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Junko Kawashima – Interview with Artist

Please note:
The interview questions are in English, the answers are in Japanese.  Answers are not shown on this page but can be seen if you download the PDF of interview (40KB).

1. What’s your name?

2. Where were you born?

3. Where do you live now?

4. What’s your favorite book?

5. What are your favorite fruits?

6. How about vegetables?

7. Favorite sweets?

8. Favorite movies?

9. Favorite animal?

10. Favorite Artists?

11. Favorite flower?

12. When are you the happiest?

13. Where did you go to school?

14. What do you do everyday?

15. What are some of your favorite things?

16. What was your dream when you were a child?

17. What is your favorite color?

18. Why do you draw so many girls?

19. Which countries have you visited?

20. Countries you want to visit?

21. You are going to perform an Artist in residency at Empathinc, what are your feelings about going to a place you have never been?

22. What do you think about Tokyo?

23. Where do you receive your inspiration?

Tom Schulz – Letter From The Director

Junko Kawashima @ Empathinc.
September – October 2005

"Hairs fall. Also to my back. Oh, mountains and rivers!"
– Nagata Koi (1900-1997)

I intended to write a wonderfully clever essay relating the work of Junko Kawashima to the work of Art Nouveau artist Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898). It was to have it all: cultural cross-referencing, literary allusions, comparisons of appropriated commerce, historical subtexts. All.

I planned to delve into the impact of the Treaty of Kanagaw on the creation of a ‘world culture’ and how open trade and capitalism provided fodder for the expansion of Fine Art and its adopted step child sibling illustration. I would have mentioned how the merchant class and European artists would have been influenced by the pictures printed on the packing paper that comforted the ‘exotic’ goods as they journeyed across the seas. How the young Beardsley (who died at 25) gave an intense attention to the Victorian consumer culture that surrounded him. I would have quoted him as saying, “I struck out a new style and method of work, which was founded on Japanese art but quite original. It is extremely fantastic in conception but perfectly severe in execution”. Oh, I would have jumped on that conceit with a barbed comment, let me tell you. Even in the midst of serious critique, there can always be room for levity.

Leaping forward to current times, I would have made a convincing argument that in the art of Junko Kawashima there is a similar concern in capturing the precise details of consumer goods. In a daring twist, I had hoped to define this concern as an ‘essence’. An essence of character and position portrayed in her drawings. Once outlined, it would be legitimate to segue into a discussion of the art of Haiku. I would have pointed out that Haiku (while poetry) is an attempt to capture a scene or experience in a few succinct words. And that good Haiku might best convey a sense of the depth and the intensity of a particular moment. By then, the reader would have been perfectly willing to accept this stretch; that art and the depiction of space can not be delegated to the mundane terms and restrictions of words like language, imagery, writing, painting.

Brilliant.

But this work does not deserve to be burdened with this level of criticism. It does not need the additional weight of analysis, though it holds its own against any intellectual sparring.

This work needs to be looked at. Seemingly delicate, the surety of the hand that has made the mark speaks to a fierce confidence. As do the demarcations of form and space. The evident rapid process of constant, in the moment, editing compares to a skilled athlete in a clinch. And the characters, while mostly portrayed as waifs or overly extended ingenues are clearly in control of any pictorial context. If commerce engulfs them in a hyper abundance of information and goods, they prove capable of ingesting all the input with aplomb. And then hunger for more. They are in familiar territory. As warriors they are shielded by a river of hair, clad in the armor of fashion.

And in the midst of a primarily black and white world is the abrupt gem of unexpected color. This color is a firefly scooting across the drawn world – beckoning the viewer to give chase. Bring mason jars to the show, and punch holes in the lids. There is life in this work.

For these are not just drawings. They are visual Haiku. Lyrics to some clip from the film Mothra. Proof of existence.

“When my concentration was just right, the words flowed. Sometimes it was like a fast-moving brook, and my mind only lingered in a still pool for a few moments, dipping about for the right word. Then, moving into the current again, I sailed like a leaf carried along by an effort not really my own. Whenever I had a morning like this, I was cheerful for the rest of the day.”
– The Tale of Murasaki Lisa Dalby 2000