Refractions Volume 22:Operation Homecoming: Epistles of Injury

Operation Homecoming: Epistles of Injury
Makoto Fujimura
Refractions Volume 22




I recently found myself at New York’s Symphony Space, listening to the voices of soldiers. As a National Council on the Arts member, I was representing the National Endowment for the Arts for the release of “Operation Homecoming” (Random House, edited by Andrew Carroll). The N.E.A. gave returning soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq an opportunity to write down their war time experiences in workshops lead by Pulitzer winning Vietnam era writers. With actors highlighting the evening, (Matthew Modine, Joan Allen, and, most memorably, Stephen Lang) and sitting next to one of the soldier/writers, I had a strange and uncomfortable revelation: a revelation that surely had been bubbling up in me in recent years -- How much of the world’s art and literature is linked to wartime experiences?

The writings of soldiers, or writing about wars in general, has indeed defined our literature and the arts, from Homer to Dante to Hemingway. If you remove works of art that do not in some way relate to, or respond to wars, our cultural landscape would be full of holes (think of Picasso’s “Guernica”). Perhaps that's what Jesus meant, when he warned us “such things (wars) must happen.” He did not validate wars by saying this, but he wanted to make sure we understood the inevitability of them: that our inner malaise will surely be translated into greater conflicts. But to have the Prince of Peace tell us that wars must happen is more than troubling. Must we be haunted by wars as part of God’s plan of redemption? Must art exist as primarily funerary?

In modern times, Rothko, Mondrian and other 20th Century masters wove the horrors of the atomic age into their work, as if to visit Hiroshima over and over again. Rothko gave that post-Atomic glow an ethereal transcendence even as Mondrian stubbornly, and valiantly, insisted on the order of grids against the approaching chaos. In both cases, they were exiled to New York, because of the dark specters of evil marching into their homelands. Surrealism (as the recent MOMA/National Gallery exhibit showed) screamed against the insanity of fear birthed in the trenches of WW1. These artists are often remembered for their anti-patriotic rants, or at best being ambivalent observers, and most definitely being anti-establishment. It is ironic that they are now seen as the establishment in the institutions of museums and academia. But the best of arts still can rise above the institutions and establishment that gave permission for them, or the conflicts that they escaped. The arts speak into a void, creating a moment of clarity, a pause in the frenzy.

Then there are the J.R.R. Tolkiens and C.S. Lewis of the world, whose front line experiences gave birth to the most resonant, faith-filled literature of our last century. Tolkien imagined through the dark trenches, surrounded by dying friends, and chose to speak directly against his own fear by naming one by one characters and places of imagined reality that would later form the basis for The Lord of the Rings. Lewis too, injured in the war, later recounts that his journey from atheism to faith was paved by his sense of loss, inconsolable violation (“the problem of pain”, he called it) that he felt in his bones. Having gone through such horrors is no guarantee of a recovery of faith, but it does suggest that faith and culture are linked to the crisis that surrounds us.

T.S. Eliot would have found this dialogue not so unfamiliar. His war-time journey to write the “Waste Land” could also describe our survey of Darfur and Afghanistan. In the “Four Quartets,” he describes “The unimaginable Zero Summer” of the atomic devastation but ends hopefully in the “still point of the turning world”, producing a rare articulation of the heart’s navigation from fear to love. But today, in the shadows of our current chaos in Iraq, and bullet holes in an Amish school still fresh in our minds, such sentiment can come across as too optimistic and even unkind.

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I read recently that most of early Christian art (at least the examples that have survived) were funerary in nature. Apparently, even in the world of faith, art is obsessed with death. Surely, it would be the darkest of confessions for any artist working today to admit that his/her visions are driven by the haunts of war and death, and, like Dante, that imaginative reality is filled with a vision of purgatorio. On the contrary, our recent contemporary art scene is rushing to escapism, lacking in engagement with the present darkness, and even without the disciplined skill to describe the horror. So such a confessional would seem welcome in today’s climate of superficiality. Pausing to listen to the writings of soldiers in “Operation Homecoming,” though, I have begun to see a glimpse of a new kind of realism.

These men and women chose to write staring into the abyss: to record both their fears and hopes, in this time of certain chaos, grieve over lost lives and opportunities; but they also speak well of their pets and ordinary sun-lit days. Theirs is a stark realism, observing the life surrounding the turmoil, wrestling against the fading memories of loved ones, comrades, and the stenches of war. So many of Operation Homecoming pages are filled with emails, which like radio dispatches, they will remain deeply etched in our minds as immediately potent. These are voices that are directed toward our private spheres, but now allowed to be make public: They deserve our hushed attention for their honest grappling with inner turmoil. Their accounts are true “Survivor” tales but without any shred of sensationalism. Told sometimes gingerly, sometimes in expletives, the soldiers seem to dwell, after a while, in my consciousness as my imaginary neighbors, people whom I might encounter in my street, or kick a soccer ball around with. I am surprised at how much humor fills these pages, not the sanitized kind, but the raw, grimy kind that belongs in beer halls and late night comedy shows. Refreshingly free of showmanship, in our glitz-filled cultural universe, their writings serve more than to recount the war: they speak into our lives with authenticity, and remind us somehow that, despite it all, humanity can still reign in a cruel kaleidoscope of fear called war.

There are poignant lessons, of a soldier writing home as he flew over Iraq, a geography lesson that span some 3000 years. “Have you heard of Mesopotamia?” writes Lieutenant Colonel Cohoes to his sons, “ Two great rivers of the word, the Tigris and the Euphrates, flow together here then empty into the Persian Gulf….King Nebuchadnezzar (I can’t say it either) build the hanging Gardens of Babylon about 2,600 years ago.” Of course, in the reading that took place at Symphony Hall, Matthew Modine could not pronounce “Nebuchadnezzar,” either.

There’s an account of a soldier of Korean descent who recounts his adoptive American father and grandfather fighting in their wars. Echoed throughout the book is generational lineage to wars, that it is not an isolated experience to one generation. Then there is Christy De’on Miller, in an essay she called “Timeless,” a single mom/soldier mourning over the loss of her only son, Aaron:

At times I believe I can learn to live a life without my son. After all, I must. I am certain there are other mothers who have lost their boys – car accidents, war, illness – who can shop for dinner at the local grocer’s without the macaroni-and-cheese boxes suddenly causing them grief. Moms who can roll sausage balls without tears; perhaps the festive food would even cause a smile. But the memory of him is planted in everything around me. Inside of me. So much is gone. Him, or course. But so much of him has been lost, is fading, breaking down. His blanket, his watch, his uniform…

The writings amplify the details of life, not just theirs, but ours. They let us into the writers’ worlds, to share in their grief, their loss, and their confusion.


Here was another revelation, then, after listening to the account after account of Afghan and Iraqi soldiers and their families that I, too, lived in a war zone. A different, milder version for sure, sanitized and packaged better. Photos of the bright new facades of “you can have it all” condominiums, to be completed in 2010, tell us that we are all better in downtown Manhattan. Their airbrushed architectural renderings are what a friend calls “architectural porn”. But nevertheless I live and raise my family in a place called Ground Zero, and reading the book opened my eyes to see the invisible collateral of a war far away shadowing us everywhere. Yes, even if there is no visible war around, there are less visible battles going on everywhere.

There are visible scars in culture though. The battle is about the imaginative territories of hope against fears, the sacrifice of love against a misplaced devotion, the anger of revenge against forgiveness. It is a battle that rages in the minds of youth as they negotiate the labyrinth of a techno frenzied universe, sharing a communion of broken promises. When the manifestation of such collateral damage ambushes us, like in the pastoral Amish landscapes recently, or in Littleton, Colorado in 1998, in a high school named after a delicate wild flower, we are astonished.

John Hewett, the development director of the N.E.A., and who also happens to be an ordained minister, told me a poignant story recently. When the evil struck the sleepy Amish community near Lancaster, when a gunman/milkman systematically shot girls one by one, there was a hidden story, in what he called “A Miracle Nobody Noticed.” He wrote:

I’m convinced most of us get through most days without thinking about God much. I was having one of those days a few weeks ago, until I heard about Marian and Barbie Fisher, two of the ten girls in the West Nickel Mines Amish School. Marian, the oldest, was 13. Her sister Barbie, who lived, is 11. When it became obvious what was about to happen that ghastly morning, Marian turned to the killer and said, “Shoot me and leave the other ones loose.” “Shoot me next,” Barbie said. “Shoot me next.”

Two children willing to lay down their lives for their friends. Wonder where they got an idea like that? That’s another miracle nobody noticed



Perhaps a new renaissance will be birthed out of the “mouths of babes” like these: “shoot me and leave the other ones loose.” Or it may flow out of a grieving mother/soldier like De’on grieving for Aaron, a Marine who lost his life protecting his wounded comrades. Perhaps we will see that whether we are soldiers, or housewives or Pulitzer Prize winning writers (or all of the above), we need to realize that we are not home, at least not yet. That’s the only faith that can compel us to say: “shoot me.” The girl did not complain that “this is unfair,” or argue, “this is unjust:” she just said “shoot me.”


Such fragile, but heroic, voices in the face of violence can easily be ignored, or simply not audible with our doomed ears. It certainly did nothing to stop a milkman from unloading his anger by pulling the trigger. Perhaps such otherworldly gestures look as pathetic, or beautiful, as the string quartet that played on as the Titanic sank. But I submit to you that here, in a miracle nobody noticed, is a bugle call also directed towards us artists. It begins in a belief that our lives are to be lived for others. Arts should let “the other ones loose” from the bondage of decay, apathy and loss. To the extent we are able to do that, to that degree we will see a new language of expression that is not self-centered, but self-giving and generous. Yes, I believe that art can, and ought to, exist apart from wars. But in only place where this has been the case in the history of the world, a place called Eden where a poet named Adam dwelled, is today hidden inaccessibly beneath, or above, the rubble of Iraq.

Operation Homecoming gives us authentic voices that seek be a responsible steward of their experiences. Why would that simple gesture seem so foreign and refreshing? Has our culture become so cynical that we no longer have the capacity to listen without having a wry, critical distance? Or has the media become so profit driven and sensationalistic that they no longer can mediate information responsibly? Because the soldiers have faced certain death, and stood over the rubble that might have crushed them, but having lived, they owned the experience, and chose to tell the tale artfully and carefully. If we all live in a war zone of some kind, should we not do the same? Words alone can impregnate promise or despair in such a precipice: the arts can inspire or despise humanity.

