Texts & Quotes

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No one had yet perceived the value of the dot. By turning away from literary elements, I began by placing a single dot.

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Supporting a family of five while working as a shipyard laborer, I continued with Gutai — and the memories from those days are endless.

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In the Gutai Manifesto there is a line that reads, “To elevate the spirit is to lead matter into the realm of a higher spirit.” During my years with Gutai, I often used oil paint as the material for my self-expression.

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Within my mind, a strong sense of inferiority and an equally firm sense of superiority flow back and forth like shifting air pressure. From the brain cultivated through all my past experiences, something like enzymes ferment, and images — perhaps they should be called ideas — bubble up one after another. And these ten fingers, trained to a versatility greater than any computer, engrave onto chosen materials the images carried from the brain through the nerves. What is inscribed in this way is no longer mere matter; it becomes an enduring, imperishable image of myself — a gravestone infused with the breathing breath of the artist at that moment.

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My painting continues each day, alongside my writing. Since October 1986, I have devoted myself especially to large-scale NUI (stitch works) by now, more than fifty pieces, ranging from 100 to 300 gō (Japanese size), have taken shape. Almost none have been shown. They are not made to be sold. They are the stubborn will of the socially weak to live strongly — and at the same time, my greatest pleasure.

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It’s been quite some time since I last wrote — how have you been? Lately the mornings and evenings have turned sharply cold, and with the days growing shorter, I haven’t been able to paint at all. On top of that, work at Nippon Express has been so busy that all the energy I might have given to painting has been swallowed up there instead. When I can’t paint, writing letters to you like this has become one of my small pleasures.

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 I must work to eat. However, painting is what keeps me alive.

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People laugh — that I couldn’t do action, performance.
But long before Gutai, there was Jumping Knife — my book about those wild, rough years — and I endured that.

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In paintings that express a natural subject and an inner concept, the form is emphasized, but if one sticks too closely to form, any living content tends to be shut out from the work. Uemae resisted this kind of painting that emphasized form, preferring material rather than spirit, pathos rather than logos. He emphasized the material and expanded his materials from paints to match sticks to cloth and thread, striving to create new works.

[Excerpt]
Countless dotted traces of brushstrokes cover the entire surface in dense profusion.
Vast numbers of matchstick ends are scattered densely across the entire surface.
Countless dotted traces of stitching fill the entire surface in tight formation.
Vast quantities of scratched linear marks are spread densely across the entire surface.

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For Uemae, who regards painting not as an object for detached contemplation but as an expression of life, it is only natural that he places greater emphasis on touch than on sight, and on “things” rather than “events.” As he says, “Even a single shard of pottery is something that exists tactilely and materially; it presses upon our hearts as a silent message from the present.” (Solo exhibition leaflet, 1992)

[Excerpt]
Since his birth and childhood, UEMAE has been suffering unhappiness of family ties, serious poverty and physical and mental weakness. He started laboring before finishing the elementary school, moving to Kobe to get a job as a stevedore or crane driver, while, without losing his dream to become an artist, creating original artworks and joining the group of . His artistic activity has proved the continuity from labor to work, from life to art. On a moderate scale and as a citizen artist, I believe his life-style and artistic career fit the way of Kobe life and images.

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I recall that at the Gutai group’s exhibition International Art of a New Era, Michel Tapié singled out Uemae’s work as one of the most noteworthy pieces in the show. Though never flamboyant, he advances along his own path step by step, without error. In recent years, there is a marked sense that his paintings have grown even denser.

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Once, when a Gutai exhibition was held in Tokyo, the members got into a heated discussion about new art, and the debate began to go nowhere. Uemae, who had been listening quietly until then, suddenly broke the tension with an unmistakably human interruption — a brief, irreverent pffft. With that single moment, even the seasoned Gutai members found the conclusion to their debate. In today’s art world, full of socializing and eloquent talk, Chiyu Uemae—who believes in action over words—is a rare and valuable presence.

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Around 1958, after Michel Tapié visited Japan, the Gutai movement stepped onto the stage of the international art world and came to fill the pages of numerous art magazines. Particularly in the later years, some who were adept at riding the currents of the times joined in, and forms of self-promotion began to appear that resembled the rise of pop stars. However, I believe that Gutai’s true strength was born from the opposite direction—and that is what endures.
Though there were differences in the scale of outward gestures, at its core Gutai shared a spirit that rejected easy acceptance and sought something directly connected to human beings themselves. Yet this spirit was often misunderstood.

[Excerpt]
Chiyu Uemae was born in Kyoto in 1920. His father died when he was one year old, and because his adoptive father was a charcoal burner, he was raised in the mountains. At age four, he suffered an ear illness that left him hard of hearing for the rest of his life. At six, his mother fell ill and entered the Tenrikyō religious order. During this time, the great Okutango earthquake struck, and just before their house collapsed, a ninety-year-old shaman woman carried him out, saving him miraculously.