Starting this April, I'm appearing regularly in a talk program about art on J-WAVE radio (broadcast in the greater Tokyo area), as part of the daily "Nescafe Gold Blend Inner Sketches". You can hear my comments on art there every Wednesday, between 14:20 and 14:50 (roughly). My talk partner is veteran radio personality Vie Vie, with whom I can chat in a cool and relaxed mood. For my first session, which took place yesterday (4/5), I was asked to give an "introduction to Tokyo art spaces", so I talked about Mori Art Museum, Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, and the gallery complex in Kiyosumi.
The producers' idea of the program can be summed up as an "easy-to-understand introduction that helps the man on the street cross the high threshold of the abstruse realm of contemporary art." I think that’s a good concept, and a reasonable request that I'm happy to comply with. But before doing so, I'd like to make an adjustment in order to express the issue rather precisely. To add "being thought of as" and call it an "easy-to-understand introduction that helps the man on the street cross the high threshold of contemporary art, which is being thought of as something abstruse" would make the implication behind the concept much clearer. What they expect me to do is explain that "contemporary art is not at all abstruse, and the threshold is not really that high." But hey, art simply isn't that easy a matter, and the threshold is in fact rather high.
My on-air time is limited, so I'm not sure to what extent I can go into details in future sessions. In order to put my own thoughts in order, I'd like to write down here once again that I think that art to sports or games always makes things easier to understand. Art is a sport, albeit one for which the players invent their own rules. The rules are as loose as in freestyle wrestling though, and there seldomly is something like a rule book for spectators (if there is, it usually makes the game uninteresting). There are simple rules, and there are trickier ones. Some rules are complicated yet relatively easy to grasp, others are simple but unreasonable and unintelligible to outsiders. The fun of watching art is to get an insight into the list of rules, interpret and master them, and enjoy the game (artwork) — sometimes as an active participant — according to that. The question whether a work hits or flops hasn't much to do with the complexity of its rules, although one can't say that it’s completely unrelated.
It’s very easy to understand if you use sumo or other martial arts as an example. A sumo wrestler wins when his vis-a-vis falls or gets pushed out of the ring. Swimming, running and other racing don't require any explanation of rules. Ball games are slightly trickier, as besides the easy task of counting goals there are such rules like hands, offside and other foul play one doesn't necessarily notice when watching casually. Things get really complicated in baseball or cricket. I was born in a baseball stronghold country, so I'm quite familiar with the rules, but when I see an overseas cricket game on TV, I have no clue what the players are doing, and why at the end one team wins by a long chalk.
Well, that doesn't really matter (my apologies to all non-Japanese readers and cricket fans), but what is clear is that, in order to enjoy sports it is necessary to know the rules at least to a certain degree. It’s the same with art. Many sports are based on a competition format, and since the rules are basically aimed at securing fairness among the competing parties, they are easy to understand to those watching. In most cases of art, on the other hand, the idea of fairness doesn't apply because there is no competition in that sense. Therefore, as mentioned above, artists create their own rules in an arbitrary manner. Like in other realms, originality, which means new works based on new rules, is being esteemed and respected. Homages or reinterpretations of senior artists' accomplishment are welcome too. You see, the game is getting more and more complex.
It’s an entertainment of twists and turns, so it just can't be that easy. Maybe one can compare it to chess, mah-jongg or contract bridge. In addition to knowing the rules inside out, research into game records, learning standard sequences, or memorizing the names of star players one wants to patronize doubles up the fun. It’s neither easy nor simple, and for that art has its own fans.
Current exhibitions at the Kiyuosumi complex I introduced in the program include "Assume Vivid Astro Focus" at Hiromi Yoshii, and Toya Shigeo’s exhibition at Shugoarts (both through 4/28). The former is a festive, almost excessive sort of installation of intense, madly dancing lights and colors, while the latter shows rather introverted, and at first sight simple and serene-looking sculptures made with boldness yet very delicately using a chainsaw. I don't know to what extent these two artists' motivations and energies are similar (probably they're totally different anyway), but on the surface these two exhibitions show the potential of contemporary art in terms of fluctuation. Even though the radio listeners are "ordinary" people, I just can't talk about art that is "not difficult". Then again, doesn't the above sound quite exciting too? I really think such explanation might result in an increasing number of art fans.
Another "high threshold" is certainly that of galleries, whereas here I think I won't have problems to emphasize that it’s in fact lower than one might think. Or wouldn't you agree that it’s sometimes much harder to enter the stores of certain fashion brands? (Not that I'm frequently visiting such boutiques…) What is necessary first of all is an effort to spread proper information in an appropriate range. In this sense, we're trying our best with both RT and ART iT!
Ozaki Tetsuya / Editor in chief / REALTOKYO