In Jesus’ realism of “these things must happen,” he was also reminding us that our sacrifice, either for just or unjust reasons, would not be the last word. Our efforts, however noble, will not end the cause of injustice. But we are all given a call for self-sacrifice nevertheless. None are exempt, not even a pacifist thirteen-year-old secluded as far away from Iraq as humanly possible. And Jesus knows, first hand, what it means to die an unjust death without picking up a stone, or a spear. Instead, he continues to breath life into us in our funerary songs. By listening to these soldiers/poets, though, we may even begin to feel that life-breath, a hint of a culture of self-giving. Despite the anguish, De’on writes with the same quiet surrender of the Amish sisters :

My faith doesn’t equal that of Job’s. I question. Why has God cut the fruit from my vine? Taken the only child that remained? Left me with no hope for a grandchild? I‘m certain there can be no more. No more children.

And yet I have no particular animosity for my son’s killer. He’s a nameless and faceless combatant to me. Should I ever have the opportunity to meet him, I hope that I’d forgive him. To me, the buck stops with the Father. His power stings at times. But He’s listened to me; perhaps He’s even cried with me. And yes, I do know what I’m talking about here. It’s a belief, man. Aaron’s words. You either believe in God or you don’t. Yes, I’d forgive. I do forgive. There is absolutely nothing I’d do to keep myself from spending eternity with God and Aaron.

Our path back to Eden is blocked, but there is a way in to the feast of the selfless. Only in these words of forgiveness, utterly stripped down to the core of faith, can echo the Timeless, or the Time-ful, promise of an Easter morning. That is our true Homecoming. Even if the condition is unbearably chaotic, or simply cruel, these authentic voices refracts in our fear dominated cultural landscape, mediating how we can choose to face a new day, and breathing certain hope into our stricken hearts.

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1/13/07 post script: Go and see "Pan's Labyrinth" (though not for children). The movie deals with themes of war and imagination, with echos of eternal longing. A must see.

Yoko Ono and Makoto Fujimura

During my recent exhibit for The City of London Festival (my installation art is documented below), I had a great pleasure of meeting Yoko Ono. We were the two visual artists selected for the festival's theme of Japan. She kindly folded an origami crane to celebrate our exhibits. Video can be seen at http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=7881168191579098779&hl=en

Makoto Fujimura

All Hallow's Exhibit

The All Hallow's Installation in London this summer consisted of three Mercy Seat that used my children’s arm measurements (Ty, 17, C.J., 15, and Lydia, 13) as their “portraits.” (see www.makotofujimura.com, under "essays" for more information on my Mercy Seat series). I also floated "Nagasaki Koi" video on top of the installation (thanks to Meryl Doney, The Hayward Gallery curator who selected me for the exhibit), and also had the video imbedded in the small boat covered with Japanese paper.

I will be using the Hiroshima/Nagasaki images again for my next exhibit in New York City, "Golden Fire" at Sara Tecchia Roma from Nov. 30th to Jan. 13th.

Refractions 21: Come and See: Leonardo da Vinci's Philip in The Last Supper

Makoto Fujimura
Refractions Volume 21
Come and See:
Leonardo da Vinci’s Philip in The Last Supper

Above: Leonardo da Vinci: "The Last Supper”: Philip sits fourth from the right. The top image simulates looking from below




“Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathaniel asked. “Come and see,” said Philip. John 1:46

The glass door automatically shut behind us as the guide motioned us to enter the inner chamber. We waited, and as another door opened, the cool, dry air enveloped us; a contrast to the hot, July heat in Milan. The courtyard of St. Maria delle Grazie sparkled outside in the morning sun, and I wondered if Leonard da Vinci stood upon the same rocks that I saw here, 500 years later.

Because of the Da Vinci Code phenomenon, I had received several inquiries to see if I could comment on the book and the movie, and my mind seemed to wander back to the same problem: “I have never seen Leonardo’s ‘The Last Supper’ in person…how could I comment on something that I have not seen?” Yes, I own a magnified version of the photograph of the painting (see plate B), represented in a magnificent book by The University of Chicago (440 pages of delight). And I have pondered the image as I have thought much about Andy Warhol’s series by the same title. Yes, I had seen a reproduction of Leonardo’s ‘The Last Supper’.

But I never had stood under it. So I came to Milan, Italy, to stand-under a painting.

“If you want to ‘understand’ something,” said my friend Bruce Herman, “you have to be willing to ‘stand under’ it.” Bruce, an art professor, went on to cite C.S. Lewis’ essay “Experiment in Criticism” in which Lewis, a medieval literature scholar at Oxford University, writes the following:

We sit down before the picture in order to have something done to us, not that we may do things with it. The first demand any work of art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way.

An Experiment in Criticism, pg. 18, 19 (Cambridge University Press)

In the essay Lewis makes a distinction between “using” art and “receiving” art. He argues quite persuasively that: “‘Using’ is inferior to ‘reception’ because art, if used rather than received, merely facilitates, brightens, relieves or palliates our life, and does not add to it.”

Why is it important to experience a work first hand?

If we base our conclusions on merely what an “expert” has said, or on our own limited assumptions, it merely remains hearsay. We never get to discover, and ultimately create, out of an authentic experience.

Here’s what I discovered standing under The Last Supper: the most important visual catalyst for the painting is not the effeminate John, or Judas, nor even Jesus Himself. In fact, the key figure in kick-starting the visual movement of the painting is Philip.

It is Philip’s outstretched, distressed body and his cinnabar robe that we see first in the painting’s visual theatre. The whole painting is first experienced via Philip’s body. Our eyes go first to him; afterward they traverse to Jesus, the center of the work. Jesus’ mouth is slightly opened (discovered to be so through recent restoration efforts) and his hands are making powerfully emotive gestures. Leonardo was capturing the moment of Jesus’ announcement: “I tell you the truth, one of you is going to betray me.” (Gospel of John 13:21)

Leonardo painted in a grand, dominating scale for a small space. Even standing in the far back of the refectory, it is difficult for the eye to decipher the whole painting all at once. He painted “The Last Supper” in such a way as to force the viewer to enter the painting, physically and emotionally, and to viscerally become part of the narrative.

Only when the viewer stands under the painting can it be seen for what was intended (see plate A). Leonardo had a specific visual message to those who stand under the painting. He had a visual sophistication to carry off what very few artists could even dream to do then and now: he painted the complex psychology of betrayal. It starts with Philip, and ends in a moneybag. Invited to walk into Leonardo’s funhouse of mirrors, we are all meant to be part of this narrative, forever refracting within our own dark journeys.

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As an artist, I naturally try to identify the source of light in a painting, because I know that artists often use light to reveal what they want the viewer to see. In this painting, it would be easy to assume that the light is coming from behind from the windows, through which we see a Renaissance landscape. But the source of light in this painting actually is the face of Jesus reflecting on all of the disciples – all but Judas, who is under-painted with black, denied a brightened countenance.

The source of light points to what anchors the painting: the presence of Jesus. This is emphasized by the use of perspective, a Renaissance invention used to create an illusion of three-dimensionality in a two-dimensional space. The windows and other architectural elements create lines that end up in a single point, called the “vanishing point.” In “The Last Supper”, the vanishing point ends on the forehead of Jesus, the centerpiece of the painting. But if the painting were an equilibrium centered on Jesus, it would not create the psychological tension we feel from it. But the tension is there, and this is because Philip breaks up the visual stasis.

In any reproduction one sees in a book or a photograph (plate B), Philip’s body gets flattened. However, for a trained artist/viewer, the visual response to the actual piece is to see Philip’s body contorted, surrounded by negative spaces. The angle compresses his body and accentuates the movement of his reaction. Leonardo’s genius not only used the vanishing point to anchor the painting, but also to create waves of motion that shock us into shedding visual conventions.

If you are an artist working on a large commission, you know that looking up at a painting distorts what you paint, so you account for that by exaggerating the vertical. In other words, you make the figure taller than it needs to be. What I noticed looking up at the painting is that Leonardo did not make Philip’s body taller, but kept his body twisted, compressed and angular. That is why in reproductions of “The Last Supper” Philip’s body does not stand out.

If Leonardo did not elongate the figure, why does Philip stand out when you stand under the painting?

It took me the whole fifteen minutes I was allowed in St. Maria delle Grazie to understand what Leonardo did. And then the whole painting began to open up to me. In a true visual code, Leonardo reveals both his genius and the true message of the painting.

Philip stands out because he visually breaks the horizontal plane. The top of Philip’s head aligns itself with the perspective lines parallel to the windows. The eye attends to his head, magnetically drawn to the perspective line that juts out from the horizontal line. This only happens if you are standing below the painting . But there is another figure that breaks the horizontal line which is accentuated by the head of Jesus, and that other figure is Judas. “The Last Supper” is to be read from Philip to Judas, through the body of Christ, creating several visual “v’s” and “w’s”.

In the New Testament of the scriptures, Philip is one of the Seven, the closest disciple of Christ. It’s possible that he knew Jesus and his family, and may have grown up with Jesus. Philip is also noted in scriptures for having the ability to point others to Christ. He convinces Nathaniel to “come and see” Christ in the early chapters of the Gospels, and in the book of Acts (the historical document of the early church) he continues to draw many to Jesus, including the Ethiopian eunuch who was found reading the prophesy of Isaiah in Gaza.

It is clear to me that of all four of the Gospels, the Gospel of John is the one Leonardo relied on the most. The Gospel of Matthew reads more like a legal case to clearly convict Judas of betrayal. Both the Gospels of Luke and of Mark seem to focus on Peter, his betrayal compared to Judas, and eventual restoration to become the founder of the early church. But the Gospel of John records in detail what Leonardo depicted, from John’s reclining figure to Judas’ darkness, from Thomas’ infamous skepticism to Philip’s surprise at what Jesus’ mouth had just uttered.

Leonardo was interested in one thing: the psychological depiction of a night of betrayal. John 14:8 records Philip asking a question which reverberates throughout the painting:

Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”

Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves. I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” (John 14: 8, 12)

Philip asks for evidence, a question that must have also filled Leonardo’s mind. Philip’s comment is one of near frustration, an insider’s exasperation, and therefore even the nature of his request assumes a close, trusting relationship. Jesus responds to the basis of Philip’s question by saying, “Don’t you know me, Philip?” In doing so, Jesus makes one of the most remarkable promises ever made to his followers (more on this later.)

It makes sense, then, that when Jesus reveals that he is to be betrayed by a close friend, Philip leaps out of his chair in disbelief. A pronouncement of a betrayal shocks the trusted the most. To this innocence Leonardo gives the most weight, initiating a shock wave that reverberates throughout the painting, and the corridors of time.

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Betrayal has always defined our lives, and since ancient times artists have given ample attention to this common human experience, in forms like Greek tragedies and Shakespearian plays. But today, we live in the expectation of one betrayal after another, of relationships breaking up, or of another political or religious leader found in scandal. Tabloid accounts of celebrities’ comings and goings amuse us, as we simultaneously bemoan and are entertained by their depth of woes.

