Artworks

徒然草 No. 16　1991年

書き進めるうち、徒然草の書の表現は抽象性を帯び、全文は「心にうつりゆくよしなし事をそこはかとなく書きつくれば、あやしうこそものくるほしけれ」の冒頭句に収斂してきた。

点画、文字を書きつけていく速度とそこに生れる字姿は密接に結合している。この速度と字姿の自然な結合を解体分離し、新たな再結合を試みた。書字速度を高めることによって得られた「徒然草 No. 10」の字姿を、極限まで遅くした書字速度で再現を試ることによって「徒然草 No. 11」は生まれた。この作から書くことが、一段と「もの狂ほしく」なってきた。

五尺×七尺（147×209）の雁皮紙を特別に漉いてもらい、制作のためにメゾネット式の部屋を借り、一日書き終えると二階から一階の作をためつすがめつ俯瞰し、次なる展開を思い描くという日を六ヶ月かけて書きあげた。「もの狂ほしさ」の生れる、かすかな波動の世界へと表現は近づいて行った。私にとってとてもいとおしい作である。

Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness) No. 16, 1991

As I continued writing, the calligraphy of Essays in Idleness became more abstract, the entire text converging on the opening line, “As I casually jot down the trivial nonsense that comes to mind, it seems to me when those things come to me I feel even more crazy.”

The speed at which I wrote the strokes and characters and were closely bound to the shapes of the resulting characters. I tried to deconstruct and separate this natural connection between speed and character shape, and to then put them together again in a new way. Tsurezuregusa No. 11 was the result of trying to reproduce the character shapes of Tsurezuregusa No. 10, written by increasing my writing speed, by instead writing them at the slowest possible speed. After this work, my writing became even more “crazy.”

I had a piece of vellum paper measuring five feet by seven feet (147 x 209 cm) made especially for me, and rented a maisonette-style room for the purpose of creating the piece. After finishing a day’s work, I would look down intently from the second floor at the work on the floor below, imagining the next development. It took me six months to complete the piece. The work approached a world of subtle faint vibrations where the “desire to be crazy” was born. It is a work that is very dear to me.