Compulsion moves in time like a foggy dream. You’re not quite sure where you are, or what exactly is happening, but somehow, it all feels like a strange journey that you are more than willing to take. The exhibition features not only photographs from the series, which range in size from small and intimate to epically large, but also film stills from Prager’s newest short film, La Petite Mort, starring French actress Judith Godrèche. Prager has often incorporated actors and film into her work, all of which is already undeniably cinematic; Compulsion is no exception. Filled to the brim with emotion, these captured moments of intense drama read like a story board.

And while there’s no telling exactly what that story is, we can tell that it is a new one for Prager; her usual bright colors are (for the most part) muted down, creating scenes set in a lonely prairie, atop a telephone wire in a darkening sky, even underwater. It’s pure Americana mixed with a hefty dose of Surreal. In 4:01pm, Sun Valley and Eye # 3 (House Fire), a small, quaint house burns in an epic blaze, yet the bright, peaceful landscape which surrounds it is mysteriously undisturbed. Right beside it, a close-up shot of a man’s earnest, determined gaze– highlighting only one eye– watches acutely. In fact, eyes are a recurring element throughout Compulsion as smaller photographs that accompany the larger ones. It is unsure to whom the eyes belong– perhaps to the vague and varied collection of protagonists, or other people entirely– but whoever they are, they’re watching us.

A stirring mix of beauty, nature, and the bizarre, Compulsion is a can’t-miss show that will run until May 19 at Yancey Richardson Gallery.

79 galleries participated in this edition, of which 24 are based in New York. Prices range from $100 to $10,000, with many works under $1,000.

AAF also holds talk events and workshops for both adults and children which can be attended free with admission.

Here is how the Private Preview Party I attended on April 18 looked.

AAF concept is quite original among the many art fairs held annual around the world. It offers its visitors a greater opportunity to think about the value of art in their personal lives, from beginner, low budget art collectors to more seasoned ones.

In Farib Abu Shakra’s video, “Internalizing the Senses,” a soldier, stripped to the waist and with a tight black hood over his eyes, wanders through a market. He seems to be both seeking and asserting his humanity, while his identity is submerged within his “soldier” status, indicated by his camouflage pants and boots. Another video provides a forum for the artists to express their own issues; the piece highlights the immense variety of viewpoints and concerns. Hopefully, this presentation will stimulate new insights and perceptions within the artists’ networks of relationships in Israel.

Khader Oshah’s “Self Portrait,” in mixed media, displays a self-portrait head combined with Arabic text, in a personal exploration of Oshah’s Arab identity within the context of his life in Israel. His painting “Bedouin Sheppard with Dog” brings home the diversity of experience that a purely migratory desert life entails.

Gideon Gechtman’s textural announcement of his own death, “White Obituary,” jokingly tweaks the custom of announcing a death so people can pay their respects.

David Wakstein’s regional map stresses history, both ancient and current, through the use of mosaics, an age-old approach to form and material.

Sasha Serber’s charred wall work “Twigs” mirrors the destruction of nature, with its attendant hope for regeneration.

Dina Shenhav’s “Sacrifice of Isaac” employs acrylic and sponge on cardboard, in an inventive use of media, illustrating that facing the unthinkable sometimes results in a new reality.

Asad Aziz ‘s “Soldier and Civilian” reflects the conflicting aspects of daily Israeli life.

Jennifer Bar-Lev’s “Dalai Lama“ stresses the universal aspects of the world religions that span the practices of the area.

Anisa Ashkar’s photograph, “General (Muhammad Ali),” displays an image of a girl in a black top, set in a black background, wearing red boxing gloves. The “red” suggests blood, and the “darkness,” the despair and ignorance that must be challenged.

“Split Stones” explores an alternate view of the regions geology. On a positive note, Vered Kaminsky’s “Untitled” gives scope to the creative, hopeful transformation of bullets into ingenious works of sculpture.

Micha Ullman’s “Cups” displays two vessels that provide food for thought.

David Ginton’s piece, “The Back Side,” explores the information to be found on the back of framed works of art, disclosing the artist’s desire to view not only what is intended for display in a work, but its hidden meanings and messages as well.

Fatma Shannan’s painting, ”Girls,” deals with the inequality and suppression of women and individual expression in Druze and Arab cultures.

Raffi Lavie’s loosely drawn linear piece, “Untitled,” reflects a highly individualistic approach to art making.

Many of the works on view are reminiscent of a desert environment, with their monochromatic, sand colored palettes harking to a land of blazing light that bleaches the bright appearance of spectral hues.

Participants: Farid Abu Shakra, Hannan Abu Hussein, Anisa Ashka, Asad Azi, Fatma Shannan, Micha Bar-Am, Efrat Natan, Jennifer Bar-Lev, Gideon Gechtman, David Ginton, Fahed Halabi, Michael Halak, Vered Kaminsky, Raffi Lavie, Manal Mahamid, Khader Oshah, Sasha Serber, Dina Shenhav, Micha Ullman, David Wakstein, Gal Weinstein, Reuben Zahavi,

The MECA is located at 888 Newark Avenue, Jersey City, NJ 07306

Last week I viewed the show at the Rubin Museum entitled “Hero, Villain, Yeti: Tibet in Comics”, which urged me to deconstruct the sources of sanctity and the sublime, of the exotic and otherworldly-ness that many of us attach to Tibet.

