
Artist Ohtake Shinro made his debut in the 1980s and has become a leading figure in the modern art world. His work has passionate supporters among Japanese and international luminaries, museum creators and young people. In November 2022, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo opened a retrospective exhibition of a living artist for the first time ever. Ohtake himself permitted cameras to film his process for the first time. On this occasion, we follow the creation of a new work for the exhibition. How does Ohtake create his art? An array of materials and techniques are used to shape the eccentric atmosphere of his works. We learn the hidden secrets of his creative process through interviews with Ohtake himself. He also talks about his youth and the detours he has taken on his artistic journey. Notable artists share their admiration for his creations in this art documentary, which delves deep into Ohtake's work.
-
0m 14s
Artist, Ohtake Shinro.
-
0m 17s
This charismatic star of the art world continues to explore new modes of expression.
-
0m 31s
You only get one life.
-
0m 34s
I want to push my limits.
-
0m 39s
I don't care about leaving behind
some great masterpiece. -
0m 48s
But I won't compromise on what I want.
-
0m 53s
Whatever others say,
I'll do this till I die. -
1m 02s
His methods defy classification in the pursuit of boldness and freedom.
-
1m 14s
He's produced a truly diverse array of works during his 40-plus-year career.
-
1m 28s
In 2012, he was chosen to exhibit at Documenta, a German art show held every five years.
-
1m 41s
The following year he was invited to the Venice Biennale, the world's largest contemporary art exhibition.
-
1m 52s
We shared this, as well, this idea about just being curious about the world
-
1m 57s
and wanting to figure out how everything hooks together.
-
2m 02s
And that's reflected in the quality of the work and also the amount.
-
2m 08s
In the world of computers,
bugs mess things up. -
2m 17s
His works aren't scribbles,
they're bugs. -
2m 23s
Bugs jumping out and
dancing on the canvas. -
2m 29s
In November 2022, the National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo held a massive retrospective of Ohtake's work.
-
2m 41s
His latest piece drew a lot of attention.
-
2m 54s
But what inspired it?
-
3m 06s
For the first time, Ohtake has permitted cameras to record his process.
-
3m 12s
We watch his work take shape.
-
4m 02s
For the last 18 months, I've only
made works about a meter large. -
4m 07s
So for a while, I've wanted to tackle
one that's two meters in size. -
4m 15s
It was time.
-
4m 17s
I want to show it at
the exhibition next year. -
4m 29s
Well, who knows?
I never plan these things. -
4m 39s
The piece will be made on a specially ordered wooden panel.
-
4m 43s
It's two meters by one-and-a-half meters.
-
5m 14s
He thins wood glue with water, and applies it over the surface.
-
5m 24s
He then adds layers of old wrapping paper, one by one.
-
5m 35s
Covering the entire surface in paper is the first step in his creative process.
-
6m 05s
This is the very basic foundation.
-
6m 10s
Next is cardboard.
-
6m 16s
Or another material.
-
6m 22s
I need to take it apart.
-
6m 28s
Like fileting a fish.
-
6m 33s
The boxes have layers.
-
6m 42s
It's interesting when you
tear them apart. -
6m 47s
They have varying patterns inside.
-
6m 50s
A single box provides
all kinds of materials. -
6m 57s
So I rip it.
Take out the center. -
7m 05s
And, done.
-
7m 09s
Nice, right?
-
7m 13s
It's random every time.
So I make a whole bunch of them. -
7m 26s
Once I have enough, I start pasting.
-
7m 48s
There's no rhyme or reason to it.
Sometimes an edge sticks out, like this. -
8m 00s
Most of it disappears.
-
8m 07s
99% of it gets covered up.
But that 1%, something remains. -
8m 15s
That's what gives it density.
-
8m 22s
Nothing interesting will
come from planning. -
8m 32s
Not for me.
-
8m 42s
He has no vision for the completed work.
-
8m 45s
The process is one of improvisation.
-
9m 55s
Thinking about it doesn't help.
-
10m 00s
What's next?
-
10m 11s
I think I'll glue on more layers.
-
10m 57s
This kind of bit really
comes into effect later. -
11m 02s
I get leftovers like this, right?
-
11m 07s
I'd want to add those back on.
It all counts. -
11m 13s
If you're too efficient,
it falls apart. -
11m 23s
The key for me is inefficiency.
-
11m 30s
Taking a roundabout way gives density.
The shortest path is boring. -
11m 58s
- "What's that?"
- Marble. -
12m 01s
Chips from crushed marble.
-
14m 19s
His lines aren't connected
to his brain. -
14m 31s
His brain doesn't send
a signal to his hands. -
14m 38s
There's a glitch in his synapses.