Our culture of betrayal goes way beyond individual failures: it is a culture that has lost the belief in the good, true and beautiful. Without the a priori conscience that believes in civilization’s own integrity – that wrong can be righted, and that creativity is a gift to society – no art, and no work of our hands, can be infused with a transcendent vision. The culture of betrayal denies the potential to hope, and is determined to quickly self-destruct.

Our galleries and contemporary museums are full of such vacuous images (not to mention movie theatres and bookstores). But blaming artists is not helpful: no, rather it is more accurate to say that artists are simply reacting to, and honestly recording, the conditions of culture. They are, as Marshal McLuhan would have it, “a canary in the cultural mines.”

Artists smell the poisoned air and sing.

But Leonardo was born in a different time. He was given the legacy of Giotto and Fra Angelico. He had patronage that he could count on from the church and from powerful individuals who also assumed a certain world-view. He had geniuses as contemporaries, including Michelangelo and Botticelli, who also worked from a convention that assumed a direct connection between culture and beauty, goodness and truth.

In a sense, there was an innocence from which the artists of the time could work, but it was not naïveté. Leonardo certainly was not naïve, and he was certainly a religious skeptic. But this commission, only one of two wall commissions he had received, gave him an opportunity to work out of the meta-narrative (the Gospel story) with conviction and force. He could trust that his paintings were meant to last and speak to the generations to come. Because of corruption within the church, of which Leonardo was certainly aware and decried in his notes, and because of the loss of patronage about to ensue, this assumption saw its zenith in “The Last Supper”.

We may never recover that innocence again. In our current culture of betrayal we need evermore to see and stand-under The Last Supper. We need to seriously consider “receiving” the message, as C.S. Lewis suggests, and allowing the work to speak into our lives.

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In the DaVinci Code, the character Robert Langdon, a professor of “symbology,” finds it significant that Jesus and the effeminate figure seated on his right form the letter “M.” Moreover, Langdon believes this second figure is not St. John, but Mary Magdalene, the “bride of Christ,” dressed as a man.

Yes, there is an “M” imbedded in the painting, but Dan Brown does not go far enough in tracing its mystery.

The real “M” or a series of “M”s starting from Philip’s stretched out hand, do not end with John, but with Judas. More specifically, the shock wave ends in Judas’ right hand, which holds the money-bag, symbolically depicting the very coins that Judas would receive to betray Jesus.

Is the figure of John effeminate? Yes. But every male figure that Leonardo painted bordered on androgyny. Leonardo’s depiction of the sexual genre has never been a secret, and even a critique of such in open forums would not have surprised Leonardo. What would be shocking to Leonardo would be if the viewer did not somehow recognize the greatest message imbedded in the painting – that Judas, the seed of betrayal, is in all of us.

Most of the paintings of The Last Supper from the painter’s era depict Judas leaving the room. Yet Leonardo made a radical decision to have Judas to be part of the “inner circle,” placing him, and, by association, us, at the Table. Judas is depicted explicitly as part of the inside circle of the disciples sitting directly in front of Peter, who Christ identified as the “rock” of the early church.

Like Philip, Leonardo, wanted to point to a deeper journey. And when we stand-under this genius work, we too take part in that journey.

The Code phenomenon is not about conspiracy theories, but is rather a symptom of our cultural ills, of how easily we accept distortion and betrayal as normative and necessary. We are trained to cheapen our dialogue to fit our darkened realities.

Today our moneybags are full of flashy, counterfeit sound bites.

Christians must understand that this can easily happen in our worship as well as in popular culture. We want God to be palatable and to fit our needs and realities, instead of practicing a daily discipline. I venture to say that what goes on inside our worship may have a greater impact even upon the larger cultural condition.

Could it be that the reason why we have such a divided nation, insistent on quick judgment, is because the Church does not fully know how to live and exercise grace? Could it be that the reason why we do not have a culture full of beauty is because our worship is not beautiful? Could it be that the cause of our shortened attention span in contemporary society is because the Church has not trained us to listen well?

In our culture of betrayal, we are quick to impose our own views on layers of established systems. Thus, even a work of art is to be distrusted. Rather than trying to “under-stand” the work, we stand over it and dismiss it as unreadable or worse yet, impose a critical ideology upon it without first allowing the work to affect us.

In doing so we miss out on experiencing what the work of art can offer, and consequently we do not journey into the power of genuine art. This lack of authentic encounters leads only to a vortex of distrust, fueled by the media, whose capital is fear. We are drowning in a deluge of despair, and our memories of the good, the true and the beautiful have nearly faded completely.

Sadly, today no one has Leonardo’s ability or skill to ask that complex and deeply layered question in his/her art, even with the advent of moving images. It may be argued that Leonardo was the last painter to have the ability to integrate history, theology, science and art with such mastery. Consider this: can we think of any other artist after Leonardo whose work would be a target for an intriguing conspiracy tale? No one has had the genius, the psychological complexity, nor the level of skill and patronage, not even Picasso, van Gogh or Warhol. Don’t get me wrong, there are certainly notable contributors, such as Grunewald (a topic for future Refractions), Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Gorky and Kandinsky, but none of these artists has the enormous social influence, not just in the arts, but in all human endeavors, that Leonardo has had.

Our wresting against an established system demands that the system has strength enough to withstand the challenge, and at the very least serve as a dialectical opponent. The center must hold in order for the surface tension to break. Thus even in facile intrigue there is always substance underneath. Our critique of contemporary culture must begin with that assumption. And then we must not just engage and critique from that conviction, we must create out of that center.

To da Vinci, such a foundation was immediately accessible. For him to have painted as he did, he had to be convinced of a center that holds.

So who is at the center? Where does the “vanishing point” end?

It ends on the forehead of the Savior.

And that foundation will hold, no matter how full our moneybags get, nor how little it takes for us to engage in betrayal. To Leonardo, the triangular shape of Jesus literally holds the painting in its visual movement. To Leonardo, that foundation was never in question: the question to him was the question of “evidence.”

Jesus exhorted Phillip to “believe” on the basis of the evidence of miracles. Leonardo, of all people, wanted evidence. He looked for it in the stars and sketched it in the sinews of cadavers. He sought resolution in the core of his creativity, and asked deeply phenomenological and existential questions. In other words, Leonardo saw himself at the Table, too, and, like Philip, leaping up at the comment of Jesus. Leonardo, even as a skeptic, was at once in a deep creative engagement with the Savior, and approached God with intellectual rigor and dialogue.

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In this remarkable passage of John 14, Jesus, the miracle worker, tells his disciples, in direct answer to Philip’s comments, that they shall do the “greater work.”

I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” (John 14: 8, 12)

What were the “greater things” to which Jesus referred? What could be greater than raising Lazarus from the dead, an event recorded in Chapter 11?

Leonardo framed the answer implicitly in The Last Supper with Philip’s earlier words:

“Come and see.”

The greater things were in telling the world to “come and see.” Come and see a masterpiece to consider these eternal questions. And that is what Leonardo determined to undertake in The Last Supper.

The Last Supper may even miraculously outlast celluloid (or even digital) and our 15-minutes-of-fame mindset, as the world deteriorates in front of our eyes. The Last Supper, in that sense, is a perfect complement, or even an antidote, for the twenty-first century cultural landscape, exposing us for who we truly are. Even in a mere fifteen-minute encounter, the work leaves us spell bound for a moment of wonderment.

This is why we all need to travel to Milan, just for a momentary decompression, to stand-under Christ who is about to reach for that bread of communion. Like Leonardo, we may even desire to participate in that evening, in the suffering of the one and only true Artist, and follow him to the vanishing point, the source of our bright countenance.

There, witnessing the earthy vermillion glow of the Milan rooftops, we may find ourselves deeply reflecting on the Gospel of John, Chapter 14, where the Savior’s still voice continues to expose the depth of our woes and the secrets of our depravity. In Christ’s outstretched arms, we may yet find our malaise lifted, our imaginations sparked to do “greater things.”


A special thanks to Dr. John E. Walford of Wheaton College and Dr. William A. Dyrness of Fuller Seminary for their insights to prepare for this Refractions.

Next month...a meeting with Yoko Ono in London!

Water Flames and Zero Summer Exhibit at the Katzen

Zero Summer (above image, 66x88", gold and silver on Kumohada) and several of Water Flames paintings will be traveling to Washington D.C. this summer, and the opening is May 20th, from 6-9pm. The Katzen Center is a spectacular new museum inside American University arts center, and is located at 4400 Massachusetts Ave, NW (203-885-1300) www.american.edu/museum

The exhibit will continue until August 20th. I hope to see you at the opening!

For a review of Water Flames series, go to http://nyartsmagazine.com/pages/nyam_document.php?nid=1279&did=3021

Makoto Fujimura

Refractions Vol. 20: The Housewife that Could

Makoto Fujimura
Refractions Volume 20
“The Housewife that Could: Jane Jacobs of 555 Hudson Street, Greenwich Village”
May, 2006



"Designing a dream city is easy," she concluded. "Rebuilding a living one takes imagination." Jane Jacobs, (New York Times, April 26th 2006)


Jane Jacobs passed away a few days ago at the age of 89 in a Toronto Hospital. A day later, there were several flowers placed in front of 555 Hudson Street in Greenwich Village, New York City, with a note, "From this house, in 1961, a housewife changed the world."


I had lunch with sociologist Tony Carnes across from 555 Hudson Street last February, after a worship service at my church The Village Church on 11th Street. We were in a Chinese Restaurant across from this very site, looking across to the White Horse Tavern on Hudson Street. “You know Jane Jacobs lived here, right?” If there’s anything I have learned here in New York City is that you want to listen to an urban sociologist. What is so significant about Jane Jacobs? Well, according to Tony, and many others, she is the mother of a movement called New Urbanism, and yes, she happened to save Greenwich Village and changed the world, standing up against behemoth of highway construction, and against one of the most powerful men to control the destiny of New York, Robert Moses. Moses, who began his illustrious career by designing the Worlds Fair of 1939, is attributed with single handedly creating the suburbia of Long Island (and the development of suburbia in general) and the birth of car culture. He was so successful that it seemed no one stood against him in power and influence.


