced these onto life size posters, I don’t think they would communicate the quality of the real thing.
N: Yes, exactly.
E: Especially when standing in front of “Midnight Truth” for a long time, the face starts to warp, and I remember a strange sensation as I could no longer tell if the face was smiling or angry or crying. Basically, it’s as if the work rejects being turned into a product.
N: Yes. I personally think that that’s one of the great things of seeing pieces in person. Not just for my paintings, but there’s something that can only come through when seeing the actual thing. There’s something that just can’t be communicated through a print, and that’s worth going somewhere to see. That’s not limited to paintings; I think landscapes are the same.
E: It seems that you’ve always been particular about merchandise, but has your thinking on that evolved along with your work?
N: One of the main reasons I put out products and catalogs is because I don’t know if the people who buy my paintings really love them or not. When I was young, my paintings were super cheap; anyone could buy them at those prices. No one knew my name, and the galleries that would show my paintings were places that only people who really liked them would even go to. In those places, the people who bought my work were the people who really liked them. That relationship was healthy. But then, as my paintings became popular, rich people would start buying them up thinking, I heard these are popular these days; I should buy them while I can.
E: Basically collectors.
N: Then the paintings became more and more expensive, and now, people start buying them not even because they’re popular. They think, it’s kind of expensive now but in a few years, it’ll be even more expensive, so I can sell it at a profit later. Those sorts of people end up storing paintings in warehouses and don’t even look at them. The more my paintings sold, the more this sort of thing happened, and I started to realize that the people who truly loved my paintings were mostly the people who couldn’t buy them. In fact at exhibitions, I sometimes see people that make me think, wow, they really love the painting; in fact, they might even love my painting more than I do. So I feel like I do it for those people.
E: It’s ironic that because your paintings sell well that the distance between the work and the people who truly want them has gotten farther apart.
N: Yeah. I think that I paint because I enjoy it. But lately, I increasingly feel like producing works is a painful process, and it’s not as fun as it used to be in the past.
E: Why is that?
N: It’s becoming more and more like ascetic training. I definitely feel that the world of my paintings, the world of my creations is getting deeper, but it has to be said that it was more fun when I was just doing things without knowing any better. It’s like I used to paint all day and all night until dawn, until I'm completely drained and then collapse into bed. I don’t have that kind of fulfillment currently. There is a kind of masochistic pleasure towards something sadistic, like for an ascetic monk, though.
E: When you say training, what is that like?
N: Like in Shogi and Go, thinking about one move ahead, 100 moves ahead, while painting.
E: Do you mean that you can see the future steps of what you’re painting?
N: Yes. Children are free because they paint just in the moment. A lot of my work from the 90s is like that too. Of course I was older than a real child, so I was able to draw lines properly and what I wanted to paint just came out easily. But the positive qualities of something that flows out easily really only exists for that time, and if I do the same now, it just looks bad to me. Painting is more about color and brushwork and other things all coming together, so I think about that balance several steps ahead while I work. When that meshes well with the feeling of the moment, the painting can be finished. That’s kind of how it’s becoming.
E: So there’s no change to the feelings at the origin.
N: That’s right. “Midnight Truth,” in the last room, is a piece where that worked well. I showed this series in New York where I had thought about them having dark backgrounds, but that painting was the first one in the series. I was able to accomplish what I wanted to in the first painting, so the ones after seemed to come out not as good.
E: Personally, I also like the portrait of the front facing girl in “Can’t Wait ‘til the Night Comes” (2012).
N: That’s one that I erased over a past work and repainted a number of times.
E: When did you start painting the depth of the eyes? I think this is a big shift in your work, painting the depth of the eyes.
N: It’s again around the time the knives disappeared. After the easily read expressions like angry, glaring, or props like knives were gone, what I painted were things that they already had like eyes, and adding color into hair.
E: Like this is what happened naturally as a result of exploring the strength of the body itself.
