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Home , Kikuo Saito, Larry Poons, Western painting

artist profile As seen in

and performative quality would later find porary realities, decided on New York. This page, clockwise from top: , expression in Saito’s work, both His flight, however, terminated at San Beggar’s Moon, 2009, oil on canvas, and theater. Francisco, and he had to take a Greyhound 44.5 x 102.25 in.; Dime Lake, oil on canvas, As for Western postwar art, Saito became bus the rest of the way. During a stopover in 2015, 56.5 x 78.25 in.; Kikuo Saito in his acquainted with it largely through small, Chicago, he went to the Art Institute, where studio. Opposite: Indian Gray, 2006, cheap books that reproduced well-known he had a providential encounter, striking oil on canvas, 58.75 x 80.25 in. works of Abstract , Color up a conversation (in his still very limited Field painting, , and in English) with none other than Ellen Stew- black and white, on newsprint stock. Thus, art, the legendary founder of the La MaMa through a glass darkly, Saito glimpsed the Experimental Theatre Club in Manhattan’s New York art world, grasped its essentials, East Village. Saito had done set design and and aspired to be part of it. Most of his fel- lighting design for the Japanese avant-garde low art students in Japan who emigrated theater productions, and when he arrived headed for Paris, perhaps expecting to find in New York Stewart invited him to work the Montparnasse of the prewar period still with LaMaMa, with which he remained vibrant. But Saito, more attuned to contem- closely associated for many years. Inspired KIKUO SAITO (1939–2016) had two métiers, as an abstract painter and as a creator of experimental theater performances. Setting the Scene These co-existed in a state of fruitful tension for much of his life, representing two aspects of his being, the public and the private, THE JAPANESE-BORN AMERICAN the active and the reflective. These polarities can also be seen ARTIST KIKUO SAITO DREW ON clearly in his , which unite the contemplative coolness HIS THEATRICAL BACKGROUND, of with the energetic gestures of Abstract Expression- , AND COLOR ism. Establishing himself in the New York art world in the late SAITO KIKUO ESTATE OF THE COURTESY IMAGES FIELD TO CREATE A UNIQUE ’60s and early ’70s, Saito bucked the Pop and Minimalist trends STYLE OF ABSTRACT PAINTING. to chart his own course, moving back and forth between the the- BY JOHN DORFMAN ater and the studio. When he left Japan for the U.S. in 1966, at the age of 27, Saito already had under his belt a considerable number of influences and skills. He had studied Japanese and Western art and had worked as a studio technician in the workshop of Sensei Itoh, who taught students traditional using classic academic meth- ods such as drawing from plaster casts of . In return for this work, Saito received the right to use the studio space to prac- tice his . He had also been exposed to the radical post- war Gutai , founded in 1954 by Yoshihara Jiro and

Shozo Shimamoto, and something of Gutai’s intense physicality IMAGES COURTESY THE OF ESTATE KIKUO SAITO

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Clockwise from top left: Blue Window, 2001, oil by Japanese theatrical traditions on canvas, 57.5 x 83.25 in.; Harbor Blue, 2009, such as Kabuki and Noh, as well as the con- When he left Japan, Saito destroyed crabbed gestures of Ab-Ex give way to a (1980), color forms seem to flow into and Clockwise from top left: On the Snow, 1980, oil on canvas, 63.25 x 59.625 in.; Purple Shadow, temporary Butoh, Saito would go on to cre- most of the oil paintings he had made there; serene, open style in which colors speak for around each other like water—perhaps like acrylic on canvas, 53.75 x 77.75 in.; Untitled 2014, oil on canvas, 67 x 57.5 in.; Flannel Sky, ate unique sets, including his own abstract New York was to be a fresh start. To earn themselves. Saito’s early paintings, which the running water that Saito deployed on (223), 2001, oil and crayon on magazine paper, 1976, acrylic on canvas, 47.25 x 87 in. canvases as backdrops and unusual mate- a living he worked in a Japanese restaurant he did not exhibit, were strongly influenced the stage. His theater work also taught him 12.875 x 9.9375 in.; Island and Piano, 1980, rials such as flowing water on stage. He and took on carpentry jobs, but soon he by Color Field. to paint while the canvas lay horizontal on acrylic on canvas, 68.25 x 79 in.; Flannel worked with playwright and director Rob- got himself hired as a studio assistant to Saito first showed his work in a group the floor—as was necessary with the very Road, 2001, acrylic on canvas, 57 x 78 in. ert Wilson on projects in places as far-flung three major abstract artists, first Kenneth exhibition in 1970 and had his first solo large backdrops for sets—as well as vertical as Paris and Shiraz, Iran, and did the set Noland and then and show in 1976. His work from this period on the easel, and his choreographic experi- design for Peter Brooks’ Conference of the (who, like Saito, was born in is mainly in acrylics, which he diluted and ence taught him to almost across the Birds in Paris. Saito was very interested in , albeit of American parents). From allowed to soak into the canvas. While this surface while painting, as well as to convey choreography as well as straight theater, them he absorbed the lessons of Color Field is standard operating procedure in Color a dancing quality to the marks themselves. and his first wife, Eva Maier (who died in painting, in which the dense, sometimes Field, his paintings have a more dynamic In 1979, Saito quit the theater, tired of 1997), was a choreographer and feel than Color Field work generally does. the complexities of the process and of the a frequent collaborator with her In paintings such as Flannel Sky (1976), pressures of collaboration with numer- husband. Saito also worked with North Wind (1980) and On the Snow ous people. He sought the peace and self- the great choreographer Jerome Robbins. SAITO KIKUO ESTATE OF THE COURTESY IMAGES IMAGES COURTESY THE OF ESTATE KIKUO SAITO

