`A Primal Spirit: Ten Contemporary Japanese Sculptors” is one of the most stimulating exhibitions ever to come to the Museum of Contemporary Art.
It is the first major American show of contemporary Japanese art in 20 years and an unusual one insofar as the pattern has been-even in the massive 1986 ”Japan of the Avant Gardes” at the Pompidou Center in Paris-to focus on work that reflects Western influences.
Here, however, curator Howard N. Fox strove to determine the expression of indigenous Japanese ideas and attitudes, coming to them with neither preconceptions of nor allegiances to any aspect of the varied Japanese scene.
The result is a show unlike any other in town, as it presents art that has international appeal but is nonetheless remote from Western sensibilities despite superficial correspondences with forms and materials.
All the artists, who range in age from 33 to 54, work in isolation from each other, and some were completely unacquainted with their coexhibitors. So the esthetic that emerges from the exhibition is not of a particular movement or group. It originates in the Japanese culture.
The citing of traditional influences-as Toshio Hara, founder of the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, acknowledges in the exhibition catalog-is a risky business, for many contemporary Japanese artists resist the idea of
”Japanese-ness,” claiming an internationalism readily apparent in the fusion of East and West that characterizes Japanese daily life.
Still, from talks with the artists and their prepared statements, a number of attitudes emerged that have relations to Buddhist or Shinto thought as well as to traditional Japanese views regarding the practice of art.
It is important that Japan had no notion of ”fine art” until a little more than a century ago; for several millenia before, painting was a craft and sculpture a vehicle for religious expression. Such history cannot help but condition the work of contemporary Japanese painters and sculptors, especially when ”fine artists” are still a small part of the population.
Shinto and Buddhism also have found their way into contemporary Japanese art. Shinto recognizes the presence of deities in the physical world and man`s harmony with nature. Buddhism proposes that transcendence may be achieved during one`s lifetime through meditation and higher consciousness. The works on show embody such philosophies even though all the artists have secularized (and a few sometimes question) them.
Several exhibitors-Koichi Ebizuka, Tadashi Kawamata, Takamasa Kuniyasu, Isamu Wakabayashi-create temporary site-specific installations rather than more-or-less enduring objects that can be moved about at will. The one is not esthetically more advanced than the other, though installations underline more firmly the idea that the process of creation has greater significance than the finished pieces.
This emphasis may be familiar to viewers from contemporary Western art. However, in such works, form is still of crucial importance. The Japanese artists, by contrast, are involved with processes that place less importance on form, having an inward or a spiritual journey as their not-to-be-diverged- from goal.
Kuniyasu, for example, uses the physical labor of stacking blocks and logs to go deeper into himself in an attempt to approach the conditions of prayer. One would not know it from the forms of his huge pieces, as they seem to develop apart from him, leading the artist onward to a better understanding of what, precisely, he is in search of.
All the artists work with natural materials-wood, metals, minerals, fibers, stone-in a direct engagement with nature and, often, its cycles of growth and decay. Such engagement indicates that man does not seek to dominate his world as much as to achieve harmony with it, a desirable state that only recently has gained artistic proponents in the West.
The difference, of course, is that the Japanese artists are never overtly political in expression because they do not have to be, as their relationship to nature comes out of a recognition that everything has its place and is connected. Most of the artists describe such interconnectedness in spiritual terms, but even the least spiritual, Kawamata, works to establish links between the insides and outsides of buildings, as if his pieces were models of a traditional (continuous) world view.
Close relations to nature presuppose respect for materials used. Emiko Tokushige says she feels deference toward the fibers in her soft sculptures. Kimio Tsuchiya allows living wood forms to dictate his arrangements, believing there is no ”great difference in the value of a human life and the life of a tree . . . .” Chuichi Fujii speaks of trying to find a ”life force” through the tension produced by radically contorting wood.
Death, too, comes into the work quite naturally. Toshikatsu Endo completes his circles of wood, metal or stone by burning them, which, he says, is a form of burial. Kazuo Kenmochi uses discarded wood and coal tar to convey an interest in processes of deterioration and decay. Shigeo Toya creates the impression of forests, but forests ”purified” in eerie groupings that are to him ”like a burial ceremony for a forest.”
Such profound human content arises from a seeming paradox: the artists`
suppression of ego. Individuality does not naturally lead to universality;
more often than not, it gets in the way. So these Japanese artists are pleased to hold the ego in check for a higher interest. As Endo wrote, ”The act of putting the collective desire of the community into concrete form happens to coincide with my personal desire.”
The desire of most of the exhibitors is to make pieces that transcend the maker. Some write of it as a frankly spiritual pursuit. Others are more practical. But the appeal of nearly all of the work lies in part on the extent of its reach, for without becoming grandiose or starry-eyed or unduly symbolic, this is art that often shoots for the cosmos.
The MCA has responded by turning over all of the galleries, painting some of them darkly and spotlighting pieces with no little drama. It is an atmospheric installation that proves not at all distracting or inappropriately stagey.
The catalog (144 pages, $24.95) is slim but essential, as much for the artists` statements as for Fox`s brief overview. The few who have the Pompidou Center`s more substantial ”Japon des Avant Gardes” (545 pages; available only in French) will especially want the new volume, both as a continuation and a healthy corrective.
Those who recall the MCA`s finest exhibitions will easily be able to set this one among them, as it is the kind of show that looks beyond American chauvinism to give viewers an experience substantially different from any they have had before. This kind of show, which might make an even greater impact if seen in conjunction with pieces of Western art from the museum`s permanent collection, is excellent justification for the MCA`s projected new building. Let us hope it is also the start of an exhibition pattern.
———-
Organized by the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, ”A Primal Spirit: Ten Contemporary Japanese Sculptors” continues through Dec. 30 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, 237 E. Ontario St. Thereafter, it will appear Feb. 17 through April 28 at the Modern Art Museum of Ft. Worth.