N: Yeah. But there isn’t a set way to paint those eyes; all of them are painted differently. I’m always careful so I don’t paint according to a set process, a set technique. The kids holding knives or drumsticks that I’d painted in the past, they all were painted in pretty much the same way. Their eyes were also painted the same way. So after a while, it just became like producing variations, and I felt that this was limiting my potential. I was searching for more doors I hadn’t opened before. Like, trying to open those doors even if there wasn’t anything there. I struggled sometimes as I painted like this. So of course, in reality there were a lot of failed pieces. There are failures along the way, but once in a while when something works, it’s really good – that’s how it’s going now.
E: If painting is your training, what is drawing?
N: Drawing is still fun, and I can really draw based on the mood or feeling in the moment. I don’t worry if a line’s not exactly right. If it was in a painting, it would bother me and I would fix it.
E: What place do dimensional works hold?
N: That’s also a different story; making dimensional pieces brings together the joy of being a craftsperson and the joy of being a creator. Particularly when I’m making ceramics, I have to make them hollow like a clay figure, and so it’s not like I can create the shape I want right away; a certain amount of craftsmanship becomes necessary. Within that, I have to simultaneously explode myself while suppressing myself. That also feels half like training. Putting brakes on my own runaway train. I might feel like I want to make it like this but if I do that right away, it’ll collapse, so build it up little by little while letting it dry. I’ll do something like that, but then I’ll also try making something out of one solid piece. I don’t have to worry about it collapsing, so I can let my tendencies run wild while carving the piece, or clawing at it with my hands. That would be how I created the series of big faces after the East Japan earthquake.
E: I’m still thinking about how you said, “painting has become like ascetic training.” Specifically, when did this start and how?
N: Maybe around 2001, when I did a big exhibition in Yokohama which was my debut in the Japanese art world, and some friends would tease me by saying, “are you going to buy a Porsche soon?” (laughs) I was living in a prefab building with no bath, sharing a toilet with the factory next door, but people were thinking I had some fashionable lifestyle or something, and I was even getting interview requests from interior design magazines. Around the mid-2000’s, that type of misunderstanding from people, the feeling of things not being quite right, got stronger. At the same time, I had more opportunities to be around people, and I had to control myself if I got too carried away. Even now, when I drink I get carried away and I screw up (laughs).
E: During your time of solitude in Germany, you built up the foundation of your creative process, and you were wary of having that weakened by being in Japan and being hoisted up.
N: I loved to paint when I was a kid, and in early elementary school, my parents were working and my brothers were older, so there was no one around when I got home from school. There were no kids my age in the area either, so I’d play by painting by myself. At the time, painting was my playmate. Not to show anyone else, but I’d paint to show myself. Like how it’s fun when someone is by your side and watching while you paint. It’s like playing both parts by myself and having a conversation.
E: You get really into the paintings you made yourself.
N: Exactly. Like I’d make something like kami shibai (picture stories). My parents would save advertisement papers that were blank on the back, and I’d make up my own stories while painting them. Later towards the end of elementary school, I became a more normal kid and would play with other children.
As I paint, it’s as if I’m confirming myself to my own self, and speaking to myself as I paint a face. Lately the canvas is like a mirror, and I trace my own face onto it. As I trace, I have a conversation with it, or recall times when I had really heightened emotional experiences, or times I felt sad; something begins as I make my face reflected in the mirror more clear. After the face starts to take form, if I think, “Alright, I’m kinda hungry so I’m going to go eat something,” I’ll think to the painting, “Oh, sorry.” It can’t move, but I can. So it feels like, I have to apologize. When I start to feel that way, it’s a sign that that painting will get finished.
I’m painting my reflection, but at some point it starts to develop its own personality. Like something I can’t control. Like it asks me to finish it quickly. That’s something I’m conscious of. So I’m not painting for someone else, I’m painting for myself. Or, the most accurate thing might be, I'm painting for “the sake of what is being painted.” So partway through, there emerges a sense of responsibility to give it form.
E: “For the sake of what is being painted,” I like those words.
N: When a painting turns into a kind of commonplace self-portrait, the person on the other side can’t come through. For example, that was what happened with the original painting of “Can’t Wait ‘til the Night Comes,” and by erasing it and repainting it, I’m letting its true form come out.
E: When I watched you paint in the documentary, I was surprised by how you really paint lines and colors over and over again, and how a painting ends up completely different from when you start. So in your mind, that’s where you begin searching for the form of “what is being painted.”
