Robert Kushner Intro (1 results)
- Hardcover
- First Edition
Seller: Arches Bookhouse, Portland, OR, U.S.A.Arches Bookhouse
Contact seller5-star sellerCondition: Used - Fine
£ 167.65
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Hardcover. Condition: FINE. First Edition. First Edition of the first book publication of Fujimura's work, sans DJ as issued. [2], 3-44, [4] pp. Square 9' x 9', brown muslin cloth, gilt lettered front cover. Exceedingly clean and sharp with color reprodfuctions of Fujimura's early mineral pigment works with details and Scripture… on facing pages, tissue guards intact. Introduction by Robert Kushner, wherein he writes: 'Repeatedly, Fujimura credits his steadfast faith in Christ as the essential foundation of his work. But the paintings speak clearly to those of us on different paths as well. There are many artists today looking for something deeper to communicate with our work. Irony, cynicism, ennui have been a dominant force in much recent Contemporary art, and indeed it is one valid reaction to the difficulties facing us. But for many of us, the seduction of nihilistic despair seems self-indulgent. The idea of forging a new kind of art, about hope, healing, redemption, refuge, while maintaining visual sophistication and intellectual integrity is a growing movement, one which finds Fujimura's work at the vanguard. There is a recurring theme of displacement and its subsequent resolution in Fujimura's work: his attempt to resolve the classic dichotomy of the spirit and the flesh; his synthesis of Japanese technique with Western landscape portrayal and contemporary execution; the resolution of the Buddhist predilection for ambiguity with the clarity of his Christian faith; the circumstance of a Japanese-American working and residing in the New World with his mind often on the Old. Nominally, one would think this dislocation would become a potential liability. But here it surges to the surface as one of the greatest assets of this work: candor. Fujimura is brutally honest with himself and with us - about his personal history, interfaced between two divergent cultures, his full hearted acceptance of faith, his urgent desire for us to join him on his visual and spiritual quest. He once told me that his art is 'a challenging struggle to express what is really in the heart, not pretending to be someone I am not.' There is a compelling immediacy to his profound truthfulness, even more courageous against the backdrop of a trend-conscious art world. It is precisely this underlying quality of self honesty, transformed into visual form, that attracts us so magnetically to Fujimura's work. His uncompromising effort to resolve his personal revelations into a coherent pictorial language, keeps us returning to drink more deeply and experience the salvation offered at this Pool of Bethesda.'.
