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SIMON STARLING: AT TWILIGHT (AFTER W. B. YEATS' NOH REINCARNATION) FRIDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2016—SUNDAY, JANUARY 15, 2017 Members' Opening: Thursday, October 13, 7:30 PM At the height of WWI, poet W. B . Yeats collaborated with members of the avant garde to stage his Japanese noh inspired dance play At the Hawk's Well (1916). To mark its centennial, Turner Prize winner Simon Starling reinterprets this production in an exhibition that illustrates the impact of noh on Western Modernism. Newly created masks, costumes, and a dance on video are paired with works by the 20th-century masters connected to Yeats' play, bringing to life Starling's irrepressible inventiveness. This exhibition was organized by Japan Society in collaboration with The Common Guild (Glasgow, Scotland). EXHIBITION-RELATED PROGRAMMING: LECTURE Simon Starling Friday, October 14, 6:30 PM Buy Tickets ART & DESIGN Art Fall Preview: From East Coast to West Coast. From Concrete to Ethereal By MARTHA SCHWENDENER | SEPT. 16, 2016 SIMON STARLING: AT TWILIGHT Oct. 14-Jan. 15, Japan Society Gallery A Turner Prize-winning artist turns the Japan Society into an immersive multimedia environment. Noh, the traditional Japanese theater using masks, is joined with “At the Hawk’s Well” (1916), a play by the Irish writer W. B. Yeats set in the middle of World War I. japansociety.org. Schwendener, Martha, “Art Fall Preview”, New York Times, September, 18, 2016, AR 90 ART & DESIGN A Fiery Splash in the Rockaways and Twists on Film at the Whitney By ROBIN POGREBIN MAY 26, 2016 Japan Society Show When the Turner Prize-winning artist Simon Starling was preparing the piece he would exhibit at the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art five years ago, he learned about masked Japanese Noh theater, which inspired W. B. Yeats’s 1916 play, “At the Hawk’s Well.” Now Mr. Starling is building on that project with “At Twilight,” his first institutional show in New York and a rare solo exhibition at Japan Society that features a non-Japanese artist. It is also the first exhibition by Yukie Kamiya, Japan Society’s new gallery director, who used to be chief curator at the Hiroshima museum. The show is organized with the Common Guild of Glasgow, which will present Mr. Starling’s version of the Yeats play in July. Mr. Starling said that he was intrigued by the idea of masked theater, “where nobody is who they appear to be.” Pogrebin, Robin, “A Fiery Splash in the Rockaways and Twists on Film at the Whitney”, The New York Times (online), May 26, 2016 Simon Starling ‘A little knowledge is a powerful thing, and too much knowledge can stifle creativity’ The Turner Prize-winning conceptual artist underscores his first institutional show in New York with a me- ticulously researched multimedia installation based around WB Yeats’s 1916 play At the Hawk’s Well and Noh theatre by ALLIE BISWAS Since it was founded in 1907, the Japan Society in New York, which cultivates knowledge of Japanese culture, has displayed the work of just one non-Japa- nese artist, the American photographer Ansel Adams, in the 1980s. This month, British conceptual artist Simon Starling (b1967 in Epsom, Surrey) will be the second such artist to have his work presented by the society. To mark the occasion, Starling has focused his exhibition on Noh – Japan’s traditional masked theatre – specifically looking at its impact on west- ern modernism, in the form of WB Yeats’s 1916 play At the Hawk’s Well, which was heavily influenced by Noh. Starling’s reimagining of Yeats’s original produc- tion is structured as an installation of newly recreated masks and costumes, a performance video, photo- graphs and sculptures. Starling, who was awarded the Turner Prize in 2005 for his exhibitions at the Modern Institute, Glasgow, and the Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, is based in Copenhagen, and will present a solo exhibition at Casey Kaplan, New York, in 2017. Simon Starling, At Twilight / Mask of W.B. Yeats, 2016. Mask by Yasuo Miichi. Courtesy of Simon Starling & The Modern Institute. Allie Biswas: How did you start researching for your show at the Japan Society? Did you come to the project with prior knowledge of Yeats’s play, At the Hawk’s Well? Simon Starling: It’s been an ever-expanding interest of mine that took root six years ago when I started work on an exhibition for Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (Hiroshima MoCA). When I visited Hiroshima for the first time, I discovered the interesting story of a Henry Moore work, Atom Piece (1963-5), which the museum has in its collection. It’s a story of double iden- tity and disguise that connects back to Moore’s monument to the world’s first nuclear reaction (at Enrico Fermi’s Pile Number 1 in Chicago), which is essentially a larger version of the sculpture they have in