The Freedom to Say That "It Is Beautiful"

Mizuki Takahashi / Curator, Contemporary Art Center, Art Tower Mito

I would like to consider the issue of stating "beauty" by examining the works of Mami, Motoyuki Shitamichi, and mamoru. It must be worth discussing about it because of the fact that people no longer respond to the art works saying that it is "beautiful" anymore. Suzan Sontag, a critique, once wrote that the people recently tend to employ the word "interesting" instead of "beauty." In her essay, "An Argument about Beauty"(1), she raised an "interesting" discussion about how "beauty" as a word representing a sense of value has been replaced by "interesting."

The word "beauty" tends to give such an impression that it is referring to a standardized form; the form nearly stands as something absolute, together with a set of value which is rigid and restrictive. The alternatives that deviate from it are most likely to be excluded. Therefore, people prefer to say "it is interesting," hoping that it implies much broader and flexible senses of values rather than this binding and conservative "beauty". The word "interesting" is surely convenient as an opinion on the work that you cannot appreciate or understand at a first glance. You can avoid making your clear standpoint and postpone your final judgment on it for a while.

Mami, Shitamichi, and mamoru practice and realize their art with different media: body, photography, and sound. However, instead of producing art objects, all of them create ephemeral moments that do not have any physical shape, such as relationship between people, and the awareness to the subtle gestures that we normally do not pay any attention to. Therefore if I define art as the fabrication of the objects, then their artistic practices are off the grid, and in this regard, their works are "interesting". But I am reluctant to label them as just being "interesting" since I find the notion of “beauty” underneath their practices. They discover “beauty” in the humor that is brought into being through communication among people, in the everyday creativity that is indistinct and that may only last for a short while, and in the sound of the everyday objects that we use without any care. These three artists look into those elements with their affections and mold them into the art works.

They draw you into the understated yet fundamental "beauty." Therefore their artistic practices that we would be witnessing can be understood whether it is "now here" or "nowhere", any place where people run their lives around. They invite us towards the opposite direction of the current art world, which is market-driven, and full of commercial art productions. This is why I feel encouraged when I observe or learn about what these three artists are doing. I can feel free to say that "it is beautiful" in everyday basis, and feel also free to believe that art can break the chains of our hesitation and give us freedom to say that "it is beautiful."

(1) Susan Sontag, An Argument About Beauty, Daedalus, Vol. 131, 2002