Art+Auction - March 2016_

BLOUINARTINFO.COM | MARCH 2016 ART+AUCTION

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that he created his work by pushing and prodding the clay

with his ingers, never allowing his mind to intervene in the

relationship between body and matter. My mind went immedi-

ately to Shiraga’s great painting performance, Challenging

Mud, 1955. In both cases, rather than shaping and subsuming

matter, the artists’ bodies are subsumed by the base materiality

of mud, dirt, and pigment.”

Western audiences who might ind themselves compelled

to see something identiiably “Japanese” in his work may be

heartened to know that Satoru himself does not think such

generalizations of national character are entirely misguided.

“I think potters abroad might, in order to achieve a certain gray

like you see in Kayoko’s work, add pigments like manganese

t o t h e c l a y i n o r d e r t o g i v e i t t h a t c o l o r. B u t o f c o u r s e t h e r e ar e a l l

sorts of grays, each one subtly different from the rest, and

w e ’d p r e f e r n o t t o h a v e t o r e s o r t t o s u c h m e t h o d s , ” s a y s S a t o ru.

“Ultimately, I think what makes both Kayoko’s and my work

J a p a n e s e i s a p a r t i c u l a r d e s i r e t o r e m a i n f a i t h f u l t o t h e n a tu r a l ,

material feeling of the clay and its intrinsic attributes. This

sense of a collaboration between nature and the human artist is

something that I think is Japanese.”

Recalling again that life-changing catastrophe that befell

h i s f o r m e r a t e l i e r , S a t o r u p a u s e s b e f o r e c o n t i n u i n g. “ I h o pe

that a good artist’s lifestyle and his working methods would

intersect. Both my own worldview and current practice consist

BOTH IMAGES: RICHARD GOODBODY AND JOAN B. MIRVISS LTD.in respecting nature. If you ignore it, a disaster will happen.”