Introduction & Conclusion

With the period to construct this research project coming to a close I am posting an introduction to the research and a conclusion that will include some overall insight and whatnot gleaned from this project…

Introduction:

Born in Tokyo, Japan in 1948, Hiroshi Sugimoto is one of the most famous and influential contemporary photographers. Growing up in Tokyo Sugimoto had an interest in documenting and photographing the world around him. His earliest known photographs were taken in high school. Supposedly these photographs were of film footage of Audrey Hepburn and were taken as the footage played in a movie theater. After high school Sugimoto attended Rikkyo University in Tokyo where he received a BA in 1970. After receiving that degree he traveled west eventually visiting Los Angeles in 1971 and deciding to stay. While in Los Angeles he received  his BFA from the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles in 1972.

By 1974 Sugimoto was working in New York City. While visiting the city’s American Museum of Natural History for the first time and conceived the idea of what would become his Diorama series. This idea blossomed from the intrigue sparked by the lifelike qualities of the dioramas of animals and people. Around the same time Sugimoto started his Seascapes and Theaters series, which he continues to add work to today.

Since developing his name in the art world with those original three series Sugimoto has gone on to produce other series including photographs of waxwork-museum figures, drive-in theaters, and Buddhist sculptures, all of which similarly blur distinctions between the real and the fictive.

As far as solo exhibitions are concerned Sugimoto has been quite successful, with exhibitions at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Osaka (1989), Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (1994), Centre International d’Art Contemporain in Montreal (1995), Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston (1996), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2000), Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin and Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (2000), Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (2003), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. (2006), and Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin (2008), to name some of the larger ones.

Sugimoto has also participated in a number of  international group exhibitions, including The Art of Memory/The Loss of History at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York (1985), Carnegie International (1991), Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky at the Yokohama Museum of Art and Guggenheim Museum SoHo (1994), Prospect 96 at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (1996), Johannesburg Biennale (1997), International Triennale of Contemporary Art in Yokohama (2001), Moving Pictures (2002) and Singular Forms (2004) at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and Reality Check at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (2008).

Overall, Sugimoto has lead a undeniably successful career and continues to add to his vast collection of series, both in new series and in numbers to the old series he started ages ago. This continuation of his series results in an interesting phenomenon unlike any other artist were while there is evolution of ideas there is still a return to the past. After reading so much about Sugimoto’s work this is especially interesting because it directly reflects the philosophy and ideas he explores in his work.

Conclusion:

I have been instructed to reflect on this research project. As that is a vague request, which I love because it is extremely open-ended, this conclusion will lack in structure and will primarily be a off-the-cuff reflection on what I have found in the last months and some comments on further directions.

In researching Sugimoto’s work I have spent a lot of time watching videos of him discussing his work and reading what others have to say on the subject of his work and have concluded in many different ideas and conclusions. Key among these, and the one that i find by far the most interesting, is Sugimoto’s perception of time. In a lot of the reading and watching that I did there was discussion of Sugimoto’s use of light or the symbolism and philosophy behind the photographs but I continue to find his perception of time to be fascinating.

Rarely did I find any cases where Sugimoto discussed his ideas of time but they are rampant in his work. By looking at such works as his Dioramas, Portraits, Architectural Forms, Conceptual Forms, Seascapes, and really any of his series, except maybe his beautiful Fashion series. When looking at any of his work it is easy to see that his is photographing objects that have been around for some time or are illustrating something that happened a long time ago. If we are to look at his Photogenic Drawings series, the images of William Henry Fox Talbot’s experimental negatives, we quickly see this habit of documenting things that are from a time long past and subsequently breathing new life into the pieces.

Additionally we see Sugimoto play with the idea of the past and relate to time in his Portraits and Seascapes. In his portraits of wax figures he plays with time by taking what look like highly profession photographs of historical figures, thus placing them in the present context. With Seascapes he accomplishes something completely different. By documenting these meeting of air and water Sugimoto gives us a glimpse at a prehistoric world devoid of anything but the two elements. These glimpses back in time renews or interest and more importantly our awareness in the past.