N: When I can’t paint, I purposely copy myself. I copy myself, and eventually I can’t stand the fact that I’m copying, and I erase it. In that moment of erasing, I can see something. Then I paint before I lose that something. So I often paint and erase in my process.
E: So it’s not like you just sit and wait.
N: That’s right. It’s because I still believe in my own power.
E: In your conversation with director Isao Takahata at the Kinokuniya Southern Theatre in Shinjuku at the end of August, you said that the most important “heart” of this exhibition is the room on the second floor (see pages 20-21). Please talk to me about this space. Was the little house that’s shown there built by the creative design team, graf?
N: We all made it together. We made it in Kanazawa, and it was built by graf, myself, and student volunteers from the Kanazawa College of Art.
E: The moon that’s sitting on top the roof has an expression of “resting.” What is the significance of this?
N: When I was a kid, sometimes it would seem like the moon was chasing me wherever I went; at other times I would see it suddenly appear in a different place. I used to think that maybe when I’m at home, the moon is tired and resting somewhere. That’s where the idea came from.
E: The tiny doll looking down and sitting in the boat in the corner of the room also left a strong impression on me.
N: I made that out of leftover wood when I was living in Germany in the 90s. In that space, the doll is me. There’s the moon and the house and around that little house is an extremely intimate space, but the girl is in such a tiny boat all by herself in the corner. Not knowing her destination and feeling uncertain, though the boat continues onwards. But if you look closely, the bow is pointed towards the moon and house, so don’t give up hope… This is the kind of thing I understand afterwards. In the beginning, I’m kind of just doing it. Like, this seems to work, let’s do this. But, afterwards I can see the reason. For example, that sculpture is tiny so it makes the moon look even bigger; if that was life size, the worldview of that space would have ended up more artificial, I think.
E: What do you mean by referring to that room as the “heart”?
N: That’s something someone said on Twitter after seeing the exhibition, and it made me think, that’s right (laughs). I always knew that that room has a strong attracting force. While people might just pass through the rest of the exhibition, that room always had a lot of people in it even though it doesn’t have so many pieces. So this confirmed for me that the center was there.
E: From the three paintings in that room, “Emergency” (2013), “FROM THE BOMB SHELTER” (2017), and “HOME” (2017), I felt a new atmosphere that I’ve never seen before in your work. They’re painted with rather simple lines but they open up a whole world.
“FROM THE BOMB SHELTER” and “HOME” are from 2017, meaning they are your newest works, right?
N: Right, they are very recent. They’re in a really new style for me, so I’m not that confident about them, to be honest.
E: If “Midnight Truth” is a long, layered novel, “FROM THE BOMB SHELTER” and “HOME” are like poems or short songs that have been trimmed down to the minimum number of words.
N: Ah yes, that makes sense.
E: How do these two types of expression balance within you?
N: Heavy types of paintings like “Midnight Truth” also carry a heavy process for me. The painting takes me away somewhere. Like it gouges something out of my own self. Facing something like that is like ascetic training, as I mentioned before.
With the new types like “FROM THE BOMB SHELTER” and “HOME,” originally I drew them with a ballpoint pen on the backs of old papers. Whenever I thought of something, I’d draw it out, and out of the pile I selected the good ones and decided to paint them -- that’s all.
E: People frequently say this about animation and manga, but oftentimes when something is transferred to the canvas, the vivid essence of the initial sketch gets lost. Does that happen to you?
N: Well, I don’t copy it exactly. I rework it; this line here isn’t needed, let’s try making this a little bigger, kind of thing.
“HOME” is something I picked out of a series of sketches that I did really quickly like taking notes, while watching a record of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. The girl coming out of a shelter in “FROM THE BOMB SHELTER,” was born from a photograph that exists of a child smiling at the camera outside of a Nagasaki shelter.
E: That one doesn’t have something that you can really call a facial expression, and yet it makes you feel great depth.
N: I personally really like them too, but I also feel uneasy wondering if it’s okay that they’re so simple. The process itself is simple. I just paint lines. I start thinking about whether a painting only has value when it’s layered with countless brushstrokes. I'm showing them because I personally like them and I’m still holding onto them, but I’m not confident. But in this exhibition, a lot of people told me they were good, so I felt like they’re okay as they are. I started wondering, maybe I don’ t have to train anymore (laughs). That said, to be able to complete a painting with just those lines, actually took 30 years.
