Outsourced Critics — Theme: Inclusive and Exclusive Art
by Smriti Vohra
[A excerpt, section 5 of a five-part essay. See below for the entire essay and context]
5.
In search of disinterestedness, or perhaps in search of beauty, Soetsu Yanagi enters the Taka Ishii gallery in Tokyo. He stops in front of an exhibit by Kei Takemura. Renovated Café-au-Lait Bowl (2003); broken café-au-lait bowl, Italian synthetic fabric, Japanese silk thread, adhesive, 8.3 x 14.5 cm.
But the connoisseur of studio ceramics and founder of the contemporary folk crafts/arts movement in Japan cannot identify where the large white china object is flawed, or what defect, crack, or chip has been repaired, as the bowl’s void is draped with cloth and sealed off. Observing this aesthetic revocation of the object’s capacity to hold, to pour, to give, Yanagi’s curatorial sensibility is overwhelmed with a yearning for what he has supported all his life: mingei, folk art products, including the earthenware made in large quantities for daily use by the people; commonplace, dependable, convenient, sturdy; honest, healthy forms created without ambition and self-imposition…
Only mingei has the intrinsic capacity to sustain affection, he reminds himself. True mingei is a true companion for life.
Then he recalls the seventh rule prescribed by Sen no Rikyu, honored master of cha-no-oyu, the Tea Ceremony:
give those with whom you find yourself every consideration
He recalls the other six rules to be followed in the tearoom:
lay the charcoal so that the water boils
arrange the flowers as they are in the field
in the summer suggest coolness
in the winter suggest warmth
do everything ahead of time
prepare for rain
He recalls two infinitely consoling, infinitely disturbing assurances by this master exclusively committed to inclusion:
“The Way of Tea is naught but this:
first you boil water, then
you make the tea and drink it.”
“Though many people drink tea,
if you do not know the Way of Tea,
tea will drink you up.”
Yanagi recalls the red and black raku teabowls the master loved, the work of his Korean friend Sasaki Chojiro, originally a decorative tile-maker, who created the style of austere monochromatic vessels hand-formed to the master’s specifications.
He recalls a declaration by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the daimyo Rikyu served as Tea Master and advisor, who erected a teahouse plated with gold leaf that could be folded up and moved about, even while Rikyu practiced within his four-mat thatched hut:
“When tea is made with water drawn from the depths of mind,
whose bottom is beyond measure,
we really have what is called cha-no-oyu.”
He recalls Rikyu’s death poem, composed prior to his ritual suicide ordered by Hideyoshi, who had become resentful of the master’s popularity and was angered by Rikyu’s refusal to allow his daughter to be taken as the daimyo’s concubine:
“I raise the sword
this sword of mine
long in my possession.
The time is come at last.
Skyward I throw it up!”
Yanagi reconstructs the death scene, reminding himself that seppuku was a key part of the samurai warrior’s code…With his selected attendant (usually a friend, but sometimes a victorious opponent wanting to honour the bravery of his rival) standing by, the warrior would open his kimono, take his knife, plunge it into his abdomen – first making a left-to-right cut, and then a second, slightly upward cut to spill out the intestines. On the second cut, the attendant would perform a sword-stroke in which the warrior was all but decapitated. A slight bit of flesh was left attaching the head to the body, so that the head would not fly off in the direction of the verifying officials.
Yanagi reminds himself that the warrior would have agreed in advance when the attendant would act, usually as soon as the knife was plunged into the abdomen.
He reminds himself that the sword was discarded after the ceremony, and that it was considered ill-omened by samurai to be requested to be a seppuku attendant – one gained no fame if the job was done well, and if by chance the attendant blundered, it became a lifetime disgrace.
He reminds himself that because of the unflinching, unveering precision required for such a maneuver, the attendant was usually a skilled swordsman.
He reminds himself of the disinterested grip on the knife, the disinterested grip on the sword…
He reminds himself of the raku method: creating a particular strength through thermal shock, taking vessels from the kiln while red hot and plunging them directly into water to cool.
He recites the question asked of all tea drinkers by the sublimely disinterested Rikyu:
“Though you wipe your hands
and brush off the dust and dirt from the vessels,
what is the use of all this fuss
if the heart is still impure?”
Yanagi walks through the gallery, gazes at the exhibits: “This one is made by a person with too much tea within; this one is made by a person with too little tea, this one by a person with no tea at all…and this one by a person with just enough…”
He reminds himself that true beauty is experienced only when beauty observes beauty, not when ‘I’ observe ‘it’…
He recalls what he has written, as a curator/critic, about certain objects he deeply loves, inclusive Korean Yi dynasty earthenware, vessels characterized by the disinterested hand/eye of their anonymous makers: “To apply to this pottery the criteria of beauty and ugliness, skill and awkwardness, etc., makes no sense. The pieces assume no pretensions; they are simply there, in all their naturalness, looking as if they would like to say to ingenious modern artists, ‘There is nothing we want. Come and join us. Everybody will be saved.’”
Smriti Vohra, India, March 2006
A text composed in five parts by Smriti Vohra as an “outsourced critic” in response to the content of the catalogue for The Armory Show 2006, New York. Arts commentators from around the world were invited to respond to this exhibition by Holly Crawford of the AC Institute as a further elaboration on the show. This is the final section of five. The complete text can be found here.