Sugimoto's Time Machines

Author(s): Jean Dykstra

Source: Art on Paper , January-February 2002, Vol. 6, No. 3 (January-February 2002),
pp. 46-47
Published by: Art in Print Review

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24559569

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 Sugimotoss
Sugimoto
Time Machines
by Jean Dykstra

with the notion of time: there are his movie the

Hiroshi ater
Sugimoto's photographs
photographs, in whichhave long film
an entire toyedis cap
tured in one long exposure, compressing a full-length fea
ture into a glowing white light; or his seascapes, minimal
ist images of sky and water, often taken over several hours;
or his lifelike photographs of wax figures from Madame
Tussaud's museums, figures that themselves were often
based on photographs or old master paintings. The artist
has, in fact, become a kind of time traveler, referring to
himself, only half-jokingly, as "the first 16th-century pho
tographer." His black-and-white photograph of a wax fig
ure of Henry VIII, for example, that was based on a
Hiroshi Sugimoto & Naohiko Umewaka, Noh Such Thing as Time, three
Holbein painting from the 16th century, seems to bringphotographs of a Noh performance of Yashima, 2001. Courtesy the artist.
that perpetually disgruntled monarch to life—more so
than the three-dimensional wax figure, even—as though
Sugimoto was his court portraitist. the backscreen, or kagami-ita, with his own Pine Tree
The Portraits series (which Sugimoto created for the Landscape. He also designed the spare wooden stage, lit
Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin, and which was on view only by traditional large white Japanese candles, called
until December 10 at the Guggenheim Museum SoHo) warousoku, and placed a seascape that he took at the site of
took as its subject Western traditions of portraiture, and the Battle of Yashima, fought in 1185, on a side wall of the
when that series was finished, Sugimoto says, "I thought, theater. Sugimoto says he made the image intentionally
why not try to do something similar in the Japanese art out of focus, so that no contemporary elements were vis
tradition?" So the artist, who has happily borrowed im- ible. As a consequence, he says, "The ghost of this battle
agery from the likes of Rembrandt as well as Richter, took appears on the stage."
as his latest source material a famous ink painting of a pine There are a number of "ghosts" in Yashima, which may
tree landscape by the 16th-century artist Tohaku be the perfect play for an artist interested in the morph
Hasegawa. Sugimoto (who won the Hasselblad Foun- ing and shifting of time. In the first part of the traditional
dation Award in October) made a multi-panel (it's 14 two-part "dream vision" play, a 15th-century wandering
meters long), meditative, scroll-like photograph, Pine Tree monk arrives at the village of Yashima and encounters an
Landscape (2001), based on the painting. "The pine tree is old fisherman, who begins to tell him about the Battle of
a kind of Japanese national holy tree," he says. A pine tree Yashima. The monk then falls asleep and dreams of the
landscape is also the traditional backdrop for Noh theater fisherman, who appears as the warrior Minamoto no
performances, which gave Sugimoto another idea. Yoshitsune, who fought at Yashima against the Taira clan,
This past fall, acting as producer and set designer, which was attempting to retake Kyoto from the
Sugimoto brought the esteemed Tokyo-based Noh troupe Minamoto clan. "As we watch this play in the 21st centu
Umewaka to the Dia Center for the Arts in New York to ry, we are watching a 15th-century monk travel back in
perform the 15th-century play Yashima (it was staged ear- time 300 years to the 12th century," says Sugimoto, who
lier at the Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria). He designed and titled the production, punningly, Noh Such Thing as Time.
created the lighting and set for the production, replacing "It's fun to play around with this time concept," he adds.

-+6 January-February 2002

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 Sugimoto's father, a businessman, also practiced a tradi
tional form of Japanese storytelling, and the knack has
been passed on to the son, whose various projects are as
much about the myriad ways of spinning a narrative as
anything else. In addition to staging the play, Sugimoto
taped every performance of Yashima and is creating a
video, a multi-screen projection that he will edit out of
the taped performances. He also made an elegant accor
dion-fold artists book, printed in letterpress. "Serious
viewers of traditional Noh theater," says Sugimoto, "would
buy a textbook of the story. So I wanted to make this a
serious Noh performance." The book reprints the play in
English and Japanese and includes Sugimoto's Pine Tree
Landscape as well as the seascape, Yashima, and an image
from his series In Praise of Shadows (1999), in which he
photographed one traditional Japanese candle, such as
those used to light the production at Dia, as it burned over
the course of an entire night. Sugimoto left the windows
open, so that he was capturing the flickering light as well
as Such intangibles as the movement of the wind and, of Hiroshi Sugimoto, in Praise
Hiroshi of In
Sugimoto, Shadows, 1999, from
Praise of Shadows, 1999, Noh
from Noh
course, the passage of time. Such Thing as Time, artist's book,
Such Thing as2001. Courtesy
Time, artist's the
book, 2001. artist.
Courtesy the artist.

Jean Dykstra is a senior editor at Art On Paper.

Art On Paper 47

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