-
14m 43s
His hands move on their own.
-
14m 47s
It's freakish.
-
14m 51s
Completely cut off from
thought or consciousness. -
14m 58s
Just hands, moving alone.
-
15m 02s
Shaping faces or buildings.
-
15m 07s
It's all done by muscle.
-
15m 11s
They move, and he watches with interest.
-
15m 18s
There are two of him. One with creative hands
and one with a critical mind. -
15m 27s
They're divided.
It's the root of his audacity. -
15m 51s
Ohtake Shinro was born in Meguro Ward in Tokyo in 1955.
-
15m 57s
He was the second son of parents who ran a shop that sold bags.
-
16m 06s
He made this collage at age nine.
-
16m 09s
At the time, art and manga were a source of emotional support for Ohtake.
-
16m 21s
In senior high, he grew to admire pop art, including the work of Andy Warhol and David Hockney.
-
16m 34s
He applied to the oil painting course at the Tokyo University of the Arts, but wasn't admitted.
-
16m 40s
He instead entered a private art college.
-
16m 45s
But, dispirited, he took time off from school to pursue a life separate from art.
-
17m 04s
In 1974, he chose to live on a dairy farm as a way to "reset" his art education.
-
17m 19s
Cows are looking at us.
-
17m 23s
They make fun of the new guy.
I got kicked a fair bit. -
17m 29s
Even peed on.
-
17m 33s
I didn't know why the cow was
lifting its tail. -
17m 38s
I looked and got peed on.
-
17m 49s
There's no instruction manual
for artists. -
17m 57s
No one can tell you how to
become an artist. -
18m 04s
Each day on the farm, he got up at 4 AM, and did hard labor until late at night.
-
18m 14s
Whenever he had a spare moment, he would sketch.
-
18m 21s
Scraps of paper in his pocket took the place of a formal canvas.
-
18m 33s
The person I was then
had more drive than I do now. -
18m 38s
The 18-year-old I was back then.
-
18m 46s
Just pure enthusiasm.
-
18m 51s
That's the heart of all creativity.
-
18m 58s
In 1977, he took another leap into an unknown world.
-
19m 03s
This time, to the UK.
-
19m 07s
A new culture was forming from youth concern about the government and national politics.
-
19m 20s
The Royal College of Art is an acclaimed art school.
-
19m 24s
By chance, Ohtake once visited a graduation exhibition here.
-
19m 35s
At the exhibition, he discovered the work of student Russell Mills.
-
19m 45s
Ohtake was blown away by the deep expression Mills created with a variety of materials.
-
19m 57s
First time I saw Russell's work
it was pouring rain. -
20m 03s
I felt miserable.
-
20m 06s
I thought I'd give up on art.
It wasn't for me. -
20m 11s
For the first time I thought,
I can't do this. -
20m 17s
This is impossible.
-
20m 22s
Filled with both despair and awe, Ohtake got in touch with the artist.
-
20m 30s
It led to a mutual friendship.
-
20m 46s
Russell Mills is an internationally famed artist.
-
20m 57s
His thought-provoking mixed-media work has won acclaim from writers and musicians around the world.
-
21m 09s
He still vividly remembers his first meeting with Ohtake.
-
21m 21s
And he saw my work and liked it very much, and he tried to indicate that
-
21m 26s
without being able to speak English and I obviously couldn't speak Japanese.
-
21m 31s
So we somehow communicated by pointing at things and smiling, or grimacing if we didn't like it.
-
21m 38s
Just to establish a kind of set of values, I guess.
-
21m 41s
And I got on with him very well, and he was living up in North London somewhere, in a bed-sitter.
-
21m 47s
And I was living in Kentish Town in a one-bedroom flat at the time.
-
21m 51s
So he used to come over quite a lot to Kentish Town, and I'd take him to the pub.
-
21m 56s
And so we built up a kind of vocabulary that we understood,
-
22m 00s
and talked about collage, and literature, and Kurt Schwitters, and William Burroughs, and Marcel Duchamp.
-
22m 07s
And I was just feeding him everything I could really.
-
22m 11s
And he was like a sponge just taking it all in.
-
22m 17s
When I met Russell,
I felt this wave of remorse. -
22m 25s
I was 21. If I wanted to be an artist,
I needed to take it seriously. -
22m 33s
Or at least try to.
I went back to Japan. -
22m 38s
And studied copper engraving
and silk screening. -
22m 43s
I decided to make six engravings a day.
-
22m 49s
And scrapbooks. So many scrapbooks.
