AKI KURODA - Tempura Magazine interview

The big interview by Clémence Leleu, 2023.
Photos Iorgis Matyassy.

It's at four years old, leafing through the pages of the magazine Minotaur , that Aki Kuroda discovers a world from which he never left, that of surrealist painting. The artist who has lived in Paris since 1970 has only one driving force: pleasure. At 78, he continues his prolific work which weaves its web between his studio in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, theaters, the street and museums around the world. With one constant: Aki Kuroda cherishes silence. To reinvent himself, keep moving forward and, above all, let his painting speak for him.

SILENCE IS ART

You started painting at the age of three, what brought you to it?

My paternal great-uncle, Jutaro Kuroda, was a painter, he is considered the first Japanese cubist. My father also loved painting, so I grew up in an environment that was quite conducive to that. But what most explains the fact that I took up painting is that I am an only child. I had to take care. As I had a somewhat difficult relationship with my mother, I painted in secret. I painted in oil, maybe that's also what set me apart from the other children.

You grew up in Kyoto and you came to visit France for the first time at the age of 20, before settling there permanently from 1970. What prompted you to discover Paris?

In the mid-1960s in Japan, there were many leftist student movements. The university was therefore often closed. We met with friends in cafes, we played jazz, we read books by Jean-Paul Sartre. We were immersed in this culture and this atmosphere, so I wanted to discover it for real. My father had also come to France, before the Second World War. He had brought back with him many issues of the surrealist and dadaist magazine Minotaur . I found them in his library when I was four years old and it came as a shock to me. I was completely fascinated, because it was very different from what you could see in Kyoto. I turned the pages and I saw the works of Picasso, Matisse... It was a new world before my eyes. But my first trip to France did not quite meet my expectations. I was a little disappointed. The city was not necessarily pretty, some buildings were dirty, as were some streets. There was also a lot of prostitution around Montparnasse, a neighborhood I frequented a lot. I was also made some racist remarks, some people pulled their eyes looking at me. But during these eight months in Paris, I also met incredible personalities like Tetsumi Kudo, a surrealist and Dadaist artist.

Despite this first half-hearted experience, you still decide to come and settle in the capital in 1970.

Yes, in the meantime I went to New York because this city fascinated me, but there again it was difficult, especially because of the context of the Vietnam War. Being of Asian origin, I received a few death threats. So I decided to settle in Paris, with my partner. I first found a small job as an assistant to Japanese sculptor Yasuo Mizui. For eight years I did a lot of different things, in addition to my painting, but it didn't really work. So I said to my wife, “We are going back to Japan” . I started sorting through my things in anticipation of our departure. At the time, I lived next to the town hall of the 15th arrondissement and I went to a café every day, where there was a Yugoslav woman, who was also used to the place. We greeted each other every morning and one day she invited me to an evening dedicated to an artist from her country. Normally I don't go to these kinds of events, I'm not comfortable there, but this time I accepted. There were many artists and art critics. I met the painter Ljuba, the art critic Anne Tronche, but also Peter Klasen who exhibited regularly at the Maeght gallery. They wanted to see my work, and afterwards, everything went very quickly.

Indeed, because you were selected for the XIth Paris Biennale in 1980.

Absolutely. A few months earlier, I had started a series of about ten square canvases in black and white of one meter fifty. They liked them. They talked about my work, I was selected for the Paris Biennale and of course, there was no longer any question of leaving France to return to Japan.

It was also at this time that you met Marguerite Duras and she wrote a text for your first exhibition “Les Ténèbres”. Was this something decisive for you?

Meeting people is complicated for me. I'm Japanese, only son, a little apart. I have trouble finding my place. I need a lot of distance, I've always been very reserved. Even today, it is difficult to talk about me, to call curators. But Duras was something else. I had read his books, because it was translated into Japanese. Our meeting was natural, we met a lot. My decisive encounters, whether with Marguerite Duras, Michel Foucault or even Hervé Guibert, are all due to chance. That of life, of everyday life, of chance encounters. Duras wrote about my exhibition even though she didn't want to write about art at the time.

“In our time the word is very important, you have to have a constructed statement, which stretches in a straight line. For my part, I am experimenting, so there can be no precise answer. Silence best describes me. »

In her text, she writes: “Silence is thus made by Kuroda on the intelligence of painting itself. He says that there is something to understand, but without ever knowing what, that there is something to say, but without ever knowing how (...) Kuroda is ahead of the silence. “Do you recognize yourself in it?

