The Brooklyn Rail

I started writing New York art reviews for a monthly art magazine, Bijutsu Techo (BT), in the fall of 1992. BT, the de facto contemporary art magazine in Japan, was first published in 1948 and featured articles in the 1950s and ’60s by such legendary art critics as Shūzō Takiguchi and Yoshiaki Tono, both frequently cited by scholars in the West. Regrettably, BT’s publisher went bankrupt in 2015, and the magazine is now under the umbrella of a culture/entertainment conglomerate, CCC, and printed only quarterly. I no longer write for BT, but I’ve written for another long-established art magazine, Geijutsu Shinchō, since 2013.

About two years ago, Geijutsu Shinchō discontinued the “World Art News” column to which I and my fellow writers from Berlin, London, et al., had contributed every month. Even though I still receive some assignments from them and other magazines such as Elle Japón, and editors accept my proposals for writing feature articles, I never know when I’ll get my next assignment. The situation of a “freelance” art critic is unstable, and the writing fees are very small considering the time you spend viewing exhibitions, doing research, and acquiring images of artworks to accompany your texts.

So how did I survive in New York as a freelancer? Well, you must wear many hats, including exhibition coordinator, art guide, art advisor (which may lead to an art sale), editor and translator for bilingual art publications, and so on. In my early days in New York, while studying art history in Hunter College’s MA program, I worked for a Midtown gallery part time, mainly as a bridge between the gallery and collectors and museums in Japan. To point out the significance of a particular artwork, I soon realized that writing a term paper was not so different from writing a letter to a collector. In fact, the work of art critics, curators, gallerists, and even collectors, is the same. They all look at art, think about it, and either write or talk about it.

I see lots of exhibitions. I like to visit small galleries and find something new and extraordinary in the work of unknown artists. I have tremendous curiosity, too. Walter Pater (1839–94) wrote in his book The Renaissance, “Curiosity and the desire of beauty—these are the two elementary forces in Leonardo’s genius.” I certainly share not the genius of Leonardo but his two character traits. Yet my curiosity extends not to artworks or artists but rather to myself, to tell you the truth. I’m curious as to why I’m so drawn to contemporary art and to a particular artwork, and why a non-Christian, twentieth-century woman like me can react emotionally to, say, Italian quattrocento paintings.

In the end, what is the essence of art—its meaning, and purpose? And how do you see something special in one work but not in another? When you’re listening to a piano recital or watching a ballet competition, it’s relatively easy to tell which one is a better performance, or the best, even if you don’t know any technique or music and dance history. This is not the case for visual art. A simple act of describing an artwork is difficult. Now, my writing is not art criticism per se. It’s more like reports on new art and artists, and the aim of my writing is to let my readers know what’s happening in New York and the art world at large. Still, I try to use my critical mind and trained eyes in deciding which exhibitions and artworks should be the subjects in my columns. I also try to ensure that my writing is engaging and helps my readers feel as if they were in New York.

I reread and polish my reviews countless times before submitting them to a proofreader, but I don’t consider my writing an art form in itself. The ultimate protagonist is the artist and his/her/their artwork, and I see my role as being something of an intermediary between creators and viewers. In recent years, I have become more involved with translation work than with my own writing. My task is to translate art essays in English into readable and fluid Japanese. But I also see the importance of properly formatting artists’ biographies and translating (or not) artwork titles from one language to another. This kind of documentation is essential for the career of any artist. Finally, be it original or a translation, it’s encouraging to think that my work can be part of the legacy of an artist.