Touring Solo Art Project CONVERSATION WITH RUSKIN Celebrating the Bicentenary of John Ruskin's Birth by Hideyuki Sobue FINAL REPORT Section Project Overview ・・・・・・・ 3 Outline of the Activity ・・・・・・・ 7 Analytics Overview ・・・・・・・ 9 Aims and Objectives ・・・・・・・ 10 What I Learned... ・・・・・・・ 11 Feedback ・・・・・・・ 14 2 Project Overview was the 200th anniversary based on materialism. We humans are facing a grave crisis of of John Ruskin’s birth. An identity as we ask, “What does it mean to be human?” in the 2019art critic, artist, writer, era of advanced AI. educator, social thinker and philanthropist, he was one of the most influential voices in Victorian England and beyond. Bearing the above in mind, I produced a portrait of John As a Japanese artist based in the Lake District, where Ruskin Ruskin as the main work in this exhibition. I portrayed chose to live for 28 years prior to his death, I have been the Victorian thinker in a horizontal double-vision image, intrigued by his legacy in art and sustainability, which comprising two identical portraits overlapping each other. provided an ideological foundation for the Pre-Raphaelites, By carefully determining the distance between two images, the Arts and Crafts movement and the National Trust. Ruskin I attempted to promote a visual illusion so that the portrait was also the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University can be seen as a single image in another dimension, of Oxford, where he established the Ruskin School of Art. emerging from the surface of the support. It is a paradoxical approach, achieved by stimulating a visual illusion. However, In preparing for this project, I aimed at delving into it is designed to amplify the mystery of human existence the spirituality of John Ruskin. His message about the by raising questions about the distance between the visible importance of art, nature and human spirituality resounds and invisible, physical and spiritual; the abstract concepts ever louder in our advanced technological society. I believe that only belong to humanity. In this way, I attempted to that it is appropriate to reexamine these aspects considering create a platform of conversation regarding whether our the fact that we live in an age of Artificial Intelligence (AI), mind, soul and spirit exist, or they are nothing but multi- where the human mind/ soul/ spirit is in danger of being complex electric and chemical processes in our brain. It may interpreted as merely chemical and electronic processes also reflect Ruskin’s spiritual conflict with regard to his own faith. I planned to depict him as a foreseer (in a way, like one of the ancient prophets), and as the spiritual guardian of Lakeland and beyond in a period of ecological and existential crisis. Hence the title, "Conversation with Ruskin (Ecce Homo)". The Latin phrase “Ecce Homo” means “Behold the man!”, and was the statement of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea in the 1st century, when he presented 3 a scourged Jesus Christ to accusers shortly before his Crucifixion. I didn’t mean to identify Ruskin with Christ but rather attempted to present him as a man of sorrow, who could foresee the negative legacies of modernization, the world to come that we are now facing. With a teardrop in his right eye, I emphasized his emotional state, and moreover, symbolized the dignity of humanity for which Ruskin strived. Among all animals, only humans shed emotional tears. For this reason, “Ecce Homo” seemed to me to be the most appropriate title for this portrait. Alongside this portrait, I produced a series of works on the theme of nature, which John Ruskin stressed to learn from for his art practice. He wrote in “Pre-Raphaelitism”, advising young English artists, "They should go to nature in all singleness of heart, and walk with her laboriously of his excellent draughtsmanship as an artist but also a and trustingly, having no other thought but how best glimpse of the broad scope of his academic studies. I was to penetrate her meaning; rejecting nothing, selecting fascinated by Ruskin’s focus on objects, which reminds nothing, and scorning nothing." When I looked into me in style of Japanese traditional painting. Moreover, his Ruskin’s original drawings during my research at The Ruskin way of seeing, manifested by his drawing, seems uniquely (Lancaster University), I found myself extremely interested similar to Japanese traditional art on the theme of nature, in his penetrating gaze when studying objects, scenes, and which reveals a holistic ideology through depicting things his natural surroundings. It was a profound experience as minimally as possible. I also found myself intrigued to of discovery that his drawings are not only the evidence note that there are similarities between Ruskin’s drawings and my works on nature. He often produced drawings of natural objects such as stones, wildflowers, leaves, clouds, etc. for his scientific approach to understanding