on my work as a painter

Leonardo

On My Work as a PainterAuthor(s): Takami SakuraiSource: Leonardo, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Summer, 1979), pp. 228-229Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1574217 .

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Leonardo, Vol. 12, pp. 228-229 Pergamon Press Ltd. 1979. Printed in Great Britain.

ON MY WORK AS A PAINTER

Takami Sakurai*

1.

I left Japan for San Francisco at the age of 37, drawn by the Beatnik movement of Ginsberg, Schneider and others. In California I encountered the 'supermarket' of new religions, religions that were neither Occidental nor Oriental in conception. There I organized a group of painters interested in Buddhism to study the practice of Za Zen and to adopt the regimen of vegetarianism. We found a house for our group and converted one of the rooms into a gallery for our paintings. Our days began at 5 a.m. with a 40-minute Za Zen session. In 1973, I left the group to live in -France.

I retain the attitudes to life I was taught in Japan as a child. I am aware of the coexistence of opposites in everyday life. Thus, sadness is present in joy and joy in sadness. Death, taken as joining the universe of which one is a part, can be regarded with joy. In Buddhist terms it means to enter Nirvana. When one tries to imagine the state of Nirvana, one becomes weary, because one is outside it. That is the moment one accepts the idea of hell and arrives at an understanding of Nirvana. Egoistically, I have imagined Nirvana, which I do not wish to explain to anyone. It leads me to find miracles in everyday life.

One of these miracles is a marriage between a man and a woman who met by chance only to develop bonds much stronger than those existing between parents and children. In this world where people kill each other, I consider it to be incredible that two strangers should trust each other to the point of marrying. Then a child may be born to them, a child who did not decide if he wanted to be born.

Even in banalities of everyday life one can find little miracles. Since leaving my native province of Kyushu in Japan, I have, by chance, met eight of my former friends-two in New York City, three in San Francisco, one in Delhi and two in Paris. To meet them thus in cosmopolitan cities swarming with people seems an extraordinary occurrence to me.

In Japan, if someone from far away visits you, you are expected to prepare a feast that will be so ample it will torture your guest's stomach. I find it easier to fast for a week, which I do two or three times a year. The simple act of drinking tea has become a 'tea ceremony'. Many thousands of people in Japan make their living out of it! I find it strange that anyone could live without any other work than serving tea.

Now I rise each morning at 7 a.m. and practice, in an informal manner, 40 minutes of Za Zen. One should free

*Japanese painter, 12 rue Madame Curie, 92220 Bagneux, France. (Received 1 Mar. 1978)

oneself from all preoccupations during this period, but I think about what I will do during the day. Perhaps I will remember a banality that I can miraculously convert into a painting and the painting may give me a feeling of happiness. It may give happiness to others. That is why painters who live from one moment to another, for life and for death, try to convert banalities into miracles; they do this at the risk of their lives. For them, whether they succeed or not is of no importance, since the amount of energy in the universe is unchanging. I like to think I am a 'biological thread' that makes a bridge between one's birth and the moment one leaves life and one's eyes do not see any more.

Fig. 1. 'Introduction to Paradise', oil on canvas, 73 x 92 cm, 1977.

Fig. 2. 'Infinite World, Everybody's World', oil on canvas, 73 x 92 cm, 1977.

228



On My Work as a Painter

Fig. 3. 'Between Heaven and Hell', oil on canvas, 73 x 92 cm, 1977.

2.

I have chosen four of my paintings to illustrate the range of my interests. Figure 1 shows a depiction of a figure with three faces and six hands, representing the richness of human character. He is calling to a heavenly messenger and also to a bird. Surrounding him are six

suns signifying the universe. In the dark lower portion the six suns are shown following one another, and arrows point back and forth between the man and zero. Death I have indicated by the continuous passage from the heavenly kingdom to the realm of darkness and back again.

In the painting shown in Fig. 2 I have depicted a number of humans each carried on the palms of another.' Placed around them are nine circular shapes representing suns emitting light outward to the unseen limits of the universe.

In Fig. 3, two heavenly winged messengers are depicted, and they are meant to represent humans as well. The bands between their hands signify the liaison of their souls and the parallel lines between their heads the heavenly understanding of mankind. Four red suns, representing the universe, are shown in the black area, at top and bottom, which imply human awareness of the realm of darkness.

Finally, Fig. 4 (cf. color plate) is based on the question, 'Alone in the vast cosmos, where are we going?'. We, I have depicted as an apprehensive central figure. The blue background signifies for me sadness. At the right, below the wing, a sun is depicted, at the left a drifting cloud carrying a group of heavenly messengers and, at the top, right, an erupting volcano.

229



Top left: Sidney Buchanan. 'Patrick, sculpture, steel I beams, height 6.9m, max. spread at base 3.6 m, 1976. (Installed at Pipal Park, Omaha, Nebraska, U.S.A.) (Fig. 1, cf. page 217)

Top right: Jaromir Fiala. 'Uncivil Fellow', carving, elm wood, height 90cm. 1974. (Photo: J. Brok, Prague, Czechoslovakia) (Fig. 6, cf. page 185)

Center left: Joseph Floch. 'Looking Down', oil on canvas, 87 x 99cm, 1971. (Photo: G. Clements, Staten Island, N.Y.) (Fig. 9, cf. page 236)

Center right: Franco Adami. 'Les Deux faces', sculpture, bronze, 40 x 30cm, 1972. (Photo: Ortrund, Paris)

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Center rih:FanoAai 'LsDu fae', cltr,boz,4 0m 92 Poo rrn,Prs





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(Fig. 2, cf. page 213)

Bottom left: Tom Dubicanac. 'The Bighorns', Archigrok Environmental Displacement Series, photomontage, 30 x 53 cm, 1975. (Fig. 2, cf. page 220)

Bottom right: Takami Sakurai. 'Celestial Messenger and Still You', oil on canvas, 38 x 46 cm, 1977. (Fig. 4, cf. page 229

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on my work as a painter

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