It's not easy to talk about painting. In fact, I have always wanted to remain silent. In our time Speech is very important, you have to have a constructed statement, which stretches in a straight line, which progresses. For my part, let's say that I have a way of thinking which is, as I say, "octopus thinking": it goes in several directions, I experiment. So there can be no definite answer. Instead, you should try to construct a multiple response. And most importantly, I can't describe myself. It is indeed silence that best describes me. I don't know what I am myself, that's also why I paint.

Between 1985 and 1994, you edited, with Yoyo Maeght and Didier Ottinger, the magazine Noise . Why did you decide to embark on this adventure?

In my mind there was of course the review Minotaur that I had discovered as a child, in Japan. In Noise we brought together five artists and five writers with a mixture of international artists and other unknowns. I paint, but I'm interested in many things: dance, music, literature. At the time, I lived near rue Daguerre, where the Maeght family had their printing press. Many people passed there, like Miró for example. We met a lot of people, artists, so we wanted to do something about it. That's how it is Noise was born.

On a daily basis, you don't want to talk about your painting, give elements of explanation of your artistic approach. For what ?

My painting is like my thought, it is multiple. There can be things that are sometimes very expressionistic, others very minimal. I can make faces, paint in black and white and all at once create an entirely red canvas. It's a bit like in the films of Jean-Luc Godard. There is a black and white image and all of a sudden there is a typography or a plan, an image which comes to the screen completely red or blue. All this put end to end gives a whole which, although different, complements each other, fits together, like the different sides of a screen.

I don't want to talk about my painting to move forward. My main desire is not to tell myself or to seek to know what I do, it is to always seek new encounters, and with painting, and with people. And then in front of a painting, it's not easy to talk, we see your sensitivity right away. For me it is dangerous. Behind the surface, there is a thickness, memory. It all comes from within.

One of your specificities is that your works are not always dated and that you regularly pursue canvases painted several years earlier. Do you think your art should always be able to be completed?

Yes, because my life and my sensibility, but also the time, evolve. Ten years ago I was different, my style too. I want to be able to complete my painting with my new feelings. And then other things happen when you complete your works. I'm always looking for something. My driving force is not that my work is done. This is also why I refuse to define my work, it's painting that should speak for me. If it is true that the style is important, what matters to me is rather the movement. Like the cells in our body that change all the time. In a year, I will be different, there will have been variations, however, it will always be me. And above all, my paintings are not my story. It's the people who watch them who bring him other things, they're the ones who create new things, new ideas from what I do. My paintings are not me.

One of your favorite places is the city, the street. What do you find there?

First of all, I like to stroll around the city, without having a goal. It totally suits my way of thinking. My pleasure is to walk around the back of the main thoroughfares, to discover nooks, streets or alleys that are a bit alternative. We see many things there and not necessarily obvious or in any case, not accessible to those who stay on the main avenues. That's why I like to walk around Tokyo, in its maze of small streets. Paris, with the Haussmannian, it's very clear, it's very beautiful, but it's all very organized.

Then, I like to walk around, to walk the streets, because I can look at people's faces there. It is one of my sources of inspiration. And then of course there are the cafes, where I spend a lot of time. I observe the customers, I meet people there. In the cafes things are informal, links are woven, but with simplicity. I'm like my father who was at the cafe all the time, it's a tradition in Kyoto. And then whether in the street or in the cafes, there is no hierarchy. This mistletoe is important for me, in my life, but also in my art, it's pleasure. Simple pleasure, outside of any ideology or philosophical thought. I have to take pleasure in painting, in looking at my painting. I seek the pleasure of living. I believe that life should be interesting. I very often wonder why I am here, why I live here, what is life. But it can, after a while, lead me into darkness. So I try to imagine things in my paintings that make me happy, like little cafes, little gardens, alleys... The city has to be joyful, alive. For example, during the coronavirus pandemic, the city was dead, all the bars were closed, the city had become a prison.

So you represent in your works a kind of ideal city ?

No, I would rather say that I create my own city. It is both an ideal and apocalyptic city. In my opinion, everything must be in motion. The city, but also life, is like a river: there has to be a current. If the water no longer flows, it stagnates and begins to rot. It is therefore necessary to find a balance, a balance, to be constantly between movement and calm. Painting is that too. It must be visited by movement, by the wind. Otherwise it closes in on itself and ends up dying. But I don't necessarily want to show that side, too thoughtful. So, let's say that I need movement, air, stimulation to create my painting and the elements that compose it. Another point is that in my work I don't really want to be in the memory. Of course, you need a little memory, but not too much. It is necessary to avar this, to go forward to create.

