Robert Kushner, Deco Vase, 2022, oil, acrylic, Conte crayon on board, 24"x18"
Viscount Kuroda Seiki and I grew up together in the Southernmost tip of Kyushu. We were two Japanese boys, the same age, and we were friends despite the difference in our social status. My family had always served his family. When we moved to Tokyo at a young age, I went with him. And when he went to Paris in 1886 to study law, which very quickly turned into a serious study of art, I went with him as his valet.
Those seven years in France were the most exciting years of my life. Viscount was immersed in classes at the Academie Colarossi where he studied with the academic painter, Raphael Collin. So did most of the Japanese artists in Paris. There were so many young, gifted artists studying. They came from all corners of the world. The Parisian air itself was electric.
The Viscount was a kind man. At home, he allowed me to study Japanese language with him and his tutors, so that I could read and write. And when he began to learn French at age 17, so did I. This was very useful when I served him in Paris. New language, new clothes, new food, new customs. I went with him and his friends to visit the established artists and even to sit in on drawing sessions. I too drew and sometimes painted, but I was very careful to keep my own experiments secret.
We returned to Tokyo in 1893 and traveled through our rapidly changing native country, visiting various sites, including Kyoto, a treasure house of visual inspiration.
Within a short time Viscount Kuroda established a studio and began his prestigious career of teaching Yo-ga, Western Style painting. He founded his own academy in Tokyo, he served in the House of Lords. His life had grown. I was no longer needed in Tokyo.
Robert Kushner, Winter Light, 2022, oil, acrylic, Conte crayon, ink, 18"x 24"
I returned to my family in Kagoshima. As acknowledgement of my service to Kuroda, I was given a small stipend. More importantly I was given a modest storage building where I could live and paint. My “atelier” was a shed on the grounds of a local temple on top of a hill outside of our town. Between the trees you could see the bay, the trees filled with shards of brilliant sunlight. There was a long flight of stone steps, then my home and work room beside a lotus pond. The changes of my lotus pond, its reflections of the sky have fascinated and fulfilled me for decades. You see, I had looked carefully at one of the greatest French masters, Mr Claude Monet. I revived an old persimmon tree and it gave me its fruit. The orange orbs reminded me of Sakai Hoitsu. There was also a very old plum tree that offered both spring flowers, summer fruit and visions of Ogata Korin painting its pure white blossoms. Around the trees, I planted a small garden filled with food and beauty which supplied me sustenance and eternal wonder watching the minute changes in the year’s cycles. My few laying hens reminded me of another master by constantly clucking: “Jakuchu, Jakuchu…..”
Viscount Kuroda's painting style was a very good adaptation of Raphael Collin’s academic nudes in landscapes. Working so conservatively no longer appealed to me. Especially after having seen some of the most experimental paintings in Paris. I wanted to embrace a new art filled with bold color, symbolism, and meaning. Paintings that could only be made at this precise moment in time. I knew this emerging, vibrant voice was the path for me.
My stipend and my garden allowed me to live and eat. I also worked as a weaver in a kimono workshop. The radiant skeins of silk threads slipping through my fingers awakened color harmonies for my paintings. I memorized the patterns and designs I wove every day and they began to appear in my paintings.
Every bit of money that I could save, I used to buy my precious materials. Rare and expensive as fine gems: oil paints and canvas. Since I could read French, and missed the vibrant dialog that had existed in my previous life in Paris, I subscribed to l’Illustration Journal Universel. Each issue took half a year to reach my hut in Kyushu, but when they came, I was ravenous to devour the newest developments in European art. L’Illustration reproduced artwork with color photography which was a miracle. It was my lifeline to the world I had known, the world of Paris, of wild experimentation of artistic courage and constant change.
I followed the work of many of the great painters, Paul Cezanne, Paul Gauguin, Odilon Redon, Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, and the many talented and strong women, particularly from Russia and America. My favorite artist was Henri Matisse. To me, he was a true Wild Beast. He had earned the name “Fauve”. One foot in the past but staring resolutely into the future. I loved to imagine the true vividness of his colors, the boldness of his line, his rectitude of form and space. The most satisfying to me were his still lifes. Ordinary objects filled with inner life and color. My mind could stretch and my hand could innovate. An Oribe dish, an urushi plate, the silk from an antique kimono or obi, a flower, some fruit from my own garden became a series of still life arrangements. The entire world came to me in my studio. And my still lives expanded out the door to link me to the whole world.
Robert Kushner, Oribe Raspberries, 2022, oil, acrylic, conte crayon on board, 24" x 18"
Robert Kushner, Night Window Blackberries, 2022, oil, acrylic, Conte crayon on board, 24"x18"
Of course I painted in secret. People might think my experiments to be madness. But for me, the paintings gave me life, they tied me to those years of excitement and discovery in Paris, so many decades ago.
My work has continued to grow and change, but now I am too old to care whether anyone would think me insane. So now I allow a few trusted friends to see what has obsessed me for all of these years. That entire first generation of courageous and brave Japanese painters, drinking from the wellspring of the avant garde has all gone. Only I am left. But so long as I can paint, I will do so. As I continue to work, my reds become redder as I place them near veridian, my ultramarine blues are deeper next to olive green, my grays are softer, my blacks luminous in the way that only the darkest shadows can hold and savor the light entrusted to them.
You, yes you, you who have journeyed to the far southern tip of Kyushu to meet me. Won’t you enter my studio and join me in a cup of green tea? Or should it be red wine?
Robert Kushner, Wine or Sake?, 2022, oil, acrylic, Conte crayon, ink on board, 18" x 24"