Hiroshima, but under a different name (Nuclear Energy). The cold-war intrigue that surrounds the evolution of these sculptures led to an interest in masked Noh theatre (Star- ling’s 2011 Project for a Masquerade (Hiroshima) at Hiroshima MoCA), which in turn led to the discovery that, 100 years ago, WB Yeats had similarly tried to co-opt this most traditional of oriental art forms to avant-garde ends. This led to a long period of research that culminated this summer in the realisation of At Twilight, a play for two actors, three musicians, eight masks and a donkey costume. AB: I understand you worked with Yukie Kamiya, the director of the Japan Society, on two previous projects in Japan – the 2014 Yokohama Triennale and your show at the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art in 2011. How would you say that these experiences impacted on the development of At Twilight? SS: Yukie Kamiya worked for many years at the museum in Hiroshima and it was her invitation that led to this ongoing body of work. Yukie knew of my interest in Henry Moore and of my Infestation Piece (Musselled Moore), made in Toronto, and rightly hoped that I might find inspiration in Hiroshima and its very specifically focused collection. Neither of us could have anticipated quite how rich a seam of material that invitation would unearth. It’s been a long and hugely inspiring journey, and one that will find a new focus in my exhibition at the Japan Society, which brings together material from the play realised this past summer with the Common Guild in Glasgow, as well as a host of historical material from North American museum collections. AB: What are your personal experiences of Japanese culture, and were there any specific aspects that you wanted to draw out through your exhibition? SS: I’d had an interest in Japanese photography early on in my career, but only started to visit Japan with the invitation from Hi- roshima. One of the things that immediately struck me was the very special relationship between form and material in Japanese culture. When you start to visit historical sights in Japan, you soon realise that many are not as they first appear. Large numbers of the hugely important historical buildings are only decades old – their form having remained constant over hundreds of years, with their fragile building materials either burned or rotted. It’s an utterly different approach to western modes of preservation, but is fundamental to everything, it seems. Even the mask-maker I worked with in Osaka for Project for a Masquerade and At Twilight is essentially involved in making what we might refer to in the west as “fakes” – lovingly replicating the look and feel of ancient masks with all their distressed surfaces and chipped paint. His masks are highly valued artefacts – the product of a rigorous, 20-year-long apprenticeship. AB: What relationships between western modernist art and Noh theatre were you interested to explore? SS: The play and exhibition At Twilight looks at a short-lived moment in the early-20th century when Noh theatre had a signifi- cant impact on the European avant garde. It was a moment when, for the very first time, a lot of Japanese culture was becom- ing available in the west. The poet and playwright WB Yeats discovered Noh theatre in 1915/16 through his then secretary, the young American poet Ezra Pound. Pound had something of a reputation as a translator and had been approached by the widow of [art historian] Ernest Fenollosa to complete a set of English translations of Noh plays that had been left unfinished at her husband’s death in 1908. Fenollosa had been a hugely important figure in the opening up of Japanese culture to the west. For Yeats, who had grown tired of European theatre, the discovery of these aristocratic Japanese dramas with their spare economy and shape-shifting characters, captivated him, inspiring a string of neo-Noh plays that began with At the Hawk’s Well. I became fascinated by this moment of cross-cultural misappropriation and monolingual translation. It soon became clear that it was precisely Yeats’s lack of knowledge of Noh, the superficiality of his understanding, that allowed him to co-opt such a deeply entrenched Japanese cultural tradition to contemporary effect. Simon Starling, Still from At Twilight / The Hawk's Dance (Choreographed by Javier De Frutos in association with Scottish Ballet), 2016. Courtesy of Simon Starling & The Modern Institute. AB: The 1916 production of At the Hawk’s Well was a collaborative effort, with Yeats bringing in other key writers from the pe- riod. Can you talk about your experiences of collaboration while creating At Twilight, as well as your references to the collabora- tors Yeats worked with, whom I understand you have represented in the show through Noh masks? SS: Yeats assembled an impressive team to realise the play.

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