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A. Thinking about it, I suspect the breakdown of twentieth-century capitalist society was beginning in the late 1960s and the 1970s, when America became bogged down in the Vietnam War and began to suffer. In 1967, when I first went to America, Muhammad Ali was jailed for refusing to be drafted, nationwide rebellions by Afro-Americans were becoming increasingly frequent, and the movement against the Vietnam War was also intensifying. On walking around Greenwich Village, where the members of underground cultures, dropouts, and even drug addicts gathered, it was possible that one could be mugged at any time of day. At that time, the whole city was fraught with a tension bordering on danger. However, in those tense, dark spaces in a city full of contradictions, there was undoubtedly a brilliant, breathing vitality. Take contemporary art, for example, or contemporary music, or jazz... Q. Do you like jazz? A. In the early 1960s, there was a jazz café called Check in Umeda, Osaka. It was a base for avant-garde art in post-war Osaka. Such greats as Art Blakey and Thelonious Monk played there during their stays in Japan. Members of the Gutai art movement painted their works on the walls, and I've heard that Lucio Fontana once dropped in. I remember that it was at this place where I first heard about contemporary American artists like Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, and Roy Lichtenstein. In those days, in my early twenties, I would always be in the café with a cup of coffee, soaking up the modern jazz, and listening to my friends discussing avant-garde art. Because I know I can't carry a tune, I'm careful not to talk much about music. (laughs) Nonetheless, as I constantly struggled during my twenties to create a place for myself in the darkness in Osaka, jazz music, through which the musician's emotion is expressed freely through improvisation while denying the conventions of Western classical music, resonated with me as being something very American. It was a symbol of America, a country of freedom, open to all. Q. Do you go to jazz clubs in New York? A. Though I haven't had time to go recently, during my stays in New York I naturally visited jazz clubs such as the Village Vanguard and the Blue Note. The live sound I heard up close was totally different from what I'd heard in the jazz café in Osaka. It sounded like shouting out for something, rather than music... That was how it felt. Q. Do you think that contemporary art also belongs to the darkness of the city? A. I'd say so. What we now think of as established, internationally recognized contemporary art was born there. As I was myself in my twenties... It's probably for exactly this reason that I can fully engage in projects concerned with the contemporary artists and their works, which attracted me back then. For instance, with the Calder Museum now being built as an annex to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, I have had the opportunity to talk with Anne D'Harnoncourt, the foremost authority on Marcel Duchamp. At my first meeting with her, I was quite nervous about talking to the author of the books on art which I'd read so many times. I've also been given the opportunity to collaborate with Richard Serra and Ellsworth Kelly on the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, as well as on the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. At Naoshima I'm also designing a place to exhibit a sculpture by Walter de Maria, the creator of The Broken Kilometer, which deeply inspired me at the gallery in SoHo in 1979. I don't know how these artists feel about New York. Nonetheless, for me, their presence is a part of my image of New York in the late 60s. It was a place where radiant skyscrapers embodied the city's brightness, while the darkness swirling around their foundations powerfully expressed its vitality. Even now, if I am asked to name my favorite place in America, scenes from around SoHo and Tribeca come to mind. I like its edgy atmosphere, filled with possibility. Q. New York seems to have been cleaned up now. A. Yes, the dark corners of the city which captivated me in 1967 have totally disappeared since the "I Love NY" logo started appearing around the city. (laughs) Nonetheless, as long as people live there, some darkness will exist. Even if this darkness is dominated by overwhelming power, the city's repressed contradictions must somehow manifest themselves, perhaps explosively. I suppose this might be connected in some way with Ground Zero... Seeing the skyline without the World Trade Center, 35 years after my first visit, that is how I feel. • photo_Yukio • text_Mika Yoshida, David G. Imber • translation_Shoko Yamashita, Andrew Barrie |
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