E: There are two large dimensional pieces in this exhibition, “Light My Fire” (2001) and “Fountain of Life” (2001), both powerful pieces. What place do dimensional works hold for you?
N: When I paint, I don’t draft it out first, and it’s the same when I create dimensional pieces. For the sheep-like face in “Fountain of Life,” I carved the base shape out of foam but I didn’t plan out the ears first or anything; I just created without thinking about it. That originally had a body and used to be a walking doll. But the face came out so well that I cast just the face a couple of times and combined them with a coffee cup.
I created “Light My Fire” when a sculpture professor at Tokyo University of the Arts asked me, “can you come to the school and let everyone watch you work?” I was there about a month and worked on it in the same room alongside everyone. They told me I could have whatever wood I like, so I just started creating it until I could eventually see the shape. The wood is camphor.
Fundamentally, it’s all intuitive ideas. It’s intuition, but there is a universal and unchanging base to it all. In terms of ideas, you get a lot of different ideas, right? Out of those, an essential and inevitable idea that comes from myself. Just keep collecting the ideas that are above your personal line. Even if there’s an idea that makes you go, “whoa, this would be super popular if I did it,” you pass on it if it’s not right for you. That’s how I do it.
LITTLE MIRACLES HAPPEN
E: You published “Half a life (draft)” in Eureka (August 2017 Special Issue, The World of Yoshitomo Nara). Do you enjoy writing?
N: Well, it’s kind of a pain for me, but I come to understand myself as I'm doing it. It’s not that I plan out an intro, body, and conclusion, but once I start writing, there’s things that become clear to me, like “Oh, that’s how it is.” I’ve recently realized that there are reasons behind everything I do even if I’m not aware of them, but if I just leave them in my subconscious, I’ll forget them so I write them down. Then, I discover things I wasn’t even aware of.
For example, there’s the room with “Light My Fire.” Across from that wooden sculpture is a girl with the A-bomb explosion reflected in one eye (“Missing in Action -Girl Meets Boy–” 2005), and on the right hand wall are the paintings of twin girls (“Twins” both 2005). Actually, that sculpture was purchased at auction by Mr. Takashi Murakami. And Mr. Murakami once wrote about me, saying “Mr. Nara and I are like brothers from different mothers.” Meaning, we are in different places but we were born into the same world together around the same time.
And, a while back in New York, Mr. Murakami created an exhibition titled “Little Boy,” and my work was a part of it. “Light My Fire,” which he had purchased, was there, and across from it was the painting of the girl with the flash of the A-bomb in one eye (“Missing in Action -Girl Meets Boy-”), which is owned by the Hiroshima MOCA. The codename for that atomic bomb was “Little Boy.” And, Mr. Murakami and I are like brothers from different mothers, which I took to mean that we were kind of like twins.
E: Oh, so that’s why those pieces are together in that space.
N: I thought, oh, that’s why. The result is that that room had an atmosphere like a sacred chapel, creates a somber feeling. So, I’m doing these things subconsciously but everything connects together in a way, and everything comes together in the end. I'm not aware of it in the moment I'm doing it, but somewhere there is a part of me that has thought it through, and it’s really interesting when I discover these moments. It happens often when I'm painting or making things as well.
E: So basically that means for you, whether it’s planning an exhibition or a painting, you’ll go in the right direction if you faithfully follow where your subconscious leads you. Rather than deciding on a theme or concept first and then following a plan.
N: There’s no intentional theme whether I'm working on a painting or photography or writing, but what I’m usually painting is already under a big theme. I don't know what that theme is, but it’s definitely there. When those works have accumulated enough and I get asked to do an exhibition, that’s when I’m able to select pieces. If they tell me a theme upfront, it doesn’t work.
E: Is writing the same way? Is it like a diary of sorts, then??