-
22m 53s
I painted in oils and made drawings.
-
22m 58s
If I couldn't make art non-stop,
it wasn't for me, I thought. -
23m 06s
After returning to Japan, Ohtake threw himself into constant creation, a changed man.
-
23m 20s
This piece is from his first solo exhibition, held in 1982.
-
23m 33s
The motif is an American ad, painted with enamel.
-
23m 36s
The work was a revelation to the art world.
-
23m 40s
Ohtake was suddenly in the spotlight.
-
23m 46s
Japan in the 80s saw a lot of
violence in schools. -
23m 56s
Ohtake's buggy style of art
was a good fit for that era. -
24m 06s
In a different way from the 60s,
-
24m 08s
the 80s had a sense of individual
rebellion against the system. -
24m 15s
There was a sense of unrest.
-
24m 19s
A lot of personal uprisings
and revolts in the 80s. -
24m 29s
The spotlight on Ohtake Shinro
was part of that trend. -
24m 53s
Ohtake continues to add new elements to the work.
-
25m 51s
Today, he spends a long time looking at the surface.
-
26m 42s
What now?
-
26m 51s
What's going to happen?
-
26m 59s
The smooth progress has ground to a halt.
-
28m 09s
Ohtake turns his work upside down and leans it against the wall.
-
28m 40s
Yeah, I prefer this.
-
28m 44s
I wasn't expecting this.
Because it's upside down. -
28m 50s
This is much more interesting.
I'd never do that in the upper left. -
28m 57s
I'll go from here.
-
29m 43s
Using a bit of charcoal adds depth.
A sense of perspective. -
29m 53s
It emphasizes the bumps.
-
30m 00s
I don't know what comes next.
I honestly don't know what I'm doing. -
30m 09s
If you ask what I'm trying to express,
the only answer is, I don't know. -
30m 19s
It's just, like...
-
30m 24s
Thinking about it, in our society...
-
30m 29s
Art is the only place where things
don't need to be understood. -
30m 37s
It's okay to not understand.
-
32m 04s
He'll suddenly come up with a really left field idea, like he did in 1989, '90,
-
32m 11s
when he was making the Retina series of works using Polaroid film and scratching into the emulsion,
-
32m 23s
and it was another kind of drawing or painting that didn't have a name,
-
32m 27s
that he just invented from playing with the materials.
-
32m 32s
So there's such a wide variety of ways of making drawings, of making a mark in his work.
-
32m 40s
And he's talked about, if he were left without any art materials,
-
32m 45s
and he just had chopsticks and soy sauce or something, he could still draw.
-
32m 50s
He doesn't stop to worry about, "What am I making now, is this a drawing, a painting, a sculpture, a photograph,"
-
33m 00s
you know, it's just making art.
-
33m 03s
I think it will take a very long time for real understanding of his work.
-
33m 26s
Also since the second world war, had become commodified, become Americanized, commercial,
-
33m 33s
and there was this kind of clash of cultures going on.
-
33m 37s
So in terms of collage, Shinro was just reflecting all of that, this massive stuff going on in Japan was in his work.
-
33m 45s
He'd collect things and put them together, sometimes unconsciously I suspect,
-
33m 51s
not trying to make meaning out of it, just saying this is what goes on all the time in Japan,
-
33m 56s
just this massive stuff, every day, non-stop.
-
34m 01s
And yet behind it is this kind of calm down kind of culture that needs to go on, which still goes on,
-
34m 07s
and yet we've got all this rush of modernity clashing with these values.
-
34m 15s
And I think Shinro was trying to absorb all that through collage.
-
34m 48s
Ohtake begins tearing the pasted cardboard.
-
35m 06s
He picks up the torn scraps and begins sticking them back on in a random fashion.
-
35m 26s
I've always done this.
-
35m 30s
I stick the torn pieces
back somewhere new. -
35m 36s
The total volume doesn't change.
It stays the same. -
35m 53s
He turns his work upside down again, returning it to its original orientation.
-
36m 13s
When I turned it upside down,
I cut some parts. Around here. -
36m 20s
It changed the balance.
-
36m 25s
I prefer this now.
-
36m 41s
Yesterday I found paint
I don't remember getting. -
36m 48s
Paint for stained glass or
painting on glass. It's translucent. -
36m 58s
Oil-based, so it could be
interesting against resin. -
37m 42s
He's been working on his latest creation for nearly two months.
-
38m 08s
Around this point is where
people ask when it's done. -
38m 19s
That's not something I think about.
-
38m 23s
It tells me when it's done.
-
38m 28s
There's a critical point.
If you go past that, it's ruined. -
38m 35s
It's instinct.