In your works you abolish perspective. To break it, to break with this code, is it to acquire a new freedom?

Perspective for me is power. It's monitoring. Michel Foucault analyzed it very well in his work with the hospital or the prison. Haussmann's architecture, very well organized, can be reassuring. When you're in it, when you're used to it, it's a kind of protective artificial paradise. I think for my part that it is necessary to break the perspective a little, always in this idea of creating dynamism, allowing movement, but a movement that is a little anarchic, not necessarily controlled. Which allows the sidelines, to take paths that are not straight. This opens up possibilities, makes it possible to seek to understand, but also to open up to learning other things. And it is by trying new things that we can move forward. We always come back to the example of the river, of the water, which interferes and flows where it wants.

“I don't like things that are defined, binary and that don't allow for nuance. There is no black and white, there is grey. I am a mixture of many things. Of all the places I've been, of all the people I've met in my life. »

There are elements that often come up in your work: primary colors, black and white, labyrinths, faces... Do these identity markers allow you to experiment with other things in your canvases while while remaining recognizable?

I cannot answer you and for a very simple reason: my identity does not exist. It exists for today, but tomorrow it may be something else. In our post-modern era, we must not take a position, claim a style. I dance, I evolve with the world. I am an unigu€ son, since I was little I had to create my own game, my own rules, especially in this post-World War II context (Aki Kuroda was born in î944 in Kyoto, editor's note). I like colors, it's true, but I use them because it gives me pleasure at the very moment when I paint. All this is not reflected, it is only a matter of joy. And my sources of joy can vary from day to day. I want to tell things in myself, so when I paint I let the joy come. She can lead me to colors, to labyrinthine shapes or even to faces, but in a way, it's not up to me to decide. I am guided by Lajoie, the pleasure that painting gives me.

Speaking of identity, you said in an interview that you were “neither French nor Japanese, but uprooted”, what does that mean for you?

I don't like things that are defined, binary and that don't allow for nuance. In my opinion, there is no black and white, there is grey. I am a mixture of many things. Of all the places I've been, of all the people I've met in my life. And then there are my specificities. For example, I always keep a distance from others, it's not easy for me to enter and contact people, to call them. But on the other hand, there is something explosive in me, like some Japanese festivals, like the Gion Matsuri in Kyoto. And then there is my share of interiority, of modesty, this side which is also very Japanese.

You told me before the interview started that you regularly ask yourself “why do I keep painting”. Do you have an outline answer?

Today I love the painter, because I need to look at something, otherwise the world is too cruel. We need something other than everyday life in our lives and painting brings that something. She touches parts of us, there is something very rich with her. When I go back to my studio, it makes me feel good. But at the same time, I can't stay there too long. It's a lot of emotions for me. So I go out, I go to the cafe, I take a walk. It's like museums. It's a lot of emotions, it tires me, I'm too sensitive. I need a lot of energy to spend time there. In my opinion, one of the important things in the world as it is today is that we all need culture. She animates. But it's not just a question of agents, it's above all a question of energy. You have to put a lot into culture, so that it lives and is preserved.

In your works you abolish perspective. To break it, to break with this code, is it to acquire a new freedom?

I cannot answer you and for a very simple reason: my identity does not exist. It exists for today, but tomorrow it may be something else. In our post-modern era, we must not take a position, claim a style. I dance, I evolve with the world. I am an unigu€ son, since I was little I had to create my own game, my own rules, especially in this post-World War II context (Aki Kuroda was born in î944 in Kyoto, editor's note). I like colors, it's true, but I use them because it gives me pleasure at the very moment when I paint. All this is not reflected, it is only a matter of joy. And my sources of joy can vary from day to day. I want to tell things in myself, so when I paint I let the joy come. She can lead me to colors, to labyrinthine shapes or even to faces, but in a way, it's not me who decides. I am guided by Lajoie, the pleasure that painting gives me.

Speaking of identity, you said in an interview that you were “neither French nor Japanese, but uprooted”, what does that mean for you?

You told me before the interview started that you regularly ask yourself “why do I keep painting”. Do you have an outline answer?

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