The exhibition invites us to ask ourselves: how is it that so many of us living in highly developed wealthy nations—far removed from having any experience of the sociopolitical realities in Tibet and ignorant of its folkways and history—have formed a romantic, idealized, even quasi-ethereal conception of the place: of what it is, what it is not, and what it symbolizes in our 21st century, postmodern, neoliberal globalized market society? What are the media sources (pointing to their purpose of presenting fact, theoretical analysis or drawing back the curtains to feed the human hunger for fantasy) of the conceptions we have formed?

Further, what roles—heroic in its spiritually redeeming nature, sublime in its philosophy of life, a cocoon-like paradise still uncorrupted by the frenzy of materialism, a place for the pilgrimage of the adventurous souls unafraid of the unknown and of the elements of nature, to name a few possibilities—have we thrust upon Tibet to fulfill as a place both real and imagined? And what are the external stimuli for the survival of these romantic conceptions not only in our individual minds, but from one age cohort to the next?

“Hero, Villain, Yeti”, an exhibition free to the public, showcases over 50 comics both retro and recent where Tibet appears as a primary setting or reference. The exhibition invites viewers—through perusing through fantasy, adventure, horror, political and educational comics produced in North America, Europe, Asia and Tibet itself—to reflect critically on the variegated sources of the ideological trademarks associated with Tibet. Popular entertainment media sources such as Tin Tin, Bugs Bunny, Tomb Raider and Walt Disney’s Scrooge McDuck, to name a few comics on view in the exhibition, despite being lighthearted, for entertainment’s sake and without the credible aplomb of academic or other well-researched non-fiction publications, are taken together potent contributors to Tibet’s set of ideological trademarks. That is, to the fantasy component of the set’s dichotomy, the one that is the product of the pure liberties and fancies of the imagination as opposed to informational media pertaining to the real geopolitical entity defined by constraints and subject to the mechanisms of world politics.

“Hero, Villain, Yeti” allows us insight into the formation, through comic book art, of (what hardly needs to be argued is) the more enjoyable half of popularly held conceptions of Tibet. More enjoyable not only because they are gratifyingly fantastical and imbued with a glowing and dignified aesthetic quality, but because they are the fruits of human curiosity to see which direction we can push the envelope to create imagined realities using real entities (in this case, an actual existing place) that are still loosely conceived and little known to many. There is a joy in seeing the interaction and loopback effect of entertainment and literary media portrayals of a particular thing, and how this portrayal effects, transforms and informs popular conceptions of that thing.

The imagined, often fantastical and ethereal realities in comic book narratives that portray Tibet—for all their seeming abuse of idealization and riding roughshod over facts and tradition—does serve a functional purpose. The exhibition shows that these imagined realties allow us to break free, albeit momentarily, from the rules and expectations, the physical and societal organizational constraints, the unchangeable precedent of history, and humdrum of our daily lives. And, wouldn’t you agree amid our high strung New Yorker lives, affording us this “breaking free” is a lofty role for the medium of comic books to fulfill, a role that mirrors the glowing and heroic conception of Tibet that the entertainment medium so readily fashions for its purposes?

The critic Howard Halle compares some of Sherman’s work to Andy Warhol’s “Death and Disaster” series (although I cannot imagine to what her nightmarish clown series might be compared). On the faces of the women she is portraying, make-up is expertly used to almost violent effect: to puff up the lips to garish proportions or to convey an intense worry or gripping melancholy. Maybe the art world should not have been as surprised as it was when images created by Sherman were seen all over the city as advertisements for MAC Cosmetics. As part of her larger creative project, the painted faces of Sherman’s characters represent the ambition, and perhaps the folly, of everyday attempts to preserve youth, to represent wealth, or to celebrate one’s own beauty. Her work is so profound precisely because it wrestles with individuals’ inspired efforts to renew their images, to aspire to new identities, and to bend and twist the commonplace into something far greater.

Alongside Sherman, few women have stood at the intersection of the realms of make-up, art, and film like Jane Forth, a Warhol Superstar whose use of make-up yielded iconic looks that were thoroughly hers, elegant yet subdued. In contrast to so many who attempted to recycle images of faded Hollywood glamour queens, Forth created a unique identity that was also authentically her, the result of experimentation and a stunning visual sense, not dissimilar to Sherman’s. The creation of this visual identity occurred, of course, within the equally unique context of the Warhol Factory. After a time as one of Warhol’s most dazzling Superstars, however, Forth removed herself from the spotlight, leaving many to wonder what became of her. After observing the attention given to the deployment of make-up in artistic compositions and the questions of feminine beauty triggered by Sherman’s work, I decided to find Forth. Having grown up in Michigan before moving to the East Coast, Forth is now a mother of grown children and lives in Hudson, New York. She recently visited Manhattan for an interview.