In 1961, Robert Moses met his match. During a hearing at which he announced his plans to open a highway into Washington Square and through Greenwich Village, Jane Jacobs and several housewives stormed the hearing. Moses was irate, saying, "There is nobody against this—NOBODY, NOBODY, NOBODY, but a bunch of, a bunch of MOTHERS!” (http://www.kunstler.com/mags_jacobs.htm)

Today, many attribute Jacobs with having defeated Moses, in this modern version of David and Goliath. New Urbanist James Howard Kunstler writes:

One can say pretty definitively that she won the battle and the war, though the enormous inertia of American culture still acts as a drag on a genuine civic revival here. By the mid 1960s, her interests and writings broadened to take in the wider issues of economics and social relations, and by force of intellect she compelled the cultural elite to take seriously this untrained female generalist -- and wonderful prose stylist -- who had the nerve to work out large ideas on her own. Naturally, her books are now part of the curriculum.

http://www.kunstler.com/mags_jacobs.htm

Jane Jacobs wrote a book called 'The Death and Life of Great American Cities' as she and her housewife friends battled Robert Moses. The book became a foundational text for those who challenged the conventional notion of urban growth and progress. She argued for diversity of close-knit streets and buildings, and for dense populations to increase commerce and community at the same time, an urban concoction that even provides safety. Suburbia, a legacy of Moses, would, by contrast, pretend to provide safety and protection, but, according to Jacobs, ultimately isolate and dehumanize. She is often asked if her ideas came about by hanging out with intellectuals at White Horse Tavern. No, she would answer, I could not afford to go there. She merely could observe, with her curious eyes roaming the streets of Greenwich Village from her window, the intricacies of street life, both ugly and beautiful. What she saw there, though, was not a scene of destruction filled with gangs and prostitutes. What she saw was a city life teeming with dialogue, neighborly attention and fermenting vibrant cultural mix that would fight the dehumanizing elements of our increasingly segmented modern culture. More importantly, she imagined a better city, as her motherly gaze looked over her streets as she wrote, and as she raised her children.

You might question…Safety? How could the chaos and brokenness of city life provide safety? Jacobs’ answer would be something like this: it would be difficult for a Columbine High School-type incident to break out in one of NYC’s schools today, however dangerous and tenuous the dilapidated schools can be. City life limits crime simply because there are more eyes to keep watch. And besides, it would be very, very difficult for my teenage boys to hide a cache of automatic weapons in their 100 square foot bedroom. Urbanity forces us to be dependent on each other and deal with our neighbors. Urbanity forces us out of our comfort zones and may even expose our dark, sinister plans.

Besides, do we not question today Moses’ insistent vision for “progress” and the expansion of highways, as we max out our credit cards purchasing gasoline in our four-dollar-a-gallon culture? Should we not pause to listen to a housewife named Jane Jacobs?

I became involved in this dialogue over the legacy of Robert Moses verses Jane Jacobs when IAM invited Jonathan Bradford of Grand Rapids, Michigan to speak here in New York City a year ago (hear free podcast on IAMNY.org in a week or so) As I volunteer on the National Council on the Arts, and get to know the NEA design director Jeff Speck, who is, as an urban design expert, overseeing the Mayor’s Institute, I am constantly reminded of the power of design to directly affect our quality of life. In this arena of New Urbanism, arts do overlap, literally, with our lives. Our cities are our artwork, and her designs can either make us more human or less human. Whether one agrees with the pro-growth model of Moses or the organic vision of Jacobs, this imaginative battle of how we are to see our cities continues today.

As I walked with my soon-to-be teenage daughter on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village recently, I had to give a nod to Jane Jacobs’ instincts. Bleecker Street is today the most sought after cultural nexus and originator of new commerce, far more influential, in my view, than the hyper commerce sites like Columbus Circle mall. Why would fashion designers like Marc Jacobs seek out tiny spaces on Bleecker St? Why would Saturday Night Live comedians celebrate Magnolia Bakery, also on Bleecker St., with their ode to the Chronicles of Narnia (one of the most sought after pod-cast videos on I-Tunes)? Why would Japanese magazines feature stores on Bleecker St. to the extent that if you walk on Bleecker in early May, Japan’s Golden Week holidays, you would think it’s a street in Shibuya, Tokyo, filled with so many Japanese? Where would my creative second son, C.J., go to get his left handed acoustic guitar? (Matt Umanov on Bleecker…because “they have guitars that really sing.”) And where can you run into, seemingly every time I walk on Bleecker, a friendly pastor of a storefront church, appropriately named the Neighborhood Church (next to Matt Umanov)? And most importantly for that beautiful spring day, where do you find gifts for a friend’s birthday, especially for a twelve year-old Lydia that cannot be bought anywhere else? Bleecker St.

Jane Jacobs was right. The city is best when buildings are diverse and small, where we can enjoy diversity of class, backgrounds and ages, mingling together in compressed streets. Today, such an environment is so needed, and endangered; it is fast becoming a destination site for tourism, as well as a place of commerce and a family friendly despite the high rent. Whether one agrees with Jacobs’ many irascible perspectives (and she was prolific in that, as well), she did forge a context for how a creative city can be imagined. Today, whatever is done around America in favor of creative neighborhoods, we all owe a nod of thanks to Jacobs.


It is noted that when Jane Jacobs would do her dishes or walked about the local streets one would hear her audibly debate with Thomas Jefferson, and, as a second alternative, Ben Franklin. This exercise was not a joke to her, but a serious interplay among generalists of equal statures across the schism of centuries, navigating the complex pluralism of our time. Similarly, anyone today walking about New York City, or any other urban mazes of the day, would need to, and want to, hold debates (and perhaps wash dishes, too) with Jane Jacobs, a determined housewife imagining a better city with her Remington typewriter. Feisty and irreplaceable, the sound of her typing echoes in our neighborly streets, refracting the dense, fiery heart of our humanity.

I am glad Jane Jacobs won the battle to save Greenwich Village.

Refractions Volume 19: Fra Angelico and the Five Hundred Year Question

It all started again when I visited the Fra Angelico (1395-1455) exhibit at the Met last December*.

Behind the splendor of the Christmas cresche, I entered the back hall of the Met. Surprisingly, there was no line (as opposed to the van Gogh drawing exhibit – 45 minutes). But there was a hushed gathering of many, moving about in the darkly lit halls.

I entered the halls and the golden aura of a diminutive Virgin Mary painting greeted me, with her azurite robe, and the Christ child’s supple body, reflecting her humanity -- a simple work full of weighty colors. Then I had to close my eyes, after a few seconds of pondering the saturated surface. I realized this was too much to behold, all at once. As I staggered about looking for a blank wall to stare at, almost feeling ashamed to be in the presence of such greatness, I had a “500 year” question pop up in my mind.

What is the five hundred year question? Well, it’s a historical look at the reality of our cultures, and asking what ideas, what art, what vision affects humanity for over five hundred years. It’s the opposite of the Warholian “15 seconds of fame.”

Contemporary art does not encourage such thoughts. Except for a few notable exceptions, like video guru Bill Viola or the minimal zen of Agnes Martin, contemporary artists want to compress time, rather than stretch time. We are immersed in a visual culture that squeezes life into 15 second commercials with instant gains. Chelsea galleries are full of art that screams for attention, as if to say they are the twenty first century version of Willy Loman. “Attention, Attention must be paid to such an art,” gallerists dressed in their designer fashion calls out. Rather than profundity, they pine after instant recognition and fame. Just like Willy, we peddle our goods to find significance and survival, all the more as the grey world all around us passes by.

Meanwhile, artists who labor to develop their craft, artists who are committed to a longer view of their art, suffer. I can name many mid-career artists, in their 50’s who deserve much attention, but galleries do not pay attention to them, and give fresh-out-of-art-school artists solo exhibits. But of course, they are replaced the next year by the next round of twenty year olds.

Nothing wrong with twenty year olds, by the way: Fra Angelico was one, but that’s the year he entered the Dominican order. That’s where his gift was discovered, in the long lasting tradition of art. He was trained as an apprentice, and his first notable piece was a visual echo of Lorenzo Monaco, which suggests that he studied under him.

If Fra Angelico was born today, he would have a hard time finding anyone to teach him their craft, to be apprenticed, let alone to join an Order. The church would not be the first place a creative genius would look for to be trained in art. That statement alone reveals how much Christians have abdicated our responsibility to steward culture.

If you spoke with people staggering about in the Met with me, having a similar reaction to looking at the glory of Fra Angelico’s paintings, you may find them to be Enlightened secularists who also grieve today over the fragmentation, the loss of a spiritual anchor in the contemporary art scene. They may be even atheists who by the very essence of their denial may have to appreciate the sheer weighty anchor of Fra Angelico paintings. Atheism demands a language of belief to wrestle against. Fra Angelico’s paintings are undeniably Christian to the core. Enlightened secularists would be staggering because the spirit has left them. Atheists stagger because they have lost the defining opposition. I stagger and grieve because, as a Christian, I realize I do not see anyone on the horizon who could create and paint today who would rival Fra Angelico’s angelic weight.

In short, we are all staggering about, or should be…those who have eyes to see. That is precisely how we should react to Fra Angelico and the five hundred year question. We stagger because we have lost even our ability to ask that question.

-----------------------------------------



So I took the subway home and I Googled “1500” :

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001221.html

The Tudors ruled the early Renaissance, having ended the War of the Roses in 1484. In 1503, da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa, and Michelangelo created David. Not a bad start. The Sistine Chapel, and The Last Supper, of course, would follow.

Christopher Columbus was sailing to sites unknown, trying again to get to Asia. Magellan noted the global shape of the earth. Martin Luther posted his 95 thesis on the Wittenberg door (1517). And very significant for me, Tohaku Hasegawa, the Michelangelo of Japan, was born (1537).

I closed my eyes again, and the angels of Fra Angelico re-invited themselves in.

Would we see another Renaissance in the days to come? Would we have another chance to steward our culture, without losing our identity and faith in the process?

You might be saying “gee, how can we think about 500 years from now if we have the capacity to blow ourselves up a thousand time over…aren’t you being a bit optimistic?”

Recently, I had a conversation with a Japanese art student. She asked me “How can you paint if you know that you may not be around ten years from now?” The look on her face told me that she was deadly serious. Japanese youth grow up, apparently, with the shadow of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even after all these years.

So I guided her to the ages that led up to 1500’s, and I shared with her about the period of world history in which Fra Angelico painted.

It was not a cozy time in history. The stenches of Black Death hovered all over Europe and Asia. Remember that the plague killed a half, yes a half, of the population in Europe. The swords of assassination were drawn (striking the Dukes of Surrey and Exeter, and then the Earls of Kent, Huntington and Salisbury for Richard II ), the church was in turmoil (two Popes resigning, and one being excommunicated in the span of four years). The Ottoman Empire invaded Constantinople, ending the Byzantine age, through Muslim invasion. No, it was not an age to have hope, or to think of the next five hundred years. In fact, the list of events seems to have remarkable echoes of our times (the first entry of the following web site is Baghdad being “sacked” -- http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?method=4&dsid=2222&dekey=15th+century&gwp=8&curtab=2222_1&linktext=15th%20century)

So how did Fra Anglico manage to paint these indelible images? Perhaps the more pertinent question is: “To what hope did he cling to in such a dark time?”

