ABSTRACTION: The Awakening and Development of Abstract Painting - From Cézanne, Fauvism, and Cubism to the Present

As it was a Friday night near the end of the exhibition, the venue was quite crowded. Lacking the stamina to endure it, I quickly gave up on viewing the works in orderly, sequential fashion and decided to focus only on the artists and works that caught my eye.

I properly viewed the works of an artist named Arshile Gorky for the first time ("Untitled (Virginia Landscape)" (c. 1943-44), "Untitled" (c. 1946), and "Untitled" (c. 1945)).

The atmosphere was one where strange shapes made of black paint, crayon, and pencil were lined up, with colors placed here and there in a casual manner. At first, I almost walked past them, but a strange line drawing caught my eye and made me stop. Looking closely, I could feel that the lines forming the shapes were extremely delicate and carefully designed. They were lines that seemed hesitant, yet were drawn with conviction. The rhythm of various shapes being connected and released by thin lines. It is a quiet, yet strangely captivating canvas. The sense of balance with the pale colors is also exquisite, and I felt I could gaze at it forever.

As for Mark Rothko, there was the work "No. 28" (1962, collection of the Shiga Museum of Art) and a newly acquired work, "Untitled" (1969).

The latter has a relatively pale, pinkish canvas, but looking closely, the brushstrokes are surprisingly clear, and one can almost trace how the colors were applied. I took another look at the larger "No. 28" (205.8 x 193.5 cm) next to it, which I had initially walked past. Three thick bands of color are painted from top to bottom: white, a somewhat bright brown, and a dark brown. As I gazed at the middle band for a while, I began to grasp that there were subtle shades within the color. I also realized that the dark area at the bottom, which I had initially taken for the border of the band, became darker toward the corners. Even within the same hue, as the eyes become accustomed, they begin to detect subtle gradations. Come to think of it, I had a similar experience when I saw the "Seagram Murals" (1958) at the DIC Kawamura Memorial Museum. This process of recognizing subtle differences that we usually overlook by consciously turning our attention to observe them seems to me to be similar to Vipassana (awareness) meditation. Regardless of whether Rothko was interested in Tibetan Buddhism or not, I find myself thinking that such cognitive processes might be universal.

Ignorant as I am, I was completely unaware of the photographic works of an artist named Toshio Shibata. I was somewhat shocked by "Minami-Alps City, Yamanashi Prefecture" (2021).

It appears to be a concrete slope reinforced for stability, but the concrete grid is arranged in a violently undulating pattern that follows the original curvature of the slope. Against the original terrain—a natural object beyond human control—the artificial object, that is, the human hand, is responding in an acrobatic and precarious manner. As a result of the struggle between the two, an extremely abstract form emerges, overwhelming the viewer. (June 3 - August 20, 2023, Artizon Museum)

*The header image is Toshio Shibata's "Numata City, Gunma Prefecture" (2022)