Jane Forth (Veronica Ibarra, 2012)

Forth is best known for appearing in Paul Morrissey’s Trash (1970) and the lesser known but still brilliant L’Amour (1973). In the latter of these, Warhol and Morrissey took several Factory fixtures to Paris for a film in which the allure of make-up, fantasy, and mass culture runs throughout. Raggedy hippies played by Forth and Donna Jordan arrive in Paris ready to be transformed by Patti D’Arbanville and friends like Corey Tippin and Karl Lagerfeld (who at that time sported wavy black hair). Glamorous identities gradually emerge via new make-up and hair styles. Although set in Paris, the film is thoroughly Pop: Forth and Jordan rehearse for a musical wearing Pepsi Cola shirts and fruit hats, Jordan pines for hamburgers throughout the film, and Forth’s character extols the virtues of American TV, particularly the Mickey Mouse show. In what is Forth’s most memorable scene, a local waif named Max attempts a seduction. Massaging a finely chiseled statue, the heavily accented Parisian asks, “You don’t like the sex of a man?” In her classic tone, Forth’s character says, “It’s ok, I mean. But you know, I’d rather buy make-up. I get more excited by make-up.”

Recalling the inspiration behind her own famous use of make-up, today Forth remembers being pulled toward older movies, particularly black-and-white films “due to their contrast,” she says. Forth’s favorites included Clara Bow, Claudette Colbert, Bette Davis, Hedy Lamarr, Dorothy Lamour, Vivian Leigh, and Myrna Loy. To develop her own style, she says, “I experimented with many different looks as a young adolescent. I was not consciously looking to create something new as an image. I took my inspirations one step further and mixed it with my own creativity and artistic eye and my look appeared. It felt right and it felt very comfortable to me when I finally found it.” When I asked how she accounted for the ability of make-up to inspire and provoke, as in the glamorous portraits of movie starlets or Sherman’s depictions of broken identities, Forth replies, “When someone paints their face, you’re creating something. You’re stimulating your own imagination.”

Jane Forth (Veronica Ibarra, 2012)

Screening Forth’s scene in Morrissey’s Trash tends to leave viewers agape. The lead character, a drug addict played by Warhol Superstar Joe Dallesandro, breaks into an apartment only to be discovered by a brazen young newlywed from Grosse Pointe, Michigan, named Jane. The scene is one of what Forth calls “a series of what we would term as trashy events” in the film. The famous scene with Forth, Dallesandro, and Bruce Pecheur, who plays Forth’s husband, has been noted for its explicit and at times humorous exploration of sexuality, marital relationships, drug use, class divisions, and contemporary standards of beauty. Forth’s decision to participate in the film was a bit more prosaic. She was pulled toward the filmmaking community by certain social ties, she says, and with particular regard to the film, Forth says simply, “I needed to earn money to buy Christmas gifts that year, so I took the job.”

Incredibly, the teenage Forth and her co-stars spun out dialogue that is at once captivating and hilarious with little direction. Forth explains, “Paul, who was very nice, had a very rough story line: ‘Joe’s a junkie thief and you are a rich girl home alone. Take it from there.’ We were ad-libbing and creating the dialogue as we went along. I did my own hair and make-up and supplied my own clothing.” Her scene with Dallesandro is one of escalation, ending with Jane in a fit of hysteria and Joe being perilously close to death. I wondered if that kind of crescendo was intended by the actors or Morrissey. Forth replies, “That wasn’t expected. That just happened. We’d take off on each other. It was a joint effort. It’s really ad-libbing.” Forth also recalls her off-screen relationship with Dallesandro as being very friendly. As she remembers, “Joe and I had a really easy-going relationship as friends,” and even recalls holding play dates with their children and cooking dinner together.

Some viewers are sympathetic to the humor and wit of Forth’s exchange with Dallesandro and Pecheur. Others are appalled. Most are inevitably startled by her sudden appearance, mysterious demeanor, alabaster skin, and the rosy cheeks echoed by her round red plastic earrings. Illustrator Joshua David McKenney, who recently drew Forth, considers her a muse and a strong influence on his artistic practice. When he first saw her appear opposite Dallesandro, he says, “I was instantly enamored by her. I thought she was so beautiful and loved that she was so simply styled and graphic looking. I also loved the way she spoke and I watched the scene with her and Joe over and over. Her beauty was like nothing I’d ever seen. Now that I’m an adult she has this special place in my mind as the best example of my favorite kind of way a girl can be beautiful.” Jon Davies, author of Trash: A Queer Cinema Classic observes, Forth “strikes an indelible figure with her petite eyebrows, porcelain visage, impossibly haughty drawl, and quick-to-cruelty demeanor.” After being recruited by Morrissey as a last minute replacement, did the teenage Forth develop this celebrated visage specifically for the film? No, Forth tells me, “That’s how I looked every day.”

Jane Forth (Joshua David McKenney, 2012)

Of course, individuals whose everyday appearance grabbed attention in the way that Forth’s did were exactly the kind of people that Warhol pulled toward him and are still the kind of individuals inspired by the identities of his Factory Superstars. This past February marked the 25th anniversary of Warhol’s death. He continues to cast a long shadow over the art world, especially here in New York. His silver statue in Union Square was very popular, new books continue to be written about him, and his influence on so many cultural producers is apparent. Forth ties Warhol’s enduring allure to his personality. She says, “There was always a mysterious air to Andy’s personality. It seemed to stimulate the need in people to want to find out more about him, or try to get close to him, or get his attention. His mystery was not contrived. It was just him.”