After my third visit to the Fra Angelico exhibit, I allowed myself to drink deeply of that hope. It is not only the hope of an individual genius, but also of patronage, of society and the church. Then I realized, in order to create today, in fact, in order to live today, I desperately needed Fra Angelico in my imagination: when the Angelic faces would fill my heart as I pondered Aquinas in my mind. I would consider the life of St. Francis (who appears over and over in the Met exhibit), the saint/artist of two centuries past who ushered in the resplendence of the Renaissance via his humanity, re-gifting creativity and theatre back into theology. I wondered if, had I painted with Fra Angelico, I would hear about the dangerous teenage heretic in France named Joan of Arc (executed 1436). Perhaps then, I would turn to the last panel of my own “The Last Judgment”, and paint her face (secretly) as she danced up the stairs of heaven, her rich cinnabar robe with golden calligraphy, a design fit for a Queen. (http://www.metmuseum.org/special/Fra_Angelico/images.asp)

Can such Eternity refract through our earthly visions? Can my children’s world birth generations of geniuses, as did Fra Angelico’s heirs, whose splendors would fill the Earth, as well as Heaven?


Makoto Fujimura

Other links:

http://www.mercatornet.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=220




*Actually, the seed of the 500-year idea was planted deeply in my heart when James Romaine, an art historian, and I were speaking soon after 9/11. “This is a once in a life time moment in our history: it could even be once in a five hundred year moment.”



Image: Azurite Light, 2006, 30x30"

A.R.T. Introduction

Image by Pamela Moore, "128 Cooper B"


Dear Refraction Readers:

For the upcoming International Arts Conference’s 15th year anniversary conference, “Artist as Reconcilers,” I am preparing the following series of essays about art called “A.R.T.: Awareness, Reconciliation and Transformation”. Here is my introduction section. The whole content of “A.R.T.” will be initially be available to IAM members only, so if you are interested please join IAM membership ($40 annual) via www.iamny.org (go to the conference section).

I will continue with my Refraction essays, free for all, again in March.

Makoto Fujimura


What is A.R.T.?

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

Little Gidding, The Four Quartets

About A.R.T. (Awareness, Reconciliation and Transformation)

Introduction:

I write this in order to encourage artists and to help facilitators of the arts understand their role in cultural stewardship. While About A.R.T. is an effort to broadly describe what Art is, it is not by any means a complete definition. I am drawing upon my own experience as an artist and what I find myself teaching to others. I do believe that these principles are helpful to understand the role of creativity in our lives, and to contextualize our creative activities in society. I am ultimately interested in a dialogue that move toward a stewardship of creative gifts, and how we may as a society see artistic roles, and creativity in general.

I also write here to begin a dialogue among church leaders and Christians who desire to understand the arts. While this dialogue is not directed only to a Christian audience, I do speak and write as one, with all of the worldview assumptions attached to that pre-supposition. I make this premise because in all of the recent effort to define the importance of the arts, and critique of art and arts education, I have noticed writers such as John Carey (“What Good Are the Arts?") and James Elkins (“A Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art”) specifically describing their worldview as strictly secular. I find their discussions helpful, although I find that presupposition often breaks down in their own turfs as their ideas evolve, and they may not be as consistent in their worldviews as I am trying to be for mine. Nevertheless, I do think it is important to start out with a premise. I am not a secularist, so I have certain presuppositions that frame my discussions. I do believe that creativity is a gift of the Creator. And because of my theological framework, I believe that such a view of the arts will produce more diversity, more content and more color to all of the arts, Christian or not. We are created to be creative: and we have stewardship responsibilities that come with that gift. The more we find fittingness in the God given responsibility, the more freedom we will find in our expression.

It has been noted that we have entered the Creative Age. The Information Age, for us Americans and other non third-world countries, is over. India and China, and other countries have taken over the role of dispersing technology and executing productions: the only resource that we have that cannot be outsourced is our creativity. Thus, we are at a crucial moment in history in which we are witnessing a paradigm shift in culture, a shift that may be as significant as Gutenburg’s invention of printing. Just as the invention of prints caused many shifts in cultural values, the Creative Age, with her accompanying technologies, will usher in principles that formerly were considered unimportant for the everyday needs of the society. Some have called this time “post-Human” as our boundaries of creativity begins to have serious ethical and moral boundaries. Before Modernism, artists depicted flowers as flowers, asking “How do you depict a flower?” Modernism asked “What is a flower?” and Post Modernism followed with “Is there a flower at all?” And in post-Human time we ask, “Can humans combine their DNA with a flower?” In other words, we are at a point in which what we create and what we imagine will not merely be virtual, but are actualized into reality, and quite possibly, into our DNA.

If Gutenburg brought books to us, this age brings CG technology, virtual realities, and DNA manipulation. So do we study the sciences to find answers and guide our path? The sciences cannot reach into the supernatural, nor into the mysteries of our realities, because they are bound by natural, measurable data. Art on the other hand should and can reach into the very heart of existential mysteries sciences cannot tackle. But we need to have a clear understanding of how art functions, in order to begin to understand this role. Art of the past, it seems to me, is a great place to calibrate our place in history, and press our existential marker into the shifting tide of culture.

Some have moved away from the study of the classical and traditional in favor of erasing boundaries of the past. But we have found ourselves anchorless, without any agreed upon boundaries at all, ever so fearful of the future as a result. I believe that what we can learn from Rembrandts and Shakespeares of the world is even more significant today because they give us hope in turmoil, and therefore give us a picture of mediation to this age, in the power of technology today. The sciences and technology need this trans-historical dialogue on the arts, because arts determine our cultural values, and determine what the culture sees as beautiful and true.

Recently I spent some time visiting friends who work as insiders in Hollywood. There is a significant effort, I found, among the industry experts to create a more principled way to develop creative content, movies and the new media. After the success of Lord of the Rings, and now Narnia, we desire for more Lewises and Tolkiens to come out. These creative resources are not birthed out of a vacuum, but over generations of commitment to nurture and value creativity. The church has been mostly reluctant to take the lead in cultural production, fearful that those who enter Babylon will come out tainted by her, unable to speak for her values. And since there is still a vacuum in culture that the church abdicated to general culture, even if we desire more Tolkiens and Lewis, the church, in her present status, will be the first to reject them as misfits.

In order to have meaningful dialogue in this condition, we Christians must reevaluate our definition of creativity and art. On one hand, Biblical literalists and separatists (such as the “Left Behind” authors) may insist on that all of what is discussed in art must be literal interpretation of Christian stories, an approach which forbids certain art to exist at all. On the other we have secular purists who desire art to be left alone to the “good” desires of our hearts, self reliant and (in most cases) necessarily alienated from society. My approach in A.R.T. is neither of these routes. In order to lead, and teach our children to lead, Twenty First Century with creativity, we must speak in to our culture to value art and steward her with proper boundaries, and lead with a sense of responsibility. At the same time, we must realize that art is neither a mere tool to be used for ours or other ideologies. A.R.T. must ask deeper questions: what I have began to call “a five hundred year questions.” What we create matters: all art products cast their vision of what the artist consciously or unconsciously desire for the world to become. We are, and will become, what we imagine: and if we do not understand both the power and the danger of our imaginative powers, we will not begin to birth meaningful, and hopeful works of inspiration.

Makoto Fujimura

Next chapter, “Awareness,” will be released after the conference for members only.

Image: Pamela Moore, "128 Cooper B", mixed media on paper, 30x36 inches Please go to www.fujimuracontemporary.com for more information on this painting

Refractions Volume 18: How the Beast Stole Christmas

How the Beast Stole Christmas
Could King Kong be a better film than The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe?


It is said that J.R.R. Tolkien disliked the Narnia stories, written by his closest literary comrade, C.S. Lewis. He found them to be a "a hodgepodge of myths.” This December, two films vie for a permanent place in our imaginative landscapes, offering two distinct visions for moviemaking. We should not be surprised that Lewis’ Narnia story, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, so faithfully translated by a Disney team, is pitted against King Kong, a passionate offering by a director who so triumphantly translated, and transformed, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Narnia was a good film: but not a great film. King Kong is the better film -- And quite possibly a great film.


Don’t get me wrong. Georgie Henley, whose debut makes an indelible mark in the Narnia movie, playing Lucy, deserves much praise and recognition (the Academy Awards should create a new category – call it, let’s say, the Drew Barrymore E.T. Phone Home Award for the most iconic child actor of the year). Narnia should be seen by all of us if only to witness the light of Narnia wonderment refracted in Lucy’s face, and truly magical wardrobe scenes. The movie came out, to the relief of many Narnia fanatics, very much faithful to the text and imagery of C.S. Lewis. The depiction of the White Witch captured the intensity of conflicts, both spiritual and physical, and her cold stealthy fingers of evil were felt reaching into our hearts. And the twist in the end can unlock a mystery of redemption that we long to understand and describe as Christians.

But it’s the depiction of the beast that gave pause.

Can you really compare Aslan the lion, the Christ figure of Narnia with King Kong? You might ask. Isn’t Narnia the most redemptive, Christ-focused work on the screen today? And don’t you want any ventures related to the writings of C.S. Lewis (a writer I deeply love) to succeed?

Yes, no, and definitely yes.

We can, and need to, compare the two beasts, because the movies beckon us to do so. While the original text of Narnia is most redemptive, the movie pales in comparison: and I venture to say that Kong somehow manages to create a need for redemption better than Narnia as a film. Yes, I do want anything associated with our beloved don of Oxford to succeed. But, I came away convinced that Peter Jackson’s King Kong delivers the beastly quality best, while Disney’s Aslan felt tame and not the fierce Lion/King of Lewis’ original Aslan. Therefore Narnia’s redemptive quality suffered. I wonder if Lewis himself would have agreed: after all Lewis was "absolutely opposed" to a live-action version of "Narnia." (“according to an unpublished 1959 letter he wrote to a BBC producer. ‘Anthropomorphic animals, when taken out of narrative into actual visibility, always turn into buffoonery or nightmare,’” (http://www.classical1035.com/index.php?sid=324631&nid=65&template=story_print))


In King Kong, we witness the transformation of the Beast to glimpse love and to experience beauty. We see the Beast be destroyed because of, and in spite of, that response. This transaction is deeply truthful, and even Biblical. He convinces us of the lack of a way out of that beastly existence. Romans chapter eight of the New Testament tells us “the creation was subjected to frustration…in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God” (Romans 8:20,21). Kong exactly captures this frustration. And in that gap between what may be possible and what is actually not, Christians can see our need to appear on the scene as children of God: we are to be Princes and Princesses of the great King. Narnia could have told this royal appearance most powerfully in the cinema, not just as a mandatory Star Wars like last scene, but as a layered character development that evolves over the course of the film. It is after all, a story of children who are literally destined for thrones. Psychological elements, the inner tension between the weight of the call and the actualization of that call, could have been explored much deeply.

