s w i f t s  &  s l o w s: a quarterly of crisscrossings

Black Sun Painting
Koho Yamamoto & Ivan Klein

←back or next→

Koho Yamamoto’s Black Sun Painting

That is, the large, unframed canvas done four years ago when the sumi-e

master was ninety-three.  Just old enough, it seems, to have a

consummate idea of what she was doing…

Sitting in close proximity to its considerable mass, I try to think of an

apposite title for it’s ambiguities: “Dissolution”; “Stove in By a Whale”; “Mutablity

Via Slow Drip” …

Slowly bringing myself to focus on that almost palpably quivering gelid

black sun with its one good eye squinting on all that is undone below – of the

wrecks of the sea, the earth, the low-hanging sky.  All of it somehow achieving a

terrific unconstrained balance.

The innumerable nuances of the painting’s grey and blue tones and those

subtly concealed red tints inside bold black strokes that could come from

nowhere but her very soul. — What other source could have resulted in such a

symphony (or antipode of a symphony) of light and shadow?

Notan – light and shadow:

a nearly chaotic balance tight-roped to the symmetry of life and

death.

Qualities and mysteries made triumphantly manifest in this late masterwork.

←back or next→

Ivan Klein has published Toward Melville, a book of poems from New Feral Press, in July 2018.  Previously published a chapbook Some Paintings by Koho & A Flower Of My Own from Sisyphus Press.  Work published in the Forward, Urban Graffiti, Otoliths, and numerous other publications.

Koho Yamamoto, a master of the Japanese art of sumi-e, had a studio in Soho where she worked and taught for over thirty years. The subject of an NHK documentary, she has been profiled in the NY Times and had exhibitions at major universities and galleries in the United States. Her definitive statement of artistic method, evident in the above paintings is “these paintings come from nothingness.  They are spontaneous occurrences.  …Sometimes the result of space, balance and dark and light (Notan) successfully emerge in the spirit of the moment.”