Forth traveled with Warhol, attended events with him, and worked as a receptionist at the Factory alongside Dallesandro. Yet her recollections are marked by more private moments. Forth recalls, “My most vivid memory of Andy was receiving phone calls in the middle of the night from him to see if I was watching the same classic movie that he was watching.” And she usually was, she remembers. Forth also recalls spending summer weekends in Southampton with Warhol, Jed Johnson, Peter Brant, and Fred Hughes. On Sunday mornings, Warhol would sit under a giant tree and read the newspaper. Hughes would play Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and the group would at times venture into town to buy rhubarb pies, lobster salad, and fresh berries. She adds, “I would always buy my Yoo-hoos. I loved Yoo-hoo. […] It would be so quiet, relaxed, beautiful, so normal and peaceful and tranquil.”

Jane Forth (Veronica Ibarra, 2012)

Given this unique spot among the Factory Superstars and within a scene that continues to define the imagination of the New York art world, why did she depart? For years, Forth’s absence from the world of cultural production produced its own lingering mystery. In his recently re-released biography of Dallesandro, Michael Ferguson cites Morrissey as saying that she lost interest in film because she became “self conscious.” When asked if she agreed with this claim, Forth replies, “I did find myself becoming self conscious due to the lack of desire to be an actress, but in exchange I recognized and discovered that I loved working behind the camera in make-up and special effects.” She therefore moved from standing in front of the flashing lights to moving behind the scenes. Her work as a union-certified make-up artist for films, TV commercials, music videos, and even PBS after school movies included work with Bob Giraldi, Pat Benatar, Barry Manilow, and Julio Iglesias. For a time she was also married to Oliver Wood, cinematographer for films like Sister Act 2, the Bourne trilogy, and Fantastic Four.

Through the unique looks and characters she crafted, Forth continues to have an effect on cultural production today, inspiring fashion designers like Anna Sui and make-up artists like Kabuki, who now regularly paints the faces of contemporary icons of music and film. I asked Forth how she might account for make-up’s enduring and even enigmatic allure, for its ability to both create and cut through ambiguity. Why does make-up as its own artistic practice continue to play so prominently in the work of creators like Sherman, Sui, and others? Forth responds, “Make-up stimulates the imagination, imagination is the catalyst for creativity, and creativity is the source of inspiration, and the allure is the visual stimuli.” Having themselves been forcefully inspired to create new and powerful identities, Forth and artists like Sherman have bequeathed a whole set of painted faces to ignite the imaginations of future everyday icons.

Jane Forth (Veronica Ibarra, 2012)

PHOTOGRAPHY CREDITS: Photographer: Veronica Ibarra. Make-up: Kabuki. Illustrator: Joshua David McKenney. Stylist: Rachel Gilman. Hair Stylist: Saya Hughes. Photographer’s Assistant: Derek Mega. Special thanks to Corey Grant Tippin, Darian Darling, Gary Comenas, and the MAC Pro studio in Manhattan.

Here are some highlights: the preview, special studio visits with Japanese artists living in New York and talk sessions related to the Japanese contemporary art.

Liz-N-Val are currently participating in the Brucennial 2012.

Liz-Val Interview ::: Joyful Journey through Creative Exploration from Lesny JN Felix on Vimeo.

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Liz-Val continued from Lesny JN Felix on Vimeo.

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Liz-Val Influences - from Lesny JN Felix on Vimeo.

This fair wants to sell itself as a more youthful ‘street’ version of the Armory, a concurrent and larger fair whose name is taken from the original home at the 69th Regiment Armory. The compelling part of ‘street art’ is in it’s ability to declare emotions in a direct and raw way, but what appears here is little more than cartoons drawn on rough boards with at most a flair for decoration.

The Fountain Art Fair uses as its branding a block printed image of the Duchamp’s ready-made Fountain (1917), a piece that was made to perplex and confuse. The Fountain, which is nothing more than a turn of the century urinal ripped from a wall and signed R. Mutt on the side, has for nearly a century lit a torch for the digressive soul. The Fountain Art Fair’s association with the readymade is misleading because what is actually happening are people selling pictures, whether it’s pictures of women or pictures of patterns, the booths at the Fair make it very clear that the purpose of the event is to sell you things with names.

Contrast this event with the Armory Show on the city’s West Side where the majority of what the galleries are selling has been far removed from life and society to feel more like art, whether it is or not. Perhaps the Armory show missed a great opportunity of branding in the Fountain image.

But the Armory Show has known what it is for years, a big money art fair, and the Fountain Art Fair is existing only in contrast to it as an anti-Armory Show. Where is the pirate flag? Or at the very least where is the miscalculated youthful abandon necessary to counteract the big mammoth of the blue chips? The Fountain Art Fair should perhaps be considered just another booth in the expanding Armory Show, perhaps a little more inexpensive and with a lot more flat work.

However if you are a newbie collector testing the waters before jumping in the deep end, there was work to be found. Lucien Dulfan, a painter with the Broadway Gallery, had three works of women attired in burkas. The paintings lacked name tags. It is only after I looked it up online that I found out the larger work is titled Marilyn Monroe (2011), a bit unfortunate. Dulfan’s paintings of these masked figures take on a comic world where they awkwardly jump around with strange dark robes on. The paintings feel real and relevant while also mocking the KKK figures of late Philip Guston paintings thirty years ago. Dulfan has stumbled upon a new flavor of lemming without the stale dust of Guston imitators.

The work from the Uprise Art (https://www.upriseart.com) booth had some especially strong paintings and prints including a large showing of Kyle Simon intaglio prints. These images had the feeling of opening a door into someone’s head. Inside containing a tableau of memories, perhaps, Simon’s memories.

