I will write about why I started drawing again at the age of 72. This is because I think it shows the uniqueness of my drawings in terms of art history, although it may sound quite exaggerated.
In late 1985, I moved to New York City from Tokyo with my three friends, admiring Schnabel, Basquiat, and Keith Haring. I used my membership card to visit MoMA and the Whitney Museum whenever I had time. However, my hopes naturally disappeared after a few years with almost no results.
After that, I got busy working at a Japanese restaurant and completely distanced myself from art, both seeing and creating.
The turning point was when I was forced to retire due to the coronavirus pandemic. When I had time, I listened to music on YouTube, watched movies on Amazon Prime, read books, and wrote essays.
I also read books on psychoanalysis and learned that French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan placed pleasure at the root of human desire. “Pleasure” seems to mean enjoyment in a direct sense, and stimulation in an abstract sense. That's why even pain and ugliness become pleasure.
Come to think of it, since I decided to become an artist, I haven't had any fun at all on drawing or painting.
Then I remembered that when I was in kindergarten, I drew steam locomotives and fighter planes on the back of newspaper flyers. I also remember that even when I entered school, the empty spaces and photos in my textbooks were full of doodles.
This is how I truly enjoyed drawing "Doodle 001" (2023) for the first time in 50 years since I was a child. After that, I was absorbed in drawing many pictures. So the tendonitis in my right hand that I had suffered from in the past, looks like almost coming back.
The USPS flat rate mailing envelopes that have some letters on already in my bookshelf, was perfect for doodles. Doodling on a completely blank white paper goes against that spirit.
This material that some images have already been given on the surface, frees me from the pressure of having to draw something meaningful.
For many years, this bothered me, and I didn't enjoy drawing pictures. Now I can enjoy drawing with any materials and in any places as I like. Since it was already given there, I just continued to draw lines and shapes from that point. I'm more accidental than subjective. I don't decide what I draw.
Since it's a prank drawing, it doesn't have to be particularly realistic, but of course I can be realistic if I want. The motif can be anything comes to my mind. If you see the letter A, continue with B, and when you get bored, just draw a mushy lines. I develops interesting shapes created by chance, connects them to other shapes, and rhythmically colors the inside of those shapes.
It feels so good when the shape and composition are clearly determined, and above all, it is pretty fun to run a ballpoint pen with my head empty, as if my mind and body have become one.
It's fun, but what's depicted is many meaningless things. Squiggly lines, patterns like flowers and leaves, alphabets, numbers, geometric patterns of circles, squares, triangles, and polka dots, and lines that look like scratches to erase them - in other words, it's a chaos of anything.
However, none of the lines or shapes are taught in art school. It's not even a good drawing. But that can't be helped, because I enjoy it.
My drawing lines are not as intelligent and sophisticated as Cy Twombly's, nor as innocent and pure as a children's. I personally think that it is similar to Duchamp in the sense that it greatly turns over the art historical value of lines.
Through the knowledge of psychoanalysis, I have arrived at the unconscious pleasure of drawing, that's why I would like to name my art as Neo-Surrealism.