Kong became truly dangerous and remained untamed even until the end. Andy Serkis, who “played” Kong deserves an Oscar (again, let’s create a new category – maybe name it after him, the Serkis Award for the best acting-via-CG. There are sure to be many more given in the future.) His depiction, his movement breathes life into a previously undeveloped beast as a tragic hero. After initiating us in incomparable Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy to how technology can morph the art of acting as we know it, he follows the same uncharted beastly path in Kong. His depiction of emotional depth and range of a wild monster turned to sacrificial protector is utterly unrivaled in modern cinema, excepting, possibly in a much smaller way this year, Gromit the claymation dog by Nick Park in Wallace and Gromit: the Curse of the Were Rabbit.

And then there’s the Empire State Building. I may love King Kong simply because New York City, wearing her 1932 Art Deco gown in the midst of The Depression, appears in the film as a central character, as important as any other actors, with the freshly built Empire State as her crown. From the misty East River to Times Square’s snowy theatre district, King Kong shows the city as wild as Skull Island, but also romantic and dreamy, and certainly much more dangerous than dinosaurs and poisonous spiders. The movie captures the monstrous power and sophistication of the City to make a plaything, a mere spectacle, out of a pure beauty called Ann Darrow, who is just as much of a misfit in NYC as a savage 50 foot beast.

Just as in this year’s Pride and Prejudice (another highly recommended film to see) a pure range of emotions of romance is explored without pandering to cheap, sensationalistic sex scenes. Compassion, to see beyond the veneer of our beastly existence, defines Naomi Watts’ performance. And Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody) is seen mirroring his complex emotional connection in his act of creativity as a playwrite. In Skull Island, he is a “dare- to–save the girl” triathlon hero and not very credible (I certainly do not know many playwrites who can move that fast). But back in the NYC theatre, revelation he has, echoed in his own play, was one of the most important moments of the film. There is a great overlap between the dashed hopes of an imaginative, creative soul and the falling Ape. Both face an incomparable Empire State building and must climb to the top. And romance has everything to do with it.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in 1939:

From the ruins, lonely and inexplicable as the sphinx, rose the Empire State Building and, just as it had been a tradition of mine to climb to the Plaza Roof to take leave of the beautiful city, extending as far as eyes could reach, so now I went to the roof of the last and most magnificent of towers. Then I understood—everything was explained: I had discovered the crowning error of the city, its Pandora’s box. Full of vaunting pride the New Yorker had climbed here and seen with dismay what he had never suspected, that the city was not the endless succession of canyons that he had supposed, but that it had limits – from the tallest structure he saw for the first time that it faded out into the country on all sides, into an expanse of green and blue that alone was limitless. And with the awful realization that New York was a city after all and not a universe, the whole shining edifice that he had reared in his imagination came crashing to the ground.


A year before his death, the beast of the literary world stood on top of the Empire State building and saw his own limitations. He saw the world crumble down, including his love for his beloved wife Zelda. Kong, in the same way, represents not just a beast, but a “Heart of Darkness,” (Joseph Conrad’s novel of African journey is often quoted both explicitly and implicitly in the film). And the tale is about our darkened hearts, and our Pandora’s box opened. We struggle to retain the wilderness, or fail to tame it. That’s why romances in our lives either destroy us or ultimately fail to satisfy us. Therefore, Kong was seen as a necessary villain residing deep within our hearts, a victim of our dark presumption. In the climactic scene of the movie, in a “Christina’s World” like stretch, the body of Naomi Watts reaches into the beast’s eyes of surrender. On top of the world, the beauty is held together still, for but one single moment, with the beast.

This beast truly proved dangerous, and beautiful at the same time: the way Aslan should have been. Kong stood on top of the Empire State and roared against the incoming fighter planes and even against his own death: Aslan’s willingness to suffer and be sacrificed for the betrayal of Edmund could have been equally as compelling visually, but it was not.

Lewis stated in Mere Christianity about Beauty and the Beast “The girl, you remember, had to marry a monster for some reason. And she did. She kissed it as if it were a man. And then, much to her relief, it really turned into a man and all went well…” He continues in the essay to woo us to realize that these stories of old are really a means for us to tap into the great, deep longing of our hearts, and our need for the gospel, the Good News of Christ. It is that suspense we wish for, what we deeply desire that is captured in Kong: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe needed to capture that better than it did.

It may be that Narnia was so wedded to the original text that it lost some of its mythic power. The Chronicles of Narnia is indeed a great story (and especially to read aloud to our children): and it does not need to be a film to add to its integrity. If the film makes us re-read these great stories, to appreciate Lewis’ myth-filled imagination, so be it. They may have seemed a “hodgepodge” to Tolkien, but to us in this age of uncertain fears, they are more like color-filled lights refracted in Lewis’ multi-faceted prism, filling our hearts with secure hope.

On the other hand, King Kong has to be a film. There’s no other way to communicate this beauty and beast visual drama. It’s a film that needs to be a film: that’s why it can be a great film.

Finally, it’s Peter Jackson’s love for movie making that prevails. He clearly believes in the art form called film: And he loves it deeply as a myth-making medium. It is that love for the medium that convinces us of a movie as not a mere translation, but as a transformational piece. Narnia is a faithful translation with a few magical moments. But it did not, ultimately, transform the text (that would require much more freedom to the movie makers). Kong transformed the tradition of movie making as an art form. He thoroughly explores that potential to the extent that some have complained on the time length of the Kong movie: to that I say… Narnia should have been at least three hours as well! See, Peter Jackson knew that the story was worth our time – such great stories of transformation take time to steep in our hearts.


Image: Scott Kolbo, "Faster Couple," Intaglio print, 20"x8", used by permission

World Magazine

I came home from Japan with my email box full of congratulations on my being selected as World Magazine's "Daniel of the Year". Since I was quite unaware of this (they told me only that they had been working on a story on me...), it came as quite a surprise, and made me think of the real Daniel that they named the honor after. Daniel is the biblical hero who interpreted dreams for the King of Babylon, was interrogated and thrown into the lion's den but not harmed. He was full of faith, a young man "without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning, well informed, quick to understand, and qualified to serve in the king’s palace." (Daniel 1:4) He could interpret dreams. I am not so sure if I am worthy of such a comparison, but if this honor means that our friends in Christian circles are more and more aware of the vast importance of the arts in our lives and faith, I do accept, humbly knowing that there are many (some of whom I have spent time with in Japan and Washington D.C. in this trip) who labor for Christ without any fanfare or a deserved applause.

Here's the article...

http://worldmag.com/subscriber/default.cfm?issue_id=5085

I have always written Refractions knowing that many of the readers live outside of the cultural range of a Christian church. I hope you will continue to find this to be a listening post for my musings on travels, art and faith.

Daniel proclaimed to the King:

“Praise be to the name of God for ever and ever; wisdom and power are his. He changes times and seasons; he sets up kings and deposes them. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning. He reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what lies in darkness, and light dwells with him."

May your holiday season be full of refractions of this light.

Thanks

Makoto Fujimura

Image: from a Collaborative performance in Tokyo

Refractions 17: Walking Backwards into the Future

Makoto Fujimura
Refractions Volume 17
“Walking Backwards into the Future”
November, 2005




We have been taking my eldest son, Ty (17), on college tours of late, traveling mostly up and down the East Coast. Having been raised in New York City, he’s been curiously interested in only city schools. “An enclave of pseudo-community,” is the expression he’s used to describe some of the schools. Perhaps so, but I’ve been reminding him that some of the best education can be had in such enclaves (like Bucknell University, where my wife and I went). Perhaps being able to focus in a quiet bubble does have some merit? I asked. So far, he is not buying it.

I realized how much the climate of college selection has changed since I went through it in the Seventies. At Cornell University, a tour I also took with my father 25 years ago, I realized how much things have evolved since then. Colleges are big businesses, and self-assured marketing machines. Their successes are made visible in so many new building constructions. NYU and Columbia are buying up New York City, and practically every college we visited is expanding. But, as we journey the Hampton Inns (filled with seniors and their parents, all with the same looks of inevitability) and well marked admission buildings, we also discovered a new art form: student tour guides are now trained to walk backwards, and project their voices at the same time.

Not so, when I toured colleges as a teenager way back when, as we meekly followed the guides around the campus. We walked the grounds, without really looking for any amenities. When did a college education begin to involve new sports complex that combines a Crunch-like gym, with accompanying trainers, with rock climbing walls? Back then, we toured the libraries and soaked it all in very seriously, but somewhat casually. College tours today have evolved now into individual performances worthy of rating and timing, much like a skating competition. I suppose in a competitive business of education, and how much is at stake, it pays to train students to walk backwards to save time. Perhaps it speaks of the confidence that colleges place in their own students, to equip them with such indispensable training for life.

Aside from the technical requirements of such a performance -- such as their projection of voice, not falling into the cracks in the sidewalks, getting you back in time for their “informational meeting” (i.e., to answer how we can possibly afford this education), or not getting run over by a car (although they assured us that cars in the campuses, always stop for pedestrians) -- there’s the human, artistic element that needs to be cultivated for an excellent college tour guides. Humor, ability to pull out questions from prospective students, handling of anxious parents to make them feel at ease, all combine to make college tours (if you are privileged to take one from a good guide) rather an intriguing affair. I found, over time, I became an expert with my son at rating the tours. If they give you cookies in the middle of the tour in one of their many neon lit cafeterias, my rating seems to go up. If the student tour guide is too nervous, we try to bear with that, but the worst is usually not the student’s fault, but weather related (a blizzard in Syracuse! Minus ten points) or colleges too calculated with excessive marketing (i.e., a video piece showing many athletes and “diverse” body life of the students all smiling in their successes. A huge deduction in Ty’s mind).

So as we toured campuses, naturally I began to ponder not just what makes a good tour guide, but a good education in general. After having a discussion of this issue with my son at one school’s “Asian” cafeteria in Baltimore (yes, having good sushi in the cafeteria earns a few points), we decided that a good education is learning to walk backwards in to the future. Perhaps these college tour guides do have something to teach us, after all.