While Sugimoto’s series reflect elements of this interest in time the most interesting element of Sugimoto’s work to me is his actual method. I know I mentioned this in the introduction but his continued evolution from series to series yet continued production of work for each of those series is fascinating. Rarely do you find an artist that continues to go back and reflect on their own career by doing the exact same thing that they used to do. We see artist refer to their previous work all the time, but usually through the production of something completely new. The fact that Sugimoto’s work from the 1970’s and 200’s looks the same is fascinating.

In the last post I made we see Sugimoto return to the Natural History Museum in New York City to photograph their dioramas again. The fact that he returns to this place where ha conceptualized and photographed his first dioramas is intriguing. This continued returning to the past is what makes Sugimoto’s work so interesting to me.

One last take-away before I finish. As someone who studies and produces art the reflection of your personal past, as seen in Sugimoto’s life and work, is something that is becoming integral to the way I think about my art and life. Only through reflection and repetition (frequently of error for me) can we progress and learn.

All in all, this was a fun project. Rarely do I get to use these research skills that I have acquired to research something so interesting as Hiroshi Sugimoto and his work. I learnt a lot about the artist and was able to gain some ideas of how an artist functions that are applicable to the rest of my life and I cannot wait to apply them.

Hiroshi Sugimoto: Four Decades of Photographing Dioramas

Only posted yesterday this video from the American Museum of Natural History, New York City documents Sugimoto’s fourth visit in four decades to the museum to photograph their collection of dioramas. Throughout the video we are reintroduced to some of Sugimoto’s more famous diorama photographs and listen as the artist discusses his reasons for photographing here and for photographing dioramas.

Sugimoto explains that he has a distinct idea of what nature is like and seeks to represent that through his photographs. He never goes into detail as to what he think nature is like but based on his representation I would say that his perception of nature is centered on a perfection. Though by photographing this diorama (and I am sure he’s aware of this) he is documenting a man-made perception of nature and thus is flawed in being an actual depiction of nature.

In Collection at The Guggenheim Museum – New York City

As many of the great museums are starting to do, the Guggenheim is digitizing a good portion of their collection. Among the many works that they are putting on the digital collection for anyone to see are a number of Sugimoto’s works (available here: http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/artists/3540). The works that they have in collection at the New York Guggenheim include three areas of Sugimoto’s works, his “Seascapes”, “Theaters”, and “Portraits”. The majority of the collection is made up by his wax figure portraits thought there is a health collection of the “Seascapes”. these portraits, which I don’t believe I have gotten an opportunity to write about yet, are mesmerizing. The high detail photographs of these highly realistic figure creates the oddest series of portraits I’ve ever seen. It is especially interesting as the figure move back in time from people such as Pope John Paul II, who Sugimoto could have photographed, to Richard III and Jesus, who he could never have photographed. All in all, this collection is impressive and the ability to access it from anywhere with an internet connection is amazing.

Pope John Paul II, 1999

Hiroshi Sugimoto: Conceptual Forms

This book documents Sugimoto’s show Étant donné: Le Grand Verre, which was organized by the Foundation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, France and the University Museum, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan. This show exhibited a new body of work from the photographer that he has dubbed his “Conceptual Forms”. This group of pieces is further split into two parts, “Mathematical Forms” and “Mechanical Forms”. In keeping with his habit of organizing his work Sugimoto further divides the “Mathematical Forms” into “Surfaces” and “Curves”.

While documenting these pieces the book also includes three essays from Thomas Kellein (a well-know German art historian, curator, and author), Yoshiaki Nishino (the director of the University Museum at the University of Tokyo), and Takayo Iida (a well-know Japanese curator and professor for the University of Tokyo). Each of these essays delves into a different element of Sugimoto’s “Conceptual Forms”, varying from the connections between Sugimoto and Michel Duchamp’s works to an investigation into the element of the art object and the scientific object.

