Horiki in Delft

In de galerie van World Art Delft is dit voorjaar van 2009 een solotentoonstelling te zien van de intrigerende Japanse schilder Katsutomi Horiki, die wel vergeleken is met Roman Opalka en met Mark Rothko.

Aan de katalogus bij deze tentoonstelling heb ik de volgende tekstbijdrage geleverd.

HORIKI KATSUTOMI, MAKING SENSE

Semiotic considerations

Horiki Katsutomo has been compared, by intelligent analysts of his work, to Roman Opalka and Mark Rothko. We may consider that as instructive. It brings us to important questions. First of all: what is it that makes us think that there is similarity in the paintings of these artists? It is certainly their common concentration on the semiotic functioning of their works of art. Their paintings are no isolated creations. They form a growing corpus, in which often the same elements come back. That is true for form and for meaning. This repetition of form and meaning generates an impression of obsession. A creative obsession indeed, which reminds us of Petrarca, the poet who invented the sonnet and repeatedly – more than three hundred times! - used this one and only poetic deice to express hs haunting desire for the beloved Laura. It is the kind of obsession which is peculiar to geniuses, who often create, their whole life long, fundamentally the same art work, and send the same message.

The second question is still more interesting: what distinguishes the paintings of Horiki Katsutomi from those of Opalka and Rothko? There are many differences and they are essential. Opalka ignores colours other than white and grey, makes use of numbers and autoportraits, thus referring to time passing by, as is shown by dates and by traces of growing age, in the portraits. Rothko uses colours abundantly, ignoring any reference to whatever other reckognizable reality.

In Horiki’s paintings there are colours as well as multiple references. The references may be somewhat mysterious at first sight, but fortunately Horiki joins titles with his representations; they help us in our efforts to find interpretations. The titles are sophisticated, they refer to Greek mythology, to moments of Ulysses long journey home after the Troyan war, as told by Homer in the Odyssey. These titles carry proper names from the Odyssey, in Italian: Ulisse, also Doppio Ulisse, Ogigia, Calypso, Eolo, Itaca.

In giving names to his creations, Horiki makes an implicit gesture – it is like reaching a helping hand to those who are willing to find a meaning in his paintings. It is a sign of confidence in his counterparts in art. Thus art is considered as a process of communication. The reference to the Ulysses-saga creates a complicity of understanding between the artist Horiki and those, artlovers, who love and admire his work. Without a reciprocal sympathy of this kind, art is a sterile, narcissistic, endeavour.

Homer has made of the journey of Ulysses a story which has fascinated millions of people for centuries and centuries, all over the world. Not always for the same reasons, that is clear. The special interest of Horiki for the Odyssey can be explained by the fact that it is very well possible to give an allegoric value to the story of Ulysses’ adventures. An allegory is a coherent set of metaphors. We may admit that Ulysses’ journey is a metaphoric representation of human life. It is plausible that Horiki’s references to Ulysses’ journey convey his ideas about life, ours as well his own life. This admitted, we may consider Ithaca as a symbol for the goal in life, the realized dreamed-of destination. Eolo, the wind-god, is the power on earth that can drive us, eventually against our will, in unwanted directions, to unwanted places. Ogigia is the isle lives the nymph Calypso lives, who possesses such a seductive power upon Ulysses that he forgets the goal of his journey, Ithaca and his wife and family. He stays with Calypso for years. Such are the forces of love and libido. But these are forces different from those of the wind. The temptation of Ulysses is indeed related to his libido, his heart. That is to say, ultimately: to his own free will. Whereas the power of Eolo refers to men’s inevitable submission to the forces of destiny.

The paintings directly referring to the Odyssey are dated. We find, for instance, Ogigia 1995, Ogigia IV 1998, Ogigia IX 2000, Ogigia X 2001, Ogigia 2006. And Itaca 1998, Itaca III 1999, Itaca VIII 2002, Itaca 2000, Itaca 2004. Et cetera. This dating is free of the constraint of linear time. There is awareness of time, but time is non-linear, as in our memories. That suits perfectly with Homer’s narrative technique: the Odyssey is told along the lines of non-linear time. This makes a remarkable difference with the art of Opalka, whose concern is the mastership of linear time over the human being, whereas Rothko consciously wants his work to be timeless, as he has explicitely declared. Opalka and Rothko are, in this perspective, ideological (and artistic) extremists. Horiki is, as Homer was, ideologically more moderate and wiser. The dating of his personal artistic activity shows that he is not the slave but the master of time of time.

Modern semiotics, as inspired by its founding father Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1917), makes a threefold distinction of referring; the sign can be an Icon, an Index or a Symbol. The Icon is a sign by likeness (a picture), the Index points out to some proximity (a handshake), the Symbol is a sign by some convention (a word, in a particular language). The art of Opalka is highly dominated by symbolic signs (the numbers). Rothko eliminates any iconicity, as well as any use of symbolic signs in the Peircean sense of the word. This absence of any code which could lead to a specific interpretation forces the person anxious to find an interpretation to rely exclusively on feelings, on intuition.

Semiotically speaking, Horiki is at first sight closer to Rothko than to Opalka. The meaning-giving role of the splendid and highly significant colours offer open possibilities of interpretation. The helpful symbolic elements (the names of the Odyssey-heroes) are of secundary importance. But there is an absolute originality of Horiki’s work: it is the essential iconic (metaphoric) aspect of his art. This painter confirms an axiom formulated by Peirce: the Icon makes discovery possible. Horiki’s artistic journey tells, fundamentally, about a philosophical exploration.

Horiki uses a meaningful imagery, a figurative language. His paintings which carry the names of isles, be it Ogigia or Itaca, show isles as seen from an approaching ship. The painter makes us look with the eyes of Ulysses who comes nearer. A main element in the image is a horizontal line, let us admit: the horizon. This includes the idea of a perspective. We see sky and sea. The most striking feature in several paintings is that the focus is chosen in such a way that the horizon is drawn exactly in the middle of the representation. The result of this choice by the ‘storyteller’ is that the image of the isles against the sky is exactly identical as the image of the reflection in te sea. And we think: ‘As above, so below.’

As above, so below, is a gnostic maxim, formulated by Hermes Trismegistos. It is the expression resuming an ideal of harmony. We find it, represented in an emblematic way, as the deepest meaning of the painter-philosopher Horiki Katsutomi.

Is it a final word? Not at all. Life is movement. It is true that the horizontal separation between above and below can be found in many paintings, but in the most recent paintings the horizon is to be found close to the upper border. It is as if the foreground, the earth, takes much more space as the heaven above. Is this symbolic for a vision on life? Speculations are permitted. We may think of the landscapes made by Dutch 17th century painters (Ruysdael, Hobbema) who gave fair parts of space, on the canvas, to the sky over the flat land below. Or think of the, contrasting, landscapes by Vincent van Gogh. He painted (not always, but sometimes) enormous foregrounds, which leave little space, or none, to the sky.

Horiki made an exception in the series of paintings showing a separating line which can be considered as a horizon. It is the painting named Calypso 2005. The horizon in this representation is displaced from the usual, normal, position; it is a vertical one, separating not above from below, but left from right, each part fairly occupying half the space. What may that mean? The title and some visible details help us to find a plausible interpretation: this looks very much like the bottom, let’s say the buttocks, of a naked woman. Of the desirable nymph who succeeded in making Ulysses forget, for seven years, the decent goal of his journey!

Long live Horiki Katsutomi, the painter/philosopher who does not forget to add a good touch of humor to his art.

De afbeelding toont Ithaca. Heeft Odysseus het zo zien liggen toen hij met zijn schip naderde?