N: I think so. I love photography and I take a lot of photos, but I fundamentally only shoot when I want to. Like painting only when I want to paint. When I look at photographers, I realize what makes me different from them is that they all work with a theme. They go to all kinds of locations to shoot or use models, and they’ve thought it through all the way to when the works get collected into a photo book. But for me, I’m not thinking about anything, so if someone came and said, let’s use these photographs you already have and make a book called “Dogs,” I could do it. But if they said, there’s not quite enough here so please shoot another 10 photos – I couldn’t do it. I was able to shoot the photos I already have precisely because I wasn’t thinking about it, and if I shoot 10 more managed according to a theme, that’s a different me that will shoot those. It would be the same as a completely different person taking those photographs.
E: So when you’re creating, it’s best to erase as much as possible the part of you doing management.
N: Basically. If there’s an exhibition that’s short just one painting and I get asked to make it, it suddenly becomes difficult and I have to paint 3 or 4 more paintings to get that one last piece. I think that’s where I’m different from other people who are professionals. So if I’m being honest, I think there’s a huge difference between my good pieces and bad pieces.
E: From your point of view?
N: Definitely. I don’t think I could ever paint something like “Midnight Truth” again. It feels like that was some kind of fluke somehow.
E: Another way to say it might be that, unless there are constantly little miracles happening, the pieces don’t come together.
N: Yes. To make them happen, I sometimes purposefully destroy pieces. Then my subconscious self has no choice but to come out and fix them. Then I think, gotcha.
E: So it sounds like you could say that one of the your criteria for selecting pieces for this exhibition is that you picked ones where the little miracles happened.
N: Perhaps. Even if the images are similar, there’s tons of bad paintings where there’s nothing happening. I might paint 6, 7 hours straight and nothing is working, and just as I'm thinking I’ll quash it and go to bed already, I give it one more try, and suddenly it goes well and I’m finished. I might make a line for the back of the head but then think, this would be really amazing if it was the forehead, so I’ll turn it into a forehead. Right facing often turns into left facing. These things happen because there’s a part of me that I’m not even aware of that pull them out of me.
LATELY I’M CONFIDENT I CAN LIVE DOING ALL KINDS OF INTERESTING THINGS, EVEN IF I QUIT PAINTING
E: This may sound clichéd, but listening to your words, it sounds like you are putting your all into your paintings; you’re basically painting for your very life.
N: No, I don’t think it’s quite such a life or death situation (laughs).
E: Oh really? It’s not like that?
N: Lately I’ve been confident that even if I quit painting, I can continue my life doing all kinds of interesting things.
E: That’s surprising. For example, what kinds of things?
N: In September, there was a small arts festival called “Tobiu Art Festival.” The town of Shiraoi, between Tomakomai and Muroran in Hokkaido, has long had a population of Ainu people, and there’s a place called Tobiu, really deep in the mountains.
There are only 10 households in the village and the population is about 30 people. There are farms and mines around, and strictly speaking, it may not even qualify to be a village. There used to be a school called Tobiu Elementary. During the Taisei era, the mines were discovered and laborers came to live in Tobiu, but after World War I, the mines were closed. Then after the Pacific War, they were reopened but they needed to provide mandatory education for the children, so they built one tiny classroom. Eventually there were more people so they built another classroom and made a school song, and then had a tiny gymnasium.
Eventually the mining winds down, people leave, and in Showa year 61 (1986), they shut down the school. After the school is closed down, a sculptor from Sapporo (Asuka Kunimatsu) who wanted a studio space out in nature turned it into his workspace. Then other craftspeople like furniture makers and lacquer ware makers also came, and it became a communal studio space. The victim in all of this (laughs), was his son, Kineta Kunimatsu, who was in the third grade and got dragged all the way out there. Tobiu Elementary is no longer open, so he has to go to another school, 10-odd kilometers away, Morino Elementary, for 2 years. He only had two classmates there, and one of them moved away so it was just two kids at the school race. Basically one of them comes in first and the other one comes in dead last – that’s the kind of place where he was living. Coming from Sapporo, those two years he spent in Tobiu were a huge culture shock. Later he returned to Sapporo.
Partly influenced by the fact that his father was a sculptor, Kineta himself goes to Tama Art University after high school. Then after graduating art school, he goes back to Sapporo then returns to Tobiu, even though he had experienced such a culture shock before. And to vitalize the art community that’s been there since his father’s generation, he created the Tobiu Art Festival so they can showcase their work.