In any large group of exhibits there will always be good work, especially in this City. The Armory Show of 1913 that infected New York City with modernism was a fluke in its ratio of groundbreaking work. In 2012 it is too much to expect a complete overhaul of our belief systems. To suggest what happened in 1913 could occur at a small fair like the Fountain Art Fair is ridiculous, but I would rather not be so reminded of it with the over reaching branding. The Fountain Art Fair would be better off with a logo of a vectorized Mona Lisa than a ready-made. Signing out – R.Mutt.

You arrived in New York in 1958. What was your impression of the art scene when you arrived in New York?

At that time it was dominated by Abstract Expressionism, but the younger generation of artists wanted to break away from that. In my case, I’d had no access to information about American art before I came to the US. Japanese art magazines didn’t cover it. There had only been some basic coverage of Jackson Pollock. So I only learned about Abstract Expressionism once I came here, and with that Japan lost its relevance to me. I felt like I was ten years behind everybody else when it came to thinking about art.

How did you start to get involved with the New York art scene?

At that time, I wasn’t able to come here unless I had a student visa, so I joined the Art Students League of New York. But that wasn’t a very interesting place to be; it was where amateurs and bourgeois wives went, and the teachers were all conservative. So I hardly went to school at all. I would just sign in and go home. But I did make some friends there, and since it was on 57th Street, it was close to MoMA, so I’d often see the exhibitions there.

How come the Abstract Expressionist approach to painting using your whole body didn’t influence you? Did you feel driven to do something different from what everybody else was doing?

I really disliked their approach. But I was making more of a break from my background in Japan than a break from my peers in New York. In Japan I was studying traditional nihonga painting, using pigment, water, and animal glue. I’d never used oil paint before, so I didn’t know what techniques were involved. And yet I couldn’t bear the type of painting I already knew. It wasn’t so much nihonga materials as it was the institution of nihonga that I disliked. So when I came to America, I wanted to get out of that and create something on my own.

At your first solo exhibition at Green Gallery in 1961, you showed Untitled: Red and Blue (1961), Untitled: Red (1961), and Untitled: Black (1961). What inspired you create this kind of Minimalist work?

I didn’t make a conscious decision to create that kind of work; rather, I overwhelmingly felt that it was my surroundings that were pushing me to make it. It was only when I had that first exhibition that it dawned on me what I had done. My understanding of myself as an artist grew with each exhibition I did. Each time, I’d think about what it was I’d been trying to accomplish with that body of work.

At that time, Minimalism didn’t really exist as a term yet, did it? Was anyone else in your circle of friends working in that way?

People hadn’t got to that point yet. Green Gallery was showing work by George Segal and Claus Oldenburg, but their work was more in the realm of Pop Art—it had something “artistic” about it. It was through Green Gallery that I got to know Donald Judd. He initially became involved with the gallery as a critic; it wasn’t until 1963 that he started showing his work there. But he wasn’t showing the aluminum pieces that he’s now renowned for; he was making sculptures that looked like folded panels, like Japanese folding screens, and there were square boxes that he painted in cadmium red, which reminded me of Japanese bento boxes. His metallic box-like works came later.

So, in a sense, the beginning of the 1960s was still a time when people, myself included, were making “artistic” works. After a while I wanted to make work that would stand apart from the world of so-called “art.” My art education had only looked to the past, never to the future, so I think I was still working in that mindset. At the time, I was wrapping canvasses with the kinds of paper that are used in nihonga. That kind of material wasn’t suited to the abstract expressionistic dripping of paint, and so on. At the same time, the works I made in the 1960s were really big—that was the influence of America, of seeing work by artists such as Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko. Seeing their work and how big it was had a huge impact on me. I’d never seen anything like that in Japan.

Frank Stella’s geometric abstraction was a major part of the Minimalist movement. Were you in any way inspired or influenced by his work?

I’d say his approach and mine were similar. He and I have been good friends for a long time now. We emerged at the same time.

How did your work develop during the 1960s?

There was a difference between my first solo show and my second in 1962. In the second, I started to explore three-dimensionality, and I made my first floor piece. Four-by-eight feet is a standard size for wooden panels in America, so I pasted thin strips of Japanese paper onto one of those wooden panels, painted the whole thing black, and stood it on the floor. It looked like a wooden door. There was no texture to it whatsoever.

In around 1965, I started to use spray paint. I created large, flat works composed of two panels of differing metallic colors. I stopped painting by hand, and I no longer used nihonga pigments or techniques. After a year, I stopped using paper and switched to canvas. I felt nihonga materials were too limited for this kind of work, and oil paint wasn’t suited to it either. All materials have their limitations, but when the aim is to obliterate something’s surface, a spray gun is better tool than a paintbrush. These large-scale works were included in the Guggenheim’s “Systemic Painting” exhibition in 1966.

You also started bisecting the middle of your compositions with one or more strips of chrome at that time too. What led you to do that?

I felt that color was something that everybody painted on by hand, and that artistic production was seen as an act of human creation. I wanted to deny that. That’s how my work started out. I wanted to obliterate all elements of what had come before, and to create multiple versions of the same thing.