Throughout this book the ideas surrounding these forms are explored resulting in an understanding of this exploration into the scientific form and documentation.

Helicoid: minimal surface, 2004 – an example of Sugimoto’s Mathmatical Forms: Surfaces

Worn gear, 2004 – an example of Sugimoto’s Mechanical Forms

Art for the End of the World – Article from The Gaurdian

This May 16th Guardian article (available at: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/may/16/hiroshi-sugimoto-aujordhui-palais-de-tokyo-paris-exhibition) explores one of Sugimoto’s exhibits that are underway at the moment. This exhibit is entitled “Lost Human Genetic Archive” and is on exhibition in the Palais de Tokyo, Paris.

Thunder God by an unknown artist of the Kamakura period, with Sugimoto’s Lightning Fields in the background.

Grappling with ideas of the end of the world or humanity this exhibit holds little of Sugimoto’s own work and instead is a collection of found objects and readymades seeking to address these questions of when humanity will end and if it will through the artistic discourses set forth by Sugimoto’s leading influence Marcel Duchamp.

Sugimoto goes far enough down the rabbit hole of Duchampian influence and theory to reproduce Duchamp’s Étant donnés in his own way as he did years before in the same museum with Duchamp’s La mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même (Le Grand Verre).

Marcel Duchamp – Étant donnés, 1946 – 1966

Hiroshi Sugimoto – Étant donnés, 2014

The Inaugural Isamu Noguchi Award – Disegno Daily (15 May 2014)

Left to right: Ambassador Motohide Yoshikawa, Norman Foster, Hiroshi Sugimoto, & David Holbrook

Isamu Noguchi is a highly respected, though sadly not the most recognized, name in sculpture and architecture. His career as an artist and an architect spread across six decades and included work with Martha Graham and the Herman Miller Company. Four years before his death the Noguchi Museum was founded to hold and reflect a large portion of his work. Since it’s introduction into the New York City art scene the Noguchi Museum has grown and grown in recognition. This last May saw the inaugural Isamu Noguchi Award ceremony and acceptance of the award from the two recipients, Norman Foster and Hiroshi Sugimoto.

I found out about this award through the Disegno Daily article from May 15th (available at: http://disegnodaily.com/news/norman-foster-wins-the-inaugural-isamu-noguchi-award). While the article primarily focusses on Norman Foster, as he is a widely know architect and that tends to be more of the theme the website goes with than photography additionally the oddity of his selection is also intriguing.

The Gerkin, 2003 – London , England – Norman Foster

The criteria for the award are simply that the designer or artist produce work in the same spirit that Noguchi did. While this criteria fits both Foster and Sugimoto the article chose to focus on the artists’ involvement in Japanese culture, as Noguchi is of Japanese decent. In this regard Foster is an interesting choice as he only has a few pieces in Japan, no of which are his more notable works. Sugimoto on the other hand is a clear and good choice to receive this inaugural award.

Hiroshi Sugimoto: Memories in Black and White

Caribbean Sea, Jamaica, 1980 – An example of Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Seascapes

This 1993 book published by The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (frequently simply referred to as the MOCA) focuses exclusively of Sugimoto’s seascapes and includes a wonderful essay by Kerry Brougher, the newly appointed director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Museum, the interim director of the Hirshhorn, and at the time of publication working curator and author on contemporary art.

The works in the book exclusively fit in the category of Sugimoto’s work know as his Seascapes. These pieces are similar to his other work in the method of photography (large-scale long-exposure black-and-white analog photographs) yet differ in their subject. These photos contain a portrait of certain seas and oceans Sugimoto has visited throughout the years and stray toward formal abstraction that occasionally results in a piece that seems to only be a spectrum of grey.

The essay in the beginning of this book discusses and introduces the works displayed in the rest of the book and completes this task dutifully and well. In discussing the effect of seeing these pieces in series Brougher elegantly states, “In a world of images that demand to be read in an instant, that release all of their information in one flash of colorful insight, that are absorbed and reconfigured by consumerism, that blur the divisions between media, that, in short, cannot be trusted, Sugimoto’s seascapes stop us in out impatient and skeptical tracks.” Though I have never seen these pieces in their full scale I have no problem believing this to be true as the small prints in this book are mesmerizing despite their scale.