I think it started around 2009. They’d display works inside and outside the school building, and have a music event on the weekend. Everyone would camp in tents, enjoy the weekend, and then go home. I participated last year and also this year. The art community of Tobiu is also trying to repopulate the forest behind the school, and I’m interested in forestry myself so when I was back home I decided to go visit since it was close.
I went, and it just happened to be one of the days they were taking care of the forest, which they do twice a month. They invited me to join their barbeque after the forest work. I promised to come back in the fall for the art festival and show a short animation I made and do a talk. And when I returned that fall, everyone was incredibly welcoming.
What really surprised me at the camp was that there were so many families there, and so many kids that it makes you doubt the declining birth rate. At that time, I still felt like a guest there, but wanted to be more involved the following year. So this year, I went a month early and stayed there, turning one of the classrooms into an exhibition space and showed works I created while in Tobiu. In fact, I just got back the day before yesterday.
E: I see. So basically, your experience there changed you?
N: Yes. After being there for a week, I started painting as I worked on the forest with everyone. I brought canvases and started painting, but something was off. It wasn’t that different from painting at my own house. If that was the case, I should just work at home and send the paintings there. That way, it would be much easier and faster. So I didn’t know what to do and was wandering around until I found some old clay in the school’s storage. The clay was completely dried out, and I didn’t know why but I put it in water, re-kneaded it, and started reviving the clay. Then it started to feel different from painting, and I felt like the space and nature in the environment were supporting me. After a time, the children of the people working on the forest came to play, and we played with the clay together, and somehow, it started to feel like I was being accepted into the classroom.
The leftover wood from the forest maintenance work was going to be burned, and I started to think that it might be interesting to draw with charcoal made from that wood, so I went and bought large paper.
I wondered, what if once again, there were children here in this abandoned school? I decided to do something I haven’t done in over 30 years, which was “drawing children from life.” I drew on paper that was 1.8 meters long and hung them in the classroom, and added 4 or 5 dimensional pieces. I also hung up the drawings made by the children.
Eventually, I found myself a real member of the group, not a guest or a visitor. In the end, I felt like I became really close to the art festival and forestry staff.
This kind of thing is related to me feeling that maybe it’ll be okay if I no longer paint. I’ve been doing all sorts of things for long time, and this is the type of place it all led me to. It’s hard to explain, but my heart felt really stirred.
E: Are you feeling like you want to continue this type of activity?
N: I am. This summer in Hokkaido, there was also the Sapporo International Art Festival, and lately there are a lot of these government-funded events, but what I’m interested in is fundamentally different. A place where I can see the faces of the people who come. Where I can see the faces of the people I work with. I think that’s the real collaborative work.
The center of the community, Mr. Kunimatsu (Kineta), is always working in Tobiu. If you go there a month after the event, he’ll still be there.
For example, I’ve been to a lot of outdoor rock music festivals, but if you go there after the event is over, it’s a completely different landscape. You feel a tinge of sadness.
E: Because it’s something temporary that passes on.
N: Exactly. But in Tobiu, next to the defunct elementary school is the old faculty housing and he lives there; there’s a swing and the kids play on it. You can go there anytime and there are certain people who will always be there; there are people who live there, and that makes it different than other places. In the government organized art festivals, they might also use a bunch of abandoned houses, but it’s all gone once it’s over. Different from something like that – the goodness of staying in a place. The goodness in small things, not just big things. Instead of trying to get people to come from all over the country or something, the townspeople and neighbors come, and it’s really, truly wonderful.
E: In an interview in Digital Asahi Shimbun on August 25th, you said, “After the earthquake, I wanted to be prepared to take my paintings anywhere. I think it’s a good idea to create works that relate to a location, but I also think there are some things that can exist anywhere.” From what you say now, it seems that thinking may have continued to evolve from there.
N: Yes. So the question is, what do you make in that place? For example in Tobiu, one can reference the history of the Ainu or of the mining and do all kinds of things. But what I did was not related to any of that; discovering clay within what’s left of the school, or drawing the portraits of the playing children and reviving an image of a classroom full of kids. The ideas that are born are fundamentally personal ones. If you try to find ideas within the place’s history or from an anthropological perspective, the expression becomes academic.