There are five large works from that time that exemplify this. Untitled: Brown, Untitled: Blue, Untitled: Gray, Untitled: Purple, and Untitled: Beige (all 1966) are each composed of four panels, separated vertically and horizontally by strips of aluminum. They were included in my retrospective at the Nagoya City Art Museum in 2010, and they are now in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo. Each piece is also framed by a strip of aluminum, and there is no trace of a brushstroke in any of them—they are flat expanses of color. They were completely different from the Clement Greenberg school of abstraction that dominated American art of the time. These five works were a kind of art that anybody could make. And there was no specific reason why I only made five; if given the space to exhibit them, I would have made ten or twenty. As for the color, I didn’t want to create any distinction between “good” or “bad” colors. I wanted to treat them as equivalent to each other. So I used some horrible colors—all on purpose. I thought of those works as the “cheap American apartment series,” employing exactly the kind of disgusting colors that you’d expect a cheap American apartment to be painted with—pink, pale blue, baby blue, and so on. Those so-called hideous colors and art are the same thing. I made all those pieces the same size and the same shape; it was just the color that differed from one to the other. Sometimes I’m asked what order the colors should be hung in. I explain that it doesn’t matter—there is no order. They can be hung in a different order each time they’re put on display. But, nobody appreciated them.

Why do you think that is?

The owner of Green Gallery, Richard Bellamy, told me that he thought I might not make it as an artist in America—that Americans might not get into my work. He suspected that it would only be after my work had been extensively shown in Japan and Europe that Americans would eventually understand it. Looking back at that time, I think Pop Artists and Minimalists didn’t succeed in getting their work to be seen as anything other than “art.” Their work continued to be perceived as an extension of traditional notions of art, ultimately. But I never thought of my work as Minimalist. Even now I think of it as a fact, a truth, a reality.

But there are people who have supported your work. It has been particularly well received in Germany. What do you think the reason for that is?

The Germans have a very theoretical way of thinking. The entire country has thought about what direction it should take since World War II. They have embraced art as one of the cornerstones of peaceful reconstruction, and they invested huge amounts of money into the construction of museums. In the 1960s, it was the Germans who were buying American Pop Art and Minimal Art. So many works from that period are now in the collections of German museums. America caught up with those movements relatively late.

In what respect do you think your practice differs from that of Minimalist artists?

In general, the Minimalist artists were fed up with painting. They were compelled to make three-dimensional, sculptural work. But I didn’t take that approach. I wanted to turn art into something visually pure.

One could say the Minimalists explored three-dimensionality because making tableaux-like forms could be interpreted as extension of the painting tradition. And yet, you made tableaux-like forms. How come?

When I think about it now, I did want to make use of that shape. Yet, while paints do have a flat surface, that’s just one of the criteria by which we have defined painting until now, right? That’s what I wanted to reject. I was aiming to create something with a different sense of spatial dimension. That’s why the works I was making in the mid-1960s were things that anyone could make.

If, at the time, you had been able to have other people produce them on your behalf, would you have done so?

I think so, but I didn’t have the money. Thinking about it now, that series of five paintings that was acquired by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, should have been duplicated infinitely. When I was young, I did think of those paintings as my own work, but I was okay with that. It was enough just to say that my work was infinite in a conceptual sense—that conceptual premise alone was sufficient.

In today’s context, Damien Hirst seems to be working in a similar vein. His spot paintings aren’t “art.” I think it’s amazing that he’s taken that idea to such an extreme. That’s the kind of thing I wanted to do in the 1960s—to create works with no trace of touch that can be made by anybody and replicated endlessly. When I look at his work, I wish there were more artists like him. You can’t really say that any one of his spot paintings is better than another, can you? It doesn’t matter whether they’re round or square, large or small—they’re effectively all the same thing. Therefore, they have no value.

Though you had already been based in New York for quite a while, and you were working as an American artist, given that the Minimalists were all American-born, did the fact that you were Japanese limit you in any way?

To a certain degree, it did. At that time, I thought that having a foreign name might prevent me from being taken seriously. I sort of wished I had an American name. People would assume that because I’m Japanese, my work must be based on Japanese or East Asian thought. It even happened in Germany. I wanted to break down those assumptions. We are all humans, born on this earth as equals. All living things have feelings. I can’t bear artwork that is based on some kind of Japaneseness or Asianness. That said, while racial discrimination exists, I’ve never experienced it myself.

In his catalogue essay for your retrospective at the Nagoya City Art Museum, curator Satoshi Yamada quotes a statement you made in 1970. In it, you say “color, shape, and size must be clearly determined, and that is the starting point for the creation of my work.” Were those factors at the heart of your thinking from the beginning of your practice?

What I was trying to say was that there’s no point in me attempting to consider what art is; the only concern artists can have is how to make their work. I was also trying to say that you have to see the work for yourself; words alone don’t convey enough. So I was talking about the order in which I go about making my work. Take painters, for example: it’s through the process of adding and removing things that they create their work. I think that’s what defines painting. But in my case, I have to decide what I want to do before I begin. I think it’s wrong to begin creating a work without knowing what the end result will be. When I started my practice, I felt the age of painting was over, and I wanted to make things that had no trace of painterliness in them, things that existed in a different dimension. I wanted to create things that people who believed in painting wouldn’t understand. And I still do. The art scene is still dominated by the same conceptions of sculpture and painting. The world hasn’t changed much.

Japan has different ways of measuring length and area than America—centimeters rather than inches, rooms measured by the number of tatami mats in them, and so on. Given that dimensions are such an important part of your work, have these differences affected you in any way?

