Tadaaki Kuwayama : In Pursuit of Lucidity

Tadaaki Kuwayama arrived in New York in 1958. Leaving behind the traditions of Japanese nihonga painting, he became part of the 1960s cutting-edge American art scene. A contemporary of Minimalists such as Dan Flavin and Donald Judd, and also of Earthwork artists such as Robert Smithson and Walter de Maria, Kuwayama soon developed his own distinctive style, typified by flat fields of paint juxtaposed in horizontal and vertical compositions, as well as monochromatic canvases divided by thin strips of metal. Following the two solo exhibitions at the renowned Green Gallery in 1961 and 1962, his works have been shown in many important galleries and museums in the USA, Germany, Switzerland, Israel, and Japan. The museums with collections of his work include the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebaek, the Museum Folkwang in Essen, the Nationalgalerie in Berlin, the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, and the National Museum of Art in Osaka. In contrast to the painterly style of Abstract Expressionism, in Kuwayamas works we see neither the atmospheric push-and-pull of a Hans Hoffmann or Mark Rothko, nor the flat-but-enveloping color field of a Barnett Newman, nor the overall intertwining of oil paint of a Jackson Pollock. Kuwayamas early paintings are daring in their existence: they are completely stripped of excessive and expressive elements, which, by virtue of their stark geometric shape and its repetition, direct the viewers eyes to the canvases material presence. Furthermore, Kuwayamas use of metallic pigment for his canvases arouses the viewers awareness of the spatial environment in which they stand. As Kuwayama explained in 1964, "ideas, thoughts, philosophy, reasons, meanings, even the humanity of the artist, do not enter into my work at all. There is only the art itself. That is all". Today, Kuwayamas art still retains that spirit of purity. The formula for these works remains linked to his earlier compositions: single geometric elements that are repeated to form a larger whole. His use of metallic paint in his early canvases of the 1960s and 1970s has given way to works that use other materials such as aluminum and titanium. By using those reflective materials, Ku-wayama constructed the shifting field or laboratory of chromatic experience through which viewers become sharply aware of their interaction with the surrounding space. Michio Hayashi is an art critic and professor of art history at Sophia University in Tokyo, established in 1949 and widely known for its all-English program. His research interests include the history of contemporary art and visual culture as well as aesthetic theory and criticism. He is currently the Dean of the Faculty of Liberal Arts at Sophia University.