E: You end up with a planned theme, like you were saying earlier.
N: Yes, that’s right. So even if I wasn’t in Tobiu specifically, I probably would have done the same sort of things if I delved into another small community.
E: It doesn’t matter, you could be in the Saharan desert, basically.
N: Well, a desert would be an exaggeration (laughs), but yes, basically.
E: So when you talk about creating work that isn’t tied to place, this is what you mean?
N: Yes. I think that this is what creating people or a place is like. Not the sort of village revivals that everyone is doing, but for me, it’s like this. In the past, there was a time I’d draw realistically from life, and I also used to teach that at one point. So I thought that maybe I would still be able to do it, and I actually was.
E: Are the drawings of the children still exhibited there now?
N: I believe they will be up until September 17th.
E: What happens after that?
N: I’ve been thinking about what to do. I could keep them, but I didn’t make them because I wanted to exhibit them; the main reason I made them was because I wanted the people there to see them.
One of the reasons I wanted to participate in this was because Mr. Kunimatsu says, “I don’t want the Tobiu Art Festival to get any larger than it currently is.” Don’t increase the scale, just the quality. I really responded to “not wanting to make it bigger.”
E: Do you think it’s going to become your new field?
N: There’s something that makes me think that location doesn’t matter. I really enjoy seeing people living fully and happily out in the regional areas. People who are proud of where they live, or return because they have a place to come home to – seeing them gives me some hints about what is really good in life.
E: So different than something like the Moerenuma Park in Sapporo, designed by Isamu Noguchi?
N: In the brief history of art, when you go to places like that, I’m sure it’s impressive. But I feel like there are other things that I truly need, and people who truly need me in other places.
I feel like that’s the type of thing I thought was really great when I was in high school. When I was becoming an adult, there were university students hanging out in neighborhood cafes, and in that small space you could see everyone’s faces and they were all looking towards the future, rising up to it.
E: Are you also thinking you can create in places like that? Drawing the portraits of the children like you just did is one thing, but could you also create something like your paintings in such a place?
N: I do feel like I can do something if I go. There are two faculty houses, and one of them is rented by another sculptor, but if it becomes empty, I’d like to rent it. I currently live in the Nasu Kogen (Nasu Highland), but when it’s summer it gets really hot, and I think as I begin to age, it’d be good to have a place like that to work in the summertime. But to be honest, I’m really not good at teaching kids or doing things with them.
E: Is that so?
N: I’ve never really done it. When I get offers like that, I always turn them down, saying I can’t do it.
E: Why is that? You seem like you love children.
N: No, not really (laughs). Children are selfish and loud, and I just can’t. But this time, it wasn’t like a bunch of kids I didn’t know were brought together to do something; we became friendly naturally as we played together. Like, they would grab a giant worm and bring it to me saying, “Worms are the gods of the fields!” and I’d respond, “Okay.” (laughs)
E: Just regular friends. (laughs)
N: When I get asked to come, to do something, I can’t. Lots of things are like that. But if it’s something I do naturally without being told to, I can do really great things.
E: It’s very interesting that you had such a moving experience in this place, in this time.
N: Yes. Other than Mr. Kunimatsu, no one else is an art specialist; they’re fishermen, or working someplace, or retired. Back when the school was still operating, there were lots of birds in the forest and the children could distinguish the calls between all of the species. They were selected by the prefecture of Hokkaido as a “model bird appreciation school.” Everyone there has gathered under the banner of reviving that school forest.
E: If we were to put your evolution into words, you started drawing by yourself during your childhood in Aomori, and the loneliness and alienation you experienced when you went to Germany became the foundation of your work. Later you returned to Tokyo and became involved with other people, which made you feel that you were beginning to atrophy; having finished big exhibitions in Yokohama and Hirosaki, you began pottery. Including the experience of the earthquake, you have increasingly more time that you spend facing yourself. In this way, it seems that the individual part of you has returned. But hearing you speak now, it would seem you’re headed towards another stage again.