Hiroshi Sugimoto’s ‘Last Supper: Acts of God’ at Fraenkel – San Francisco Chronicle

This article from the San Francisco Chronicle (available at: http://www.sfgate.com/art/article/Hiroshi-Sugimoto-s-Last-Supper-Acts-of-God-at-5460743.php#photo-6250197 ) reports on the instillation of one of Sugimoto’s most recent work’s, “Last Supper: Acts of God”. The new piece is installed for a show at the gallery of one of Sugimoto’s dealers, the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco from May 1st – July 2nd, 2014.

Back in the late 1990’s Sugimoto photographed a wax set of the “last supper”. These prints were toured around the world and a part of his “Portraits” series. As with most photographs there are more then one print of these photographs. While there are copies of these photographs touring around the world there are some that are in storage in Sugimoto’s New York-based studio.

The Last Supper, 1999

In 2012 New York City and the majority of the eastern seaboard saw the effects of Hurricane Sandy. As the hurricane moved over New York City it caused an outstandingly large amount of flooding and permanent damage to the city. Among the locations flooded was the basement of the building holding Sugimoto’s studio. In the flood the copies of “The Last Supper” were flooded causing the images and the paper its self to warp. Instead of throwing out the “ruined” photographs Sugimoto has now put them together into a new piece entitled, “The Last Supper: Acts of God”.

The Last Supper: Acts of God, 2014

The Last Supper: Acts of God, 2014

On Memory – Art21

This segment from the third season of the PBS show Art21, which focusses on the state of art in the 21st century through focussing on the work of prominent artists at this time, illustrates Sugimoto’s world and work on the idea of memory.

Fagus Schulheistenfabrik, 1998

The majority of Sugimoto’s work deals with the past and how we remember it. In this video they focus on his “Architecture” and “Seascape” series. In the explanation of his work Sugimoto discusses his characteristic out-of-focus photos of famous architectural forms as a means of rubbing out the creases of the building. Sugimoto talks about how each of these buildings, though great examples of architecture, are old and falling apart. By photographing them out of focus he is able to return them to their original clean selves, preserving their memory in the process.

In his “Seascape” series Sugimoto seeks to construct a scene that is devoid of humans or history. These scenes are photographed in such a way that the audience should feel like they have stumbled upon Earth only moments after its conception. These photographs that solely contain water and air get at the memory of a world that none of us have ever seen, one empty of humans and history.

Photogenic Drawings – The Fraenkel Gallery

Roofline of Lacock Abbey, circa 1835-1839, 2008

From 5 January to 25 February, 2012 the Fraenkel Gallery exhibited a at-the-time new series of Sugimoto’s works entitled “Photogenic Drawings”. These photographs are of the negatives by William Henry Fox Talbot, the 19th century inventor who developed the negative-positive process. These original experimental photographs by the inventor are rare and hidden away due to their fragile nature. Working from the original paper negatives, Sugimoto’s was able to enlarge and vastly add to these ancient works. In the blurb provided by the gallery they discuss this collaboration in this quote: “The artist’s collaboration with Talbot encompasses the panoply of subject matter that has formed the backbone of photographic history—still-lifes, landscapes, architectural views, and portraits.”

Additionally they provide a quote from the artist that puts the themes of the work into his own words and allows the audience to further understand the work.

“I decided to collect Fox Talbot’s earliest negatives, from a time in photographic history very likely before positive images existed. Most early Fox Talbot negatives languish in dark museum collection vaults, hidden from public view. Negatives predating any reliable method of fixing the image are always in danger of changing if exposed to the slightest light. I, however, had to take that risk to return to the very origins of photography. With fear and trepidation, I set about this task like an archaeological explorer excavating an ancient dynastic tomb.”