Makoto Fujimura: New York works - Hardcover

Fujimura, Makoto

9780964834019: Makoto Fujimura: New York works

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0964834014 ISBN 13: 9780964834019

Publisher: Dillon Gallery Press, 1996

[Excerpt from introduction by Kushner] The first time I looked at Makoto Fujimura's painting, The Twin Rivers of Tamagswa Series, I responded immediately to the somber, bittersweet tenor of the chroma - sensuous blues, greens, grays that echoed the moodiness of the Northeast in winter or earliest spring. The sense of light, polar opposite of Impressionist dazzle, depicted the wan winter pallor of the sun trying to break through gray clouds, or the final blush of late afternoon before darkness ascends. The poignant mood of these river bottom landscapes elevated the New Jersey wetlands, near- which the artist then lived, to the grandeur of Dutch landscapes. Through the restrained calligraphic addition of a tree dwarfed by the vastness of the horizontal expanse, or of a distant viaduct, the entire composition crystallized into a cohesive spatial unity. These depictions of a particularly elegiac American locus, wetlands scarred by industrial insensitivity, strangely echoed the historical Romantic sense of "the sublime" linking Fujimura more closely to the 19th Century than to much of today's work. Knowing that Fujimura painted with traditional Japanese techniques, I came closer to examine the modulations of surface textures, and was literally astonished to perceive faint gold writing in the sky of each painting. The Biblical texts, derived from the writing of Old Testament Prophets (in this case, Isaiah) offered hope and serenity at times of doubt and adversity. "Bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair." The gold words were smudged, partially obscured by a darker wash as if the clouds were attempting to shelter the divine message. Formally, the words became an elegant adaptation of the colophon, or textual commentary an Asian artist adds as the completion to the pictorial part of his work.

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