We raised our three children to, indeed, look back, to respect the tradition and history that they have come from. Rather than promising them an unlimited future, I found myself teaching them to steward carefully the gift mix they have. I wanted them to know the best of our traditions, from Shakespeare and Bach to Hemingway. I want them to also know how much their own time echoes in the various chambers of history, and are relevant in their post-9/11 experience. I want them to understand that in our mixed race-and-culture marriage between Judy (Irish/English/Scottish) and I (Japanese and God knows what else*), they represent in their mixed blood the very promise of reconciliation of nations that once were at war. But we also do not want them to dwell there, but to walk confidently towards a goal of their own path. We have tried to teach them that success is not worldly success of money and fame, but being faithful to the unique journey God has called them to. Education must be past-focused and future-focused at the same time. Our job is to help a child discover the uniqueness of their calling that only they can walk in.

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Paul Elie, in a recent book “The Life You Save May Be of Your Own: An American Pilgrimage” poignantly looks back to portray the journey of Flannery O’Connor, Doris Day, Walker Percey and Thomas Merton. As he recounts the life and art of Flannery O’Connor, arguably the most influential writer of the mid-Twentieth Century, he notes that at age five, O’Connor trained one of her chickens to walk backwards. A reporter from New York City somehow found out, and took a newsreel, with the title UNIQUE CHICKEN GOES IN REVERSE:

Elie writes: “The episode lasts less than a minute. Yet Mary Flannery O’Connor had been changed by it. She perceived that she had an unusual gift, even if it was just a gift for getting a certain kind of chicken to walk a certain way; and she saw that her challenge in life would be to make the nature of her gift clear to people who wouldn’t understand it otherwise…The chicken was a freak, a grotesque, and when a cameraman came all the way from New York to Savannah to photograph her just because she had trained it, she was suddenly a kind of freak, too” Pg. 13-14

O’Connor’s early experience shaped the vocabulary of her fiction. It seems that she not only trained her chicken to walk backwards, she trained herself to write and see in a kind of a backward manner. She reverses the conventionalities of a southern world-view, with a wry critical stance, exposing the superficial evils of a “Christ haunted south.” Her characters, like the Misfit in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” or Hazel Mote in “Wise Blood,” speak out of the violent cores of our existence, so explosive and obsessive, and yet devastatingly precise in their actions. They will not be comfortably shaped into the future, but they resolutely and awkwardly remain in their pasts, walking reverse in a kind of self-tormenting labyrinth.

But in doing so, she gently lights the grace journey that lies deep beneath our feet. She walks backwards into a unique world, projecting her voice in an anguished, compressed scream, but what she actually describes is a transformative, rather hopeful series of epiphanies, intentionally cast into our own evil filled darkness and desires. What she accomplished in her short stories and one novel (she died very young) is noteworthy exactly because these stories arise from an unexpected place of exile, a voice of a Catholic in the Protestant south. They look backwards, having eyes upon Dante and Shakespeare in influence, but they also map a new territory of contemporary fiction. O’Connor’s stories seem fantastic and freakish at first, but we do grow into them, as we are so much in need of their vigor today, her dark vision so filled with faith.**

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As I negotiated the I-95 to get us home, and as Ty recited Hamlet in the passenger seat for his senior literature class, I pondered how much of our education is about the past, and how much is about the future. Of course, it is about both. I then realized that he has been walking backwards already without much fanfare. Whenever a student decides to stay true to his faith as a Christian in a public school in New York City as he has, he/she is walking backwards. When a student today is committed to keeping himself sexually pure, as he has endeavored to do with his girlfriend, he is walking backwards into the currents of cultural norms. When a student decides, on his own, to start a conservative club in his liberal Quaker school (with his Jewish buddy), he is definitely walking backwards. His teachers and fellow students may not agree with him, but he, with humor, manages. No matter where he ends up, or what he chooses to do in the future, he knows what it means to negotiate the labyrinth of complex pluralism of our day. The key, I realized for him as for me, is walking backwards and paying attention to what comes ahead, at the same time. That takes a kind of zany, awkward commitment not normally encouraged in schools nor in the world. More importantly, such a stance forces him to lead others, projecting his voice, and assuring them that their decision matters, too.

So, as we anxiously await his decision on his future (he decided to apply early decision to NYU), wondering how we ourselves ever got accepted by any college -- it seems we are to feel rather inferior about not measuring up, so when they do let him in, we can simply be grateful for the opportunity to send him with much enthusiasm -- I have learned much from these tour guides. Art today, too, suffers from certain amnesia (“post-modernism is xenophobic to the past” as Tom Oden states). Perhaps the best of art, too, is made via a backwards glance, and not simply blindly forging ahead, or we may end up, like O’Connor’s characters, trapped in futility? Perhaps by paying careful attention to the historical landmarks around us, and by artfully describing the milieu via naming the new experiences, we will stumble onto a vision that maps a new territory for art? Whether we buy into the hype of college admissions or not, one thing is for sure: The Twenty-First Century will be lead by creative children who boldly dare to lead, backwards. Their voices, like Flannery O’Connor’s, will project into the future corridors of their making, and we shall indeed be glad for that. To have such guides is worth any price, any sacrifice.



Makoto Fujimura

P.S. our Cornell guide did receive the highest points of all the guides so far.



*Most people assume that Japanese people are homogeneous. But the early history of Japan tells us that Nara, then the capital of Japan, was the end point of the Silk Road, and was as diverse as Queens is today.

** I am deeply grateful for Professor Robert Love Taylor who introduced Flannery O’Connor to me, a student who could barely write English at the time I arrived at Bucknell. Bubble or not, this starting point of my journey into the world of literature and art has let me to a deep well of creativity and expression.

Image: A Valentine’s Day Card from 1987. The year before we had Ty. This card proved prophetic…we ended up with the same number of children as the heart-shaped eggs!

Water Flames Review

Water Flames Exhibit has been selected on Terry Teachout's top five list.

http://www.terryteachout.com/aboutlastnight/sidestuff/topfive.shtml

GALLERY: Makoto Fujimura, Water Flames (Sara Tecchia Roma New York, 529 W. 20, up through Oct. 23). An exceptionally handsome new Chelsea gallery opens its doors with a show of large-scale paintings on paper inspired by a line borrowed by T.S. Eliot from Dante’s Divine Comedy: “The fire and the rose are one.” In these spacious, intensely colored visualizations of the essence of fire, Makoto Fujimura fuses Pollock-like pigment-dripping with medieval Japanese painting techniques. The results are at once spectacular in their immediate effect and unexpectedly intimate in the spell they cast on the attentive viewer. Be sure to take a look at the short documentary film in which Fujimura demonstrates how these works were created—and don’t overlook the smaller paintings hanging in the offices just off the main gallery (TT).

Exhibit continues until 10/22...

Water Flames Artist's Talk

Thank you for coming to this artist-talk event and the exhibit Water Flames. I am grateful for this dialogue, and to be on this journey together. I want to thank Sara and Benjamin for their support, as well as allowing me to speak tonight.



And all shall be well and

All manner of thing shall be well

When the tongues of flame are in-folded

Into the crowned knot of fire

And the fire and the rose are one.



So wrote T.S. Eliot in “Four Quartets.”

In 2002, mere months after September 11th, I began a series of paintings based on T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets”. The Four Quartets reveal a poet who struggled to understand the darkness of a war-torn world, and yet became a resolute voice of hope despite the darkness around him. His personal journey was one of being “disastrously married, accidentally expatriated, emotionally dependent… “ (Dana Gioia). And yet he reached that place of stillness. I needed to journey with the poet through “The Waste Land” into that “still point of the turning world” in my poet 9/11 experience.

I asked my writer friend who first introduced me to the “Four Quartets,” where the expression “the fire and the rose are one” originated and he kindly directed me to Dante. Apparently, Dante informed Eliot’s imaginative landscape, and Dante was to Eliot what Virgil was to Dante, a poetic and even spiritual guide and a mentor.

I thus began the “Water Flames” paintings wanting to further explore the “knot of fire”. It was an intense, intimidating battle at first, as I began to experience the enormity and weight that this theme brings into my art. It is a fearsome task to deal with fire.


I could find very few paintings of fire in modern times, which depict fire as a source of mystery and life, rather than a source of destruction. There are a few fire images by Ernst, Kiefer or Viola, and yet as a whole modern artists have not been very explicit. And yet, flames, particularly the flames of life, play a central role from Egyptian times to Giotto, with many examples up to medieval times. In Japan, fire images are very present and alive from “Zigoku Zoshi (Stories of Hell for Buddhist Priests)” to Gyoshu Hayami’s “Flame Dance.” Iri and Toshi Maruki’s Nihonga paintings of Hiroshima captured the sinister power of that living hell. After that, I dare say very few, except for the possible exception of my mentor Matazo Kayama, have painted fire as a life force. In 20th Century western works, one can surmise that Rothko’s and Richter’s are all paintings of fire, echoing the reality of an atomic age. In that sense, Eliot’s words “the Fire and the Rose are One” reverberate throughout the metaphysical art of modern times, and I am only starting to grasp the potential of such an expression.

Dorothy Sayers, in her exquisite commentaries of on Dante’s Inferno, states: “it is the weakness of Humanism to fall short in the imagination of ecstasy.” Dante’s works that begin in the perilous seas and a dark wood where “the right road was wholly lost and gone”, ends in “The love that moves the sun and the other stars.” I am aiming for this integration of elements, spiritual and physical, in these works that somehow capture the “imagination of ecstasy.” It is a journey that is driven upward. It is a journey of hope in a midst of darkness.




I use ground minerals and basic earth materials. I mix the pigments with Nikawa hide glue, and paint with water onto Kumohada hand lifted Japanese paper. I realized that, during the process of painting these images, that I had been painting fire all the time, but did not know that. For instance, even if I were to paint a flower, or a bird, or a landscape I was painting a burning rose, burning wings and burning mountains. I want to get at the mystery of what is behind an object or a landscape. And I have increasingly become more and more monochromatic in doing so. But the materials I use will refract, catching the most delicate, complex light, so they are multi-chromatic paintings that look monochromatic.

In the Water Flames, I am focused more intently on the process of creating. I speak about this in the mini-documentary shown here, but there are two sides of experiencing a work of art: process and product. It is interesting to ponder whether Dante’s work is more about the process of that journey, or the final destination. Dante never finished the work (as Sayers never finished the translation), and therefore one might argue that it was process driven – that it was experiential work. But throughout the journey, there is a pointed teleological directive, a type of conviction about the direction of the journey. L’Inferno begins:

Midway this way of life we’re bound upon,
I woke to find myself in a dark wood,
Where the right road was wholly lost and gone.

But even there, lost in darkness,

Then I looked up, and saw the morning rays
Mantle its shoulder from that planet bright
Which guides men’s feel aright on all their ways:

In order to appreciate the experience of the journey, then, we must be convinced, also of the end point. This is what I experienced, as an artist, working on these paintings. There’s a certain way that process driven art relies on the end vision, and without such conviction in resolution, we can’t trust the process of creativity. A creative journey must be both the recognition of what is “lost and gone” in that dark wood, and at the same time be guided by a creative force that transcends our own capacities. We must see the morning rays
Mantle its shoulder from that planet bright, and that requires a kind of faith.