the holistic natural environment. When Ruskin drew clouds, for instance, it reflected his insight on air pollution. I also often produced and still love to produce works on the same subjects; however, my approach is rather the exploration of the meaning of human condition by means of the 4 image. Visual images are deemed to be far more ambiguous than text, and are inevitably open to free interpretation by viewers. “Round Stone”, on one hand, seemingly depicts a stone such as those I found in my daily life. However, I drew it as round as possible deliberately so that it looks like the moon. As you know, 2019 was the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing by Apollo 11. In the other work, “Storm Cloud”, I attempted to suggest the giant cloud of a devastating explosion. Our civilization is threatened by weapons of mass destruction such as nuclear bombs, which Ruskin could never have imagined. In this way, I wanted to show the passage of time since Ruskin was alive. After all, it is humans who embrace and treasure all living things, and at the same time destroy them by their own hands. This overwhelming contradiction corresponds to Ruskin's human fundamental tool of creativity, namely drawing and tormented state of mind when he resisted the torrent of painting through the metaphor, symbol, and referentiality of the first industrial revolution. Now we are facing the fourth visual language. For example, when I portray fallen leaves, industrial revolution. insignificant wildflowers, pebbles or stones, they are the metaphors of the anonymous majority of people across the This project, apart from drawing, was completed employing globe. When I paint small insects, I refer to the symbolic meanings in art history. When I draw sheep, cattle or other domestic animals, I look at the relationship between human and livestock along the line of the idyllic landscape throughout history. Bearing this in mind, I have produced a series of works focusing on observations of nature, each portraying the essence of what I have personally experienced in the Lake District, looking into the history and life of this unique landscape. They are not a mere collection of nature-themed works but I attempted to assemble a semiotic series of natural subjects focusing on Ruskin's love for nature and his passion for conservation, sensing the passage of time up to now and into the future. In this series, I produced a couple of works that demonstrate the ambiguity of the 5 my unique brush hatching method using Japanese sumi ink and acrylic, which I created and have developed over the past 15 years. It is inspired by the concept of designo, which was established in the Florentine School during the Renaissance, combined with neurological studies, which reveal that the human visual brain perceives objects predominantly by oriented lines. This series of paintings features gold backgrounds, created using acrylic gold paint inspired by the Japanese traditional painting style, which can be seen in fusuma-e (sliding door paintings) and byobu-e (folding-screen paintings). In this way, I attempted to embody a quest for the spirit and legacy of John Ruskin. Painted, sculpted or photographed in his lifetime and since by many artists, none I know of has approached the challenge of portraying Ruskin quite like Hideyuki. In a single image he manages to “bring forth Ruskin’s power, intensity, suffering and sensitivity with extraordinary clarity. Nor is Ruskin an object of contemplation. This is the face of a soul that urgently wishes to communicate with us. He inhabits the room and reaches out to us. Howard Hull Director of the Brantwood Trust ”6 Outline of the Activity n my initial proposal, I planned to produce 6 paintings to the adult workshop was over quota and 20+ participants including John Ruskin’s double-vision portrait and all enjoyed learning my original line hatching technique. I5-6 drawings including a drawing of John Ruskin. Due to the popularity of the exhibition at the Blue Gallery in However, due to a restricted schedule I changed the plan Brantwood, which was held immediately after the first major to produce 1 large double-vision portrait of Ruskin, 12 Turner exhibition at the same location, the director of the smaller nature-themed paintings and 1 drawing of Ruskin. Brantwood Trust decided to prolong the exhibition period This decision proved right in that I was able to deliver all until 17th November. The exhibition was featured in local works on time. Although the double-vision portrait of media such as the Westmorland Gazette and Cumbria Life Ruskin titled “Conversation with Ruskin (Ecce Homo)” was Magazine. produced as the principle work of the project, I believe that the 12 nature-themed small works matched it conceptually The dates for the tour to The Ruskin at Lancaster University and technically, and were appropriate for celebrating the was confirmed in late August 2019, and the exhibition bicentenary of Ruskin’s birth.