Nihonga painting measures everything in shaku, but one shaku is almost the same as one foot, so I didn’t feel particularly constrained by the change of system—in fact nowadays I prefer inches to centimeters. The scale of artworks is, in general, conceived in relation to scale of human beings and buildings, so I wanted to create works that weren’t bound by those ideas and suggested the infinite.

For example, at my solo exhibition at the Kawamura Memorial Museum of Art in 1996, I exhibited 136 eight-foot-tall panels of Bakelite, alternately painted with metallic pink and yellow. That work has nothing to do with the realms of painting or sculpture—it exists in the realm of space. Each panel is eight feet tall because that’s a standard size for materials in America. Eight feet is slightly taller than an average human being, and it invites you to look upward. I think it’s the most comfortable set of proportions to look at. As for color, though that piece was pink and yellow, but I don’t even perceive it as having any color. The same goes for all my work: I think colors should be treated as equivalent to each other. The point is that they just exist.

Can you talk about why you progressed to using metallic colors?

You know, there are some colors that don’t assert themselves—one might think they don’t even have any character. It might sound funny, but I’m interested in intermediate or neutral colors, and that’s what metallic colors offer. In any case, I’m not that fussy about what colors I use.

I see colors in terms of the infinite, which is why I’m not concerned about what order they are displayed in. Yet, colors and materials do each have their own characters. But I don’t think that alone is particularly impressive. I want to give them a sense of inscrutability. For example, if one of them has a little scratch, the viewer’s eye will inevitably be drawn to it, and at that moment the sense of balance in the work is lost. You no longer feel the conception of space that the work provides. So that’s something I absolutely try to avoid. I want the work to send a shiver up your spine. It should have no “hook” for viewers to cling to. I want to make people feel like they’ve entered a world beyond “art.”

In your current solo exhibition at Gary Snyder Gallery, you are showing Untitled (1996/2012), a set of six small sheets of Mylar, each bisected by a thin line of red and blue graphite and mounted between to thin panes of glass. What is your interest in transparent materials?

I was experimenting with glass. I tried creating lines by sandblasting it until it became frosted, but the effect always ended up being reminiscent of craft. I tried really hard to avoid that. So I ended up using colored pencil on Mylar.

Untitled (2012), which consists of eight roughly one-by-two-foot panels of titanium standing vertically on the floor at alternating angles, is the first work you have made in this material. How does titanium compare to aluminum?

Titanium is completely different. It’s hard to shape, but the colors are permanent. You can put it out in the sun and it won’t fade, whereas colored aluminum does. Another thing is that the color of the titanium shifts depending on the angle and distance from which you look at it. Untitled (2012) is actually pink, but depending on the angle of the light and where you’re standing in relation to the piece, it can appear green. This is a result of the anodizing process, in which the metal is put in a bath of water and acid, and an electrical current is applied—the color changes with every second. And these color changes aren’t gradual, either: the metal will be purple for a moment and then suddenly it’ll become blue, and so on. You can choose what color you want, down to the precise second, though, as I said before, I think of them as all being the same. Aluminum has its own base color, and I dye it. Both aluminum and titanium are white inside—the surface color is just a thin layer. But you don’t need to dye titanium; the anodizing process makes the color inherent to the material.

Last year, in my exhibition at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, I showed Plan for Gallery 11 (Yellow and Orange) (2011), a set of sixteen cylinder-like pieces of anodized aluminum placed in a row on the floor. Originally, I had wanted to make that work in titanium, but it was technically too difficult to achieve. Those cylinders are each made out of a single strip of aluminum that has been bent into shape. But the subtle angle on those works is virtually impossible to achieve with titanium. So that’s why my first work in titanium is made up of flat surfaces. When I first made the aluminum cylinders, I found that adding a slight angle to it conveys a sense of weight. A pure cylinder feels too geometric to me, and I don’t like that at all. Adding even a very subtle angle gives the work a sense of otherworldliness.

Are you planning to explore any other metals than aluminum and titanium?

I’ve experimented with iron before, but it ends up being too reminiscent of conventional sculpture. I prefer the feel of titanium. There’s something unusual about aluminum and titanium that I like. I’ve been looking into making eight-foot-tall panels of titanium, but it’s going to take time because I’m told that it won’t be possible to keep the color even across the entire surface. I don’t want there to be many colors evident from the moment you see the work; the colors should change as you observe the piece from different angles.

You’re also currently showing Untitled (1992/2012), a set of twenty-two red aluminum elements hung on the wall in a horizontal line. In the event that somebody buys that piece—or any of your other modular works—do you wish to exert any control over how and where it is displayed?

I do. However, there are many times when I can’t. Eventually I won’t be around anymore, so I’m writing a lot of instructions for how my works should be installed. It’s only a relatively recent development that people buy my work. Twenty years went by before anyone bought my aluminum and Bakelite pieces.

When that happened, did you feel like everyone had at last come to understand your work?