Dorothy Sayers seems to write her commentaries defending Dante from modernist critics who seem to relate to Inferno, and less so with Purgatorio and reject Paradiso all together. But Paradiso imagery is not an afterthought, but an end point of the journey that is necessary to see “the morning rays”. This is one of the keys to understanding Dante:

T.S. Eliot wrote:

.…because he could do everything else, is for that reason the greatest 'religious' poet, though to call him [merely] a 'religious poet' would be to abate his universality. The Divine Comedy expresses everything in the way of emotion, between depravity's despair and the beatific vision, that man is capable of experiencing. (T.S. Eliot on Dante)

Dante wants us to dive deeper into “depravity's despair” by and through the “the beatific vision.” So in that sense, it does not make sense to read L’Inferno without knowing Il Paradiso. There is a good reason why Dante titled this The Divine Comedy, and not The Divine Tragedy. It is from the first page to the last, a teleological journey upward.

This quote by Eliot actually prompts a few questions for me: questions that I have asked myself as I prepared the Water Flames paintings:


Dante is framing our question for both art and life, and that is why we must see Dante as a universal poet: Eliot unpacks this question to helps us to ask what is our expression of “depravity’s despair and the beatific vision” today? How does our contemporary expression compare to the emotional range of Dante?

Eric Fischl recently noted:

Artists connected with the church were asked to imagine four things; what heaven was like, what hell was like and what the Garden was like before and after the Fall. Those are four profound archetypes, and they're part of many cultures. What has happened over the centuries is the artists in the West have become specialized. You still find heaven painters, hell painters and Garden painters, but you rarely find them in the same person. In a way, that denies the full scope of the imaginative world.

Eric Fischl Art in America

We need to recover the “full scope of the imaginative world.” I believe it is possible to develop future art that has the range of Dante. But we must understand, that a different type of journey is required.





Soon after 9/11, I found myself needing to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I suppose being a “ground zero” resident now, I wanted to understand the real Ground Zero. When I was in Hiroshima, I took video footage of the memorial flames there. I used the footage in a post-9/11 installation called “Two-T” exhibit, a collaboration with Albert Pedulla.

Then I had another opportunity to collaborate in a production called Shangri-La, a modern opera composed by Susie Ibarra and written by Yusef Kumunyakaa. For the Kitchen production, Susie asked me to consider doing the visuals. We decided to use in the background images, frozen stills, of the flames of Hiroshima. As I was looking at them from the back of the stage, I realized that the images resonated so much with the direction I was moving towards, and Dante’s universe. So I appropriated these images of flames, and began the last few images of Water Flames.

Fire can be illustrated easily, and the abbreviated forms can be found everywhere, from “explosive content” labels to the Methodist Church’s logo. But how is fire’s essence to be captured? What is its shape? How do you describe its energy? Capture its heat? When fire becomes more than merely a symbol, but a phenomenon, then the depiction of flames become a difficult, if not an impossible, task. The attempt is to capture the essence of something you think you see, but in reality is elusive to capture. Fire is at once recognizable and yet mysteriously abstract at the same time.

The materials I use, mostly derived from the medieval methods of Japan, lend themselves to a subtle intersection between abstraction and representation hidden behind the four basic elements: Water, Earth, Air and Fire. Pulverized precious minerals, gifts from the earth, are layered with water onto Japanese mulberry and hemp fibers, creating a semi-permanent surface. The prismatic semi-opaque layers trap light, creating refraction of light for the eyes to delight in. Paper breathes, accommodating itself to the environment, and thus continues to mold itself to the surroundings, and that process is captured by the watermarks on the surface. Gold powder, mixed with animal hide glue, is the ideal color to be placed on top of Japanese vermillion and cochineal (derived from a tiny insect in India). The surface itself is an ecosystem of colors combining earth with air, and water with, in this new series, fire.

Of course, my paintings of flames could be read as “religious.” I am certainly risking that as I paint these images of Flames of Life. To me, to paint is to reveal the inner most chambers of my existence. Therefore, my work has a specific, transcendent purpose for me. Yes, I do want my art to be the “burning bush” that emits fiery power and yet exudes life. As I stated, I am convinced that our contemporary expressions need to recapture “depravity’s despair and the beatific vision” once again. If not, we incapacitate ourselves to a certain resignation: how would we understand our world of Hiroshima and 9/11 otherwise? How do we express the depth and breath of both our dark realities and resolute hope at the same time?




I find the most intriguing of the three books of The Divine Comedy to be Purgatorio. Why? Well, it is exactly because it is sandwiched between “depravity’s despair” and “the beatific vision.” Any utopian or dystopian vision can lose sight of the significance of suffering: the utopian vision tends to assume that suffering is illusionary, and the the dystopian vision might consider suffering to be the only reality. But Purgatorio assumes that suffering of the journey is very necessary to purify as gold, the divine grace that resides within.



Currently, at Luhring Augustine Gallery, Joel Sternfeld’s “Sweet Earth: Experimental Utopias in America.” His photographs capture the enormous varieties of utopian communities in America, ranging from early Mormonism, Mayor Daley’s attempt to create green rooftops in Chicago to cultish visionaries. What you see in these depictions is the struggle and fascination we have toward our common search for the ideal. But as diverse as they are when you see them, I think you will note how similar they are. They all have common Edenic desires to get back to the Garden of Eden. But we also see that idealism is often met with disappointments. I wonder if in some profound way Sternfeld has captured a part of America that we all struggle with. We are suspicious of anyone who claims to have found the answer. And we are suspicious of Dante exactly for this reason.



But Dante, is not utopian or dystopian. Purgatorio is necessary exactly as a bridge between dystopia of Inferno and what we might see as the “utopia” of Paradiso.




Note that, for Protestant Christians, we need to know that what happens in Dante’s purgatory is not what we often misunderstand it to be: it is not a place for lost souls, or souls that do not know where they will end up. If you read Dante (and Catholic theology), you know that every cornice of the purgatory represents steps of sanctification. Purgatory is a place for those who know their final destination is heaven, and those who know that their earthly journey did not allow, for whatever the reason, the purification from what corrupts a person. I find, as a Christian, these verses of Purgatorio enormously helpful. As I struggle to understand my place in God’s graced Kingdom, I know that my journey needs to be challenged by fire, my inner corruptions exposed, and my convictions tested and purified. Further, I know, as an artist, that this is exactly what is needed in the process of art. There is no easy path. My creative process is filled with encounters with the “heavy cairn of stones.” And I must deal with them, one mineral at a time.

Where he and I burned in one furnace-blast;
The visionary fire so seared me through,
It broke my sleep perforce, and the dream passed.

This dream parallels the journey of a creative artist, who sees the need for “visionary fire” to sear us through. We know that in order to create, we must destroy something. In order for the minerals to refract beautifully, they must be pulverized. So Dante’s dream of purgatory seems apt in light of the process of creativity. It is a journey of beauty that the Japanese of old understood: ultimate beauty is necessarily tied with death, and sacrifice.

T.S. Eliot writes in Four Quartets:


The only hope, or else despair

Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre—

To be redeemed from fire by fire



How can one be redeemed from fire by fire? Well, Eliot suggests that the fire of despair can turn into the fire of sanctification. This is the transition from the fire of the Inferno to the fire of Purgatorio. And as Eliot suggests here, it does lie in our “choice of pyre to pyre.” What exactly is this choice?

In Inferno and Purgatorio, Dante is guided by Virgil, and is devastated to find that Virgil disappears. And yet, at this turning point, is where he realizes that Beatrice (with her eyes and her mouth expressing the beatific vision) is her guide. She represents the vision of sacrificial love (a presence of Christ) that will ultimately guide him to Paradiso. And this transition of vision is given to us as a choice:


The angels cry out:

Do us more grace, and of thy grace reveal
Thy mouth to him, so that he may discern
The second beauty which thou dost conceal.

And Dante:

O splendour of the living light eterne,
What man that e’er beneath Parnassus’ shade
Grew pale, or from its fountain filled his urn…

There where all heaven harmonious shadows thee

Purgatorio, Canto XXXI, 136-141,145

Parnassus’s shade is referring to Apollo, the god of music, poetry and reason. Dante’s encounter with the “second beauty” accompanies the loss of Virgil, and it represents his inner death. Dante is dying to his need for his beloved guide, and his dependence on even Apollo, the god of poetry and reason. All things, even his art, and his own reason, is to be shadowed by this second beauty. Art as a guide can only go so far. My writer friend who guided me to read Dante tells me in our recent email correspondence: “that in the end, whatever our religious beliefs, we're hoping for something like grace to help our work go further than we can intend or achieve on our own” Our art must die to itself, in other words, in order that the fire of destruction can become the fire of life everlasting. And for that, a certain sacrifice is needed, a divine sacrifice of cosmic proportions that pours into us grace.



The upward journey, then, is fueled by this grace alone. These Water Flames paintings trace that journey of discovery, of dying to myself, and even to art. It is an invitation to the viewer to journey with me, with your creative offerings, to encounter this “second beauty” as well. Like Dante, we may need to descend, before we can be brought upward: certainly, we need to recover the language of heaven in our times, in order to understand the dark realm of our own nightmares. We may even be dismayed to find that the guide that we so idealized was inadequate. But if we can journey from “pyre to pyre”, we will recover the redemptive, imaginative landscape. We have to consider the alternative. Do we not have but a limited window of time today to infuse hope in the global dialogue? This is the work of imagination as much as it is a “flesh and blood” struggle. The journey of humility must take place for all of us, or the consequences will be dire. The stewardship of our creative journey, the development of that “full scope of the imaginative world” is needed, or we will succumb to the hopeless futility of the ideological and fear driven terrors of our day. Terror does take away imaginative hope. So the battle does rage in the creative realms dominated by vengeance, fear and despair verses the realms of humility, of “the love that moves the sun and the other stars.”

I hope these images point to the ultimate flames of life, flames that burn and yet do not consume us; and as we find our own dross being purged, and golden fire burn brightly within, may we, with Dante, find the “splendour of the living light” smiling upon us.

Water Flames Exhibit

In a beautiful new gallery, I am pleased to install these new works, loosely based on Dante's The Divine Comedy. Please note the artist talk event on Oct. 7th will also feature Susie Ibarra. Her music is dubbed with a documentary style video in the video created by Joey Tomassoni's team in the video room.

Check out the photos from the opening!

Makoto Fujimura Opening at Sara Tecchia Roma

And a blog interview at http://spaghetti.nujus.net/artDirt/ Click on where it says "mp3" and you can hear my conversation with digital artist G.H. Hovagimyan.