In Memoriam : Tadaaki Kuwayama (1932 - 2023)

  • Three Works in Memoriam

    TADAAKI KUWAYAMA (b. Nagoya, 1932 - 2023)

    Tadaaki Kuwayama (1932 - 2023) was a visionary of space, light, and color, rejecting composition in favor of pure materiality. He attended the Tokyo University of the Arts where he trained in the traditional painting style of nihonga. In 1958, Kuwayama moved to New York with his wife and fellow artist, Rakuko Naito.

     

    Disenchanted by both nihonga and the remnants of Abstract Expressionism still prevalent in New York City, he used familiar materials in pursuit of a new style void of expression or subjectivity. Seeking to remove the artist’s hand from the work completely, he found himself classified with the American Minimalists. Though aligned with such assertions that a work of art should refer only to itself, Kuwayama pushed back against this classification, stating in a 2012 interview that “Even now I think of [my work] as a fact, a truth, a reality.”

     

    Staunchly committed to this conceptual framework, Kuwayama prioritized the experience of encountering his work over its production, almost as if it was borne out of the architecture of viewing space itself. Traditionally speaking, the work is neither painting nor sculpture, synthesizing elements of both, while resisting others, to create something entirely its own. Every step in Kuwayama’s career was a step towards eliminating the trace of his own hand, eventually outsourcing the production of some pieces, such as the site-specific installation of 136 Bakelite panels at the Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art in 1996. In such instances, the artwork became twofold: its conception and the viewer’s experience. 

     

    Kuwayama’s artistry rested in his deep understanding of space, light, and color, as he crafted impact over objects. That being said, he never completely abandoned the traditional picture plane, working on panels in various monochromes through the end of his career. This commitment to a more traditional surface was not so much a link to the past as an attempt to expand the definition of painting, away from representation and towards a cultivation of space and perception. By allowing for and encouraging the replication of his work either by himself or others, he removed the singular objectivity of painting, just as he removed its representational and expressive aspects. He moved fluidly between different modes of production to prove such, demonstrating that the artwork is not so much about who makes it or its materials, but rather its final existence in the space and the resulting viewer experiences.

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  • TK7549-61


    Kuwayama created TK7549-61 (1961) only two years after he began his career in New York. This work encapsulates the transitional period of the young artist as he began to turn away from nihonga and commit his practice fully to exploring the new avant-garde sensibility emerging in the artist circles that he was active amongst. Layering strips of paper horizontally across the board, Kuwayama created subtle breaks in the vertical composition that diffuse the viewer’s eye from the stark contrast of the aluminum strip that seems to almost split the piece in two. Following the recommendations of close artist friends such as Sam Francis, Kuwayama had begun to turn to acrylics at this time— for this piece, he combined acrylic paint with dry pigment. This combination created an emanative, velvety effect with the paint, resulting in a very distinctive surface quality.


    The early aesthetic decisions that can be observed in TK7549-61 highlight Kuwayama’s interest in experimenting with materials and painting outside of history. Viewers must consider the various shifts in the painting’s surface and texture when viewing it in the exhibition space—in this way, the piece reckons with

    materiality itself. This is the first time TK7549-61 has been exhibited.

    TK1314 1/4


    This early work by Kuwayama demonstrates a transitional period in his oeuvre, as he acclimated from his traditional nihonga training in Japan to the climate of artistic experimentation in New York City. It is during this period that he laid the conceptual groundwork which would define the rest of his career. As he became acquainted with the likes of Donald Judd, Frank Stella, and their contemporaries, so too did he develop a desire to create work that existed in a different dimension than paintings of the past.  


    TK1314 1/4 (1963) is a departure from Kuwayama’s earlier works where his manipulations of media and surface are plainly apparent. This work, consisting of pigment on canvas, allows a perceptible trace of the artist’s hand, but the work does not depend on its relationship to the artist nor any external referent. The work consists of two canvases transformed into red planes. The use of pigment, a fundamental material for nihonga, nods to his past, though acts in service of a new artistic direction. This piece is one of few such similar compositions that does not include an aluminum bisector between the two panels, indicating its production as during this formative period of experimentation. Each section is marked with slight ripples, resultant of the application of the wet pigment. This texture is the only material vestige of the artist’s hand, allowing the piece to exist in and of itself. TK1314 1/4 thus exemplifies the successful beginnings of Kuwayama’s conceptual applications. The piece functions as both a record of this critical transition and the artist’s own intent to create art that existed purely for itself.

    TK 477/8-16


    Seriality was a logical step that Kuwayama undertook after moving forward with his larger-than-life endeavor to produce “pure art without history.” Repetition prevented a work from becoming unique and compositional. Systemically produced art was part of the “new sensibility” that arose by the end of the 1950s, taking over the following decade through the principles of repetition and seriality, which constituted the most elementary systems to resist conventional art practice.


    The piece TK 477/8-16 (2016) consists of anodized titanium brackets that entail the viewers’ scrutiny of color through their movement in space. This installation is part of a larger series of anodized aluminum and titanium works Kuwayama made in pink, blue, red, yellow, green, silver, and gold. TK 477/8-16 manifests Kuwayama’s entrance into a circuit of production that involved the loss of manual control of his work, contradicting an art principle that states that the quality of the work depends on the manual skill of the maker. Pairing with Donald Judd’s “Specific Objects”, Kuwayama’s anodized brackets avoid any metaphysical intention and become objects that compel the viewers to look at the object and color within space—and monochrome, in particular— in an increasingly alienating world of banal objects and digital screens.