I wouldn’t say everyone—experts are a lost cause. These supposedly educated art-history specialists don’t get my work. For example, the 136-panel pink and yellow Bakelite piece that I exhibited at the Kawamura Museum was my first modular work. I had given the factory all the specifications for color, material, and size, but I couldn’t be sure how the piece would look until the factory had made it and it was installed in the museum. I could calculate everything in advance, but it was only once they were hung on the wall that I understood what feeling they conveyed. On the day the show opened, members of the general public gasped when they first entered that room. They were curious about what they were seeing; they wanted to get close and study the work. Only those who are not part of the art world have that kind of sincere, emotional response to the here-and-now of the work. But art-history specialists tend to look at the work in terms of what it relates to in the past, and therefore they don’t get it.

You’ve been talking in terms of the past, present, and future, but your work feels very still. How do you perceive the concept of time in your practice?

My work represents a sense of existence. It endures—I have to make it endure. There would be no point in me making a work that can’t be seen five years later. Aesthetic values are bound to change—they always have. It can’t be helped if people make things that don’t endure. To put it another way, people don’t just live for the present; they live in the knowledge that there is a future ahead. I think art should be the same. Things can live on as art. Visually arresting works of art from the past often still evoke a sense of the future when you look at them today. Because they convey the future, they make you feel the present.

Then, there’s the issue of people asking me when I made each of my artworks. I’ve never felt the need to sign or date my works. Why should that information be on an artwork? It’s only done for commercial reasons. I get a bit confused when people ask me when I made my works, because there’s a difference between when the work was physically made and when I display it. For example, in my current exhibition, the aluminum and Bakelite pieces were made in 1992, but they’ve only become artworks now that they’re on display. As for my earlier paintings, I can remake them. If anything, it’s more interesting to remake them now. The only thing that changes is the material. If someone wants one of my past works, I’ll make another one for them. My work is supposed to be replicated by anybody at any point in time.

Many artists eventually increase the scale of their work, making bigger outdoor pieces—it’s often a natural evolution of their practice. Do you have any interest in doing this?

It depends on the setting. If I find an unusually interesting place, then I might do it. I’ve made an outdoor piece once before, for the 21st Century Museum last year. Plan for Courtyard (Gold and Silver) (2011) was a ring of twenty-four nine-foot tall panels. A New York collector wanted to buy it, so I’m working with architects and engineers to figure out how best to install it in its New York location, on Fishers Island. It’s not going to be in an enclosed courtyard; it’ll be more exposed. I’m working with a landscape engineer to make the appropriate setting for it. It needs to be firmly set in a concrete base, and we need to find a way to prevent sand from damaging the surface as it gets blown around by the wind. We can’t go so far as to construct buildings around it, but nor do I want it to be enclosed in a glass box. We’ll see what we come up with.

For more details about the museum exhibitions that Tadaaki Kuwayama refers to in this interview, see the following links: Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Nagoya City Art Museum, Gallery Yamaguchi, Osaka & Gary Snyder Gallery.

Interview: Kosuke Fujitaka
Transcription: Takayuki Fujii

Using newsprint as his salient material, the artist infuses its graphic content randomly in and on the surface of the human and animal forms he constructs, bringing sympathy and approachability to his expression. In a refreshingly unpretentious group of figures, the portrayal of daily activities breaks the barriers between art and life. Subconsciously, the viewer identifies with the information that he sees placed on the surface of the forms. This innovative presentation achieves an unusual level of truth. Expressive gestures such as stooping, slumping, dressing, or merely walking the dog, are postures far from “high” art, that give the individuals their appeal, lending a hint of sympathy to these mottled figures. George Segal and Duane Hanson depict the ultra-realistic features of quotidian people in their sculptures, while Kurtz eschews realism in favor of a representational metaphor for contemporary urban existence.

While classic beauty is absent, Kurtz’ attention to the details of hair, clothing, accessories, pets, and equipment brings a heightened awareness of each unique character. These accoutrements convey a touching “down-to-earth” eloquence. The figures evoke contemporary heroism. In a culture where mood-altering drugs help cope with daily life, it is the undistinguished who emerge as urban legends. This art seems to affirm that life is still good; even a “lower” life affords freedom, pleasures, and rewards. Just getting out of bed to look at the sky, offers an extreme experience. Kurtz’ portrait of brown-skinned dancers presents a sweet view of the pride and bonhomie that typically characterizes posed group photographs. He courageously infuses quietly sympathetic humor into many of his figures.

Kurtz’ statues are nothing if not the personification of the “downscale.” They embrace the psychological reality of people whose achievements are few, where awards won’t be granted for barely managing to exist. Kurtz tweaks our “beauty” culture, so extolled in advertising, by challenging the ideal of slim, youthful good looks, that plagues those who fails to achieve it. Why is this lack of external beauty so heartwarming? Perhaps these unusual figures elicit a friend from the past, or a family member who is the “salt of the earth.” Art can be intimidating to the average individual, but almost all will experience sympathetic commiseration, when confronted with a humble example of “Everyman.”

New York City dwellers and art lovers frequently notice the top echelons of the art and entertainment world, as they walk the streets. We are a mixed multi-cultural population. These sculptures capture glimpses of the lives of people who don’t strive to excel, who never lose those pounds, don’t quit smoking, or manage to get that job done. This laissez-faire attitude allows the viewer to relax a little, to guffaw, to identify with the slack, and to take time to be a little more human. The works are positioned so that visitors can easily walk among them; all the more to feel the oneness that is cloaked within the young, old, depressed or happy sculptures on view. The title of the show says it all. The extra-ordinary can be seen as the extreme of ordinary, or as the very special. This exhibition allows viewers to make the choice.