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sufficiency of capital letters (in Roman type with ser- youthful confusion on being confronted With Saito’s death on February 15, Clockwise from top left: Nickel Pond, 1994, the studio, and ifs) that are sometimes legible, sometimes with English signage for the first time. And 2016, the art world lost a beloved, mod- acrylic on canvas, 70.25 x 70 in.; Three Rivers, there he devel- obscured almost to the vanishing point. In of course, taken into the realm est, inspiring colleague, but his second 2013, oil on canvas, 60 x 43 in.; Blue Wave, oped the mode Indian Gray (2006), for example, the let- of abstraction, in which letters lose their wife, Mikiko Ino, is administering an oil on canvas, 2012, 73 x 72 in. Clockwise from top left: Hunter’s Roof, 1993, of working that he is best known for today. ters, such as Q, N, and P, stand out clearly, literal meaning while retaining a deeper arts institution dedicated to his legacy, acrylic on canvas, 69.5 x 58.5 in.; Blue Train, Unlike with many artists, of Saito it can though they are isolated from each other kind of meaning, is a staple of traditional called KinoSaito. The nonprofit is housed 2010, oil on canvas, 63.25 x 59.625 in.; fairly be said that his late work is his best. and spell out no words. On the other hand, Japanese aesthetics. in the former St. Patrick’s Sanabria Rain, 1990, acrylic on It is characterized by large fields of color in Beggar’s Moon (2009), one senses the let- In 1996, after almost two decades away School, a century-old three- canvas, 67.5 x 143.5 in. overlaid with dense, intricate lines suggest- ters’ presence more than actually reading from the theater, Saito made a brief but story brick building in Ver- ing calligraphy and, in the later versions, them. In Blue Window, a letter painting significant return, collaborating with Eva planck, N.Y., which Saito from 2001, one sees the letters as if Maier on a wordless drama titled Toy Gar- and Ino purchased in 2014 through , and the rich den for which he designed the sets, cos- and which served as his

hue was so beloved and frequently SAITO KIKUO ESTATE OF THE COURTESY IMAGES tumes, and narrative. Performed by students last studio. It is expected used by the artist that the Golden at , where Saito was an art- to open to the public in paint company, whose products ist in residence, it was based on writings 2020 and will feature exhi- he used exclusively, named it Saito about by John Ruskin and riffed on bitions of Saito’s work and Blue after his death. an imagined restoration of the lost left-hand other work relating to the The use of typography in mod- panel of painter Vittore Car- Color Field tradition, art- ernist painting goes back to the paccio’s diptych Two Venetian Ladies. It ist-in-residence initiatives, Cubists and to , and was actually in Toy Garden that the capital- and theater and dance per- gained prominence again with the letter typography seen in so many of Saito’s formances. The interdisci- Pop artists, particularly Jasper paintings from the 2000s first appeared. plinary of KinoSaito Johns. Whether any of these was Another, similar theater piece of his from will be a fitting memorial a direct influence on Saito is hard this period, Ash Garden, at New York’s to the eclectic, boundary- to say for sure; a likely explana- LaGuardia High School, was inspired by negating multimedia work

tion is a desire to express his own IMAGES COURTESY THE OF ESTATE KIKUO SAITO the volcanic destruction of . of this unique artist.

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