YUICHI INOUE | Ai (Love)

marked with one artist's seal

Private Collection, Japan

Tokyo, UNAC Salon, First-time showing 89, 1998
Kanagawa, Chigasaki City Museum of Art, Ikita Kaita YU-ICHI, 2000
Tokyo, Tomio Koyama Gallery, Love for Collecting Exhibition, July 2009, p. 20, 46, 49, 51-53, illustrated in colour (installation view) 
UNAC Tokyo, Tokyo Air Raid, March 2010, p. 44, illustrated in colour

Masomi Unagami, Ed.,Yu-Ichi [Yu-Ichi INOUE]: Catalogue Raisonné of the works 1949-1985, Vol. II 1970-1976, UNAC Tokyo, Tokyo, 2000, CR no. 73028
Chigasaki City Museum of Art, Ikita Kaita YU-ICHI, 2000
Yuji Akimoto, A Retrospective Yu-Ichi Inoue 1955-1985, 2016, p. 164, illustrated in colour

This work is in very good condition overall. Very minor wear in handling noted occasionally on the extreme top right edge. Visible only upon close inspection, scarce pinpoint foxing noted in isolated places. Two spots of light fibrous accretions are noted to the lower part of 'ai'. Occasional paper 'veins' and gentle tonal variation are inherent to artist's chosen medium and method of execution. Framed.
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The colossal, bold strokes of Yuichi Inoue's Ai (Love) emanate a quivering ethereality – a classic and moving example from the artist’s celebrated avant-garde practice that revolutionized the ancient art of Eastern calligraphy. In the deep tradition of sho (calligraphy), the brushstroke is understood as “an imprint of the mind” – a sign of the artist’s intellectual, psychological, and spiritual state of being. The Eastern tradition of calligraphy is thus akin to the foundations of Western abstract art that espouses a formal and conceptual rather than real or descriptive image; as such, “the basis for practicing calligraphy as a form of modern art was already in place” (Alexandra Munroe, Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky, Harry N. Abrams Inc., New York, 1994, p. 129). In post-war Japan, avant-garde Japanese artists led by Yuichi Inoue and Shiryu Morita re-conceived of calligraphy as “a metaphysical act which uses the character as a ‘site’ (basho) to manifest “the dynamic movement of life” (inochi no yakudo), or the ultimate rhythm of “absolute nothingness” beyond intellect, emotion, or ego” (Ibid, p. 131). Their works hover at the edge of painting and calligraphy, line and stroke, content and form, control and sensuality.

Focusing intensely on a single character for a short, intense period of time, Yuichi's massive strokes tremble with sublime internal tremors and intricate rivulets of ink. In the present work, the character Ai crosses over the pictorial edge of the frame, defying traditional rules of calligraphy and evoking a subtly heart-wrenching sense of pathos. In the period following an obsessive yet never professed affection for Mayuno Sato, a woman 30 years his junior, a great deal of romantic poetry was found in Yuichi's diary, coinciding with repeated calligraphic works with the characters ‘no’ and ‘love’. The present work also testifies to an important breakthrough in Yuichi's innovative experiments in the 1960s, after which he began combining a water-based glue and carbon powder to resolve the issue of cracks caused by dried ink, a feature observed in his earlier works. Yuichi achieved swift international acclaim as early as the 1950s, exhibiting alongside the likes of Jackson Pollock, Yves Kline, Hans Hartung and Pierre Soulages at the São Paolo Biennials (1957, 1959 and 1961) and documenta II in Kassel (1959).