N: It was actually when I left home to go to Tokyo that loneliness and alienation allowed me to create. When I was in high school, I wasn’t lonely or alienated at all; I was creating rock cafés with older students and other friends who were about 10 years older, and that was our tiny community in our town. When I went to Tokyo after that, there were a lot of people with different values, and even when I met other art students, they had a different way of thinking. That’s when loneliness and alienation were gradually born in me. So my original community was that tiny one around the rock café when I was in high school. That’s what I felt when I went to Tobiu, a community there.
E: I see. So those feelings before the loneliness and isolation came back?
N: Yes. Those feelings came back, and I felt like I could really be myself.
There were other happy encounters at the Tobiu Art Festival too. When I lived in Germany, I had a part-time job washing dishes at a Japanese restaurant. There were two girls who worked at another Japanese restaurant behind mine, and they were originally from Hokkaido, and I got to reunite with them 20 years later.
E: Did you contact them?
N: Yes, I reached out to them and they came. They had returned to Japan two or three years ahead of me, I think. They hadn’t gone to Tokyo; they went straight from Hokkaido to Germany and were working. They had returned to their hometown of Abuta Gun Kimonbetsucho, and they came from there.
E: How wonderful!
N: Also, when I gave my lecture, I told a story about when I was in high school, and created a café with older students from my middle school and also a university student who was living nearby, and I said, “That university student was from Sapporo, but he’s not here, is he? There’s no way he would be here, right?” and then suddenly a voice calls out, “I’m here!”
E: Wow, that is amazing!
N: I was so surprised. That guy is now a high school teacher. These sorts of things are also interesting. Probably, these types of things have no value in the industry of the art world, and wouldn’t be news. But, aren’t these moments important for everyone? Basically, it’s about not living exclusively in the art scene, or rather, how to make the art scene as small as possible within myself. Then, your humanity can expand, and when your humanity expands, it means that you have that desire to see old friends again, to have conversations with people that transcend any time apart, to come together for a common goal. Creating a forest, or taking care of the children all together -- I’ve been thinking that these are the kinds of things that are important. Going through this, my paintings will probably change again, and might take on other expressions. Not that I know.
E: So it would seem that loneliness and alienation are no longer the sources of your work.
N: It’s become that way, yes. Another thing is that I’ve become very interested in in the last few years in the fate of the Ainu people in contemporary Japan. As I’ve been learning about it, I started to talk a lot with Ainu people, becoming friends with some of them, and one of those friends is originally from Shiraoi. That person is now in Sapporo, but on this visit I was treated to lunch in his old family home. Come to think of it, in October there will be an Ainu Thanksgiving Festival in Yokohama for the Ainu that live in the Kanto region, and for some reason they’ve asked me to speak there. At first, I thought that the Ainu community would be very insular and I couldn’t possibly get close even if I wanted to, but before I knew it, I'm able to participate in their ceremonies.
E: Sounds like your life will just continue to get richer.
N: In a way, I almost feel like I don’t care about the art world (laughs). I do have the desire to create good paintings, and I want to leave something behind, but the desire to have exhibitions or aggressively make something happen -- that has been going away.
E: Do you ever return to your family home in Aomori?
N: I often do, yes. Especially since my mother is living on her own since 2009, when my father passed away. My brothers also live nearby, and I go home at least twice, sometimes as often as 4, 5 times a year. And my mother still tells me stories about my maternal and paternal ancestors, stories I still don't know, that amaze me.
E: It might be that this is the time in your life when all of these fateful things come together.
N: Might be. My friend’s Shiraoi-born mother became friends with the Shiraoi Ainu people because her father was born in Sakhalin, and gave me a reply on Twitter about it. I don’t really have any memories of being close with my own grandparents, so sometimes I think of other elderly people as my own grandpa and grandma, and become friendly with them.
E: Basically, you like people.
N: I’ll never be the one to proactively approach other people, but if we become a little friendly, then the rest is like whoa, an avalanche (laughs).
Neppuu(GHIBLI), Studio Ghibli, 2017, October issue
『熱風(GHIBLI)』（スタジオジブリ 2017年10月号 第15巻第10号(通巻178号)）
(Translation: Chisato Uno)