-
38m 38s
Layers don't matter. At times, I reach
that point at the foundation stage. -
38m 47s
All too easily.
-
38m 51s
And I start to think to myself,
surely it's not done yet. -
38m 58s
So I add something and it fails.
-
39m 03s
Once I reach that critical point,
I leave it alone. -
39m 07s
And in a few months, I get a better view.
-
39m 12s
Freshly finished, it's hard to say.
-
39m 21s
Ohtake sets his work aside to rest.
-
39m 41s
Six months after stopping work on the piece, he returns for another look.
-
39m 55s
The colors have settled well.
-
40m 00s
Anything else would spoil it.
-
40m 04s
It was already finished.
-
40m 08s
This happens a lot.
-
40m 11s
It's not a specific goal.
It's just reached the right density. -
40m 19s
It's not that I couldn't
add another millimeter. -
40m 27s
But it's, like... Adding
anything else would be a waste. -
40m 36s
It wouldn't help anything.
-
40m 39s
It's about feeling when
I've hit that point. -
40m 48s
The completion of Ohtake's latest work is connected to news that shocked the world.
-
40m 59s
It's the invasion of Ukraine.
-
41m 04s
It felt so sudden.
I finished this piece in late January. -
41m 09s
Then a month later,
the world order had changed. -
41m 14s
I hadn't thought of a title.
-
41m 18s
But the invasion showed me
why I made this. -
41m 22s
It looked like an aerial photo
of a city. -
41m 29s
One that's been bombed.
Photographed from above. -
41m 37s
His latest work is titled "Mnemoscape Zero."
-
41m 51s
Before starting 'Mnemoscape Zero,' Ohtake spent over a year of the pandemic holed up in Uwajima.
-
42m 00s
The Mnemoscape series was born out of that siege mentality.
-
42m 08s
The series contains around thirty works.
-
42m 11s
The process evoked images of ruins and destroyed buildings.
-
42m 21s
The early Mnemoscape works were
like bird's-eye images of a city. -
42m 28s
As if taken from drones.
-
42m 33s
They're ruins, but they felt
like peaceful ruins. Quiet. -
42m 41s
But this felt different.
They weren't natural ruins. -
42m 45s
This is something that was destroyed.
Suddenly it all made sense. -
42m 56s
Rather than natural decay via the passage of time, Ohtake's latest work revealed deliberate destruction.
-
43m 03s
So he added "Zero" to the title "Mnemoscape."
-
43m 23s
Work on Ohtake's exhibition at the National Museum of Modern Art is proceeding rapidly.
-
43m 36s
The team is setting up a place for his newest work, "Mnemoscape Zero."
-
44m 05s
The news shows so much being
destroyed every day in Ukraine. -
44m 12s
So much beauty.
-
44m 14s
And people dying, of course.
Obviously that's far worse. -
44m 22s
But all the little everyday things.
The beauty that inspires me. -
44m 33s
I'm sure there's so much of it there.
-
44m 36s
And people who see no value in it
are destroying it. -
44m 45s
In my life, I've not really been faced with
destruction on this scale. -
44m 55s
The pandemic, the 2011
Fukushima nuclear disaster. -
44m 59s
They bring home just
how powerless I am. -
45m 07s
But I make things.
All I can do is just keep creating. -
45m 16s
Who cares about what art means.
Just keep going. -
45m 22s
Don't give in to pressure. Keep creating,
whether there's meaning to it or not. -
45m 31s
That's how I feel.
-
46m 01s
It's like pouring sand onto a
mountain of sand. Over and over. -
46m 12s
One perfect moment of satisfaction,
that slides off immediately. -
46m 25s
That's what creating art is to me.
-
46m 30s
So, I don't get the idea of enjoyment.
-
46m 39s
This talk about enjoying the
creative process. Makes no sense. -
46m 47s
It's not fun for me.
Making art isn't fun. -
46m 55s
Living like that must be tough.
It's divisive. Causes conflict. -
47m 06s
Regular folks think he's strange
and write him off. -
47m 15s
But he's kept going.
-
47m 21s
Over the decades since we met.
That's real fortitude. -
47m 33s
He's still living as a bug.
-
47m 41s
Maybe right to the end.
-
47m 45s
We share that.
-
47m 50s
I sometimes, people ask me sometimes, like, "you're an artist, why are you an artist?"
-
47m 55s
And I say, well it's a condition I have, as if it's a kind of illness.
-
47m 59s
I can't do anything else, you know.
-
48m 02s
I wouldn't want to do anything else.
-
48m 04s
And I think Shinro's exactly the same.