Space of Effusion

RICHARD SPEER

浸出の空間—日本におけるサム・フランシス THE SPACE OF EFFUSION:

Sam Francis in Japan

SCHEIDEGGER & SPIESS

Foreword Sam Francis, a “Colorful Unsui”

Fig. 3 Sam Francis working in temporary Mita studio, Tokyo,

fall 1957. Photo by François-René Roland, Paris.

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Sam Francis’s engagement with the world, coupled with his fascination and involvement with different cultures, particularly Japan, is explored in Richard Speer’s compelling monograph The Space of Effusion: Sam Francis in Japan, as well as in the related exhibition “Sam Francis and Japan: Emptiness Overflowing,” scheduled installation for 2020–21 in the Resnick Pavilion at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), California. One of the twentiethcentury’s most profound Abstract Expressionists, Sam Francis was one of the few visual artists who traversed the globe multiple times during the 1950s and 1960s, becoming one of the first post-World War II American painters to develop a truly international reputation. A bit of an outlier, Francis was not rooted to one locale during his five-decade artistic career. He spent time working in France, Mexico, Switzerland, and Japan as well as New York and California, creating thousands of paintings, works on paper, prints, and monotypes. His works reference the places he lived and worked, including nods to the New York School of painters, French Impressionism, Chinese and Japanese art, and his own Bay Area roots. As Speer articulates in his text, with a focus on Japan, the different styles, techniques, and artistic influences Francis encountered through his travels informed the development of his own visual dialogue and unique style of painting. Shūzō Takiguchi, a noted Japanese art critic and poet, described his friend’s wanderlust as almost mystical in nature, seeing Francis as “a colorful unsui—a Zen monk who has no place to live and is destined to

roam the country, his only permanent abode being within himself” (quoted in Tsujii 1987). Agreeing with Takiguchi’s assessment, Takashi Tsujii (aka Seiji Tsutsumi) indicated that he could not think of a more accurate and revealing description of Francis’s characteristics. The spirit of unsui, which loosely translates as “cloud water,” echoes descriptions of Francis drifting like a “free-floating cloud” (the title of a 1980 mural), always on the move and trying to escape limitations. The reference to water is also fitting in regard to Francis and his painting, with its connotations of beginnings, life, and the eternal.

The opportunity for an in-depth exploration of Francis’s ties to Japan arose in 2011 after I read an Art Ltd. magazine review of Francis’s oeuvre by Richard Speer. I was not acquainted with the author but was immediately drawn to his poetic and sensuous response to Francis’s aesthetics. We met, and after a period of general back-and-forth correspondence, the Sam Francis Foundation supported his proposal to write an essay and curate an exhibition focused on the artist’s Japanese influences.

What followed was an organic flow of connections with Bruce Polichar, a Sam Francis Foundation board member, who introduced me by email to Hollis Goodall, curator of Japanese art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Goodall was very enthusiastic about the show’s premise, and soon Leslie Jones, curator of prints and drawings, joined the LACMA curatorial team. The resulting exhibition focuses on the confluence of Francis and Japan by pairing his works with art from historical Japanese

11

Foreword Sam Francis, a “Colorful Unsui”

Fig. 3 Sam Francis working in temporary Mita studio, Tokyo,

fall 1957. Photo by François-René Roland, Paris.

10

Sam Francis’s engagement with the world, coupled with his fascination and involvement with different cultures, particularly Japan, is explored in Richard Speer’s compelling monograph The Space of Effusion: Sam Francis in Japan, as well as in the related exhibition “Sam Francis and Japan: Emptiness Overflowing,” scheduled installation for 2020–21 in the Resnick Pavilion at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), California. One of the twentiethcentury’s most profound Abstract Expressionists, Sam Francis was one of the few visual artists who traversed the globe multiple times during the 1950s and 1960s, becoming one of the first post-World War II American painters to develop a truly international reputation. A bit of an outlier, Francis was not rooted to one locale during his five-decade artistic career. He spent time working in France, Mexico, Switzerland, and Japan as well as New York and California, creating thousands of paintings, works on paper, prints, and monotypes. His works reference the places he lived and worked, including nods to the New York School of painters, French Impressionism, Chinese and Japanese art, and his own Bay Area roots. As Speer articulates in his text, with a focus on Japan, the different styles, techniques, and artistic influences Francis encountered through his travels informed the development of his own visual dialogue and unique style of painting. Shūzō Takiguchi, a noted Japanese art critic and poet, described his friend’s wanderlust as almost mystical in nature, seeing Francis as “a colorful unsui—a Zen monk who has no place to live and is destined to

roam the country, his only permanent abode being within himself” (quoted in Tsujii 1987). Agreeing with Takiguchi’s assessment, Takashi Tsujii (aka Seiji Tsutsumi) indicated that he could not think of a more accurate and revealing description of Francis’s characteristics. The spirit of unsui, which loosely translates as “cloud water,” echoes descriptions of Francis drifting like a “free-floating cloud” (the title of a 1980 mural), always on the move and trying to escape limitations. The reference to water is also fitting in regard to Francis and his painting, with its connotations of beginnings, life, and the eternal.

The opportunity for an in-depth exploration of Francis’s ties to Japan arose in 2011 after I read an Art Ltd. magazine review of Francis’s oeuvre by Richard Speer. I was not acquainted with the author but was immediately drawn to his poetic and sensuous response to Francis’s aesthetics. We met, and after a period of general back-and-forth correspondence, the Sam Francis Foundation supported his proposal to write an essay and curate an exhibition focused on the artist’s Japanese influences.

What followed was an organic flow of connections with Bruce Polichar, a Sam Francis Foundation board member, who introduced me by email to Hollis Goodall, curator of Japanese art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Goodall was very enthusiastic about the show’s premise, and soon Leslie Jones, curator of prints and drawings, joined the LACMA curatorial team. The resulting exhibition focuses on the confluence of Francis and Japan by pairing his works with art from historical Japanese

11

Fig. 113 Tōru Takemitsu’s compositional score dedicated to

Sam Francis, Cross Talk, 1968. 7 min., electronic sounds.

Written “For Two Bandneons and Magnetic Tape.” Photo courtesy Éditions Salabert.

122

123

Fig. 113 Tōru Takemitsu’s compositional score dedicated to

Sam Francis, Cross Talk, 1968. 7 min., electronic sounds.

Written “For Two Bandneons and Magnetic Tape.” Photo courtesy Éditions Salabert.

122

123

Fig. 120 Teruko Yokoi with Sam Francis’s first child,

her daughter Kayo Francis Malik in Bern at Yokoi’s exhibition at Galerie Kornfeld, 2019.

Photo by Nelly Puigventos, Switzerland.

Fig. 122 Left to right: Sam Francis’s sons Osamu and Shingo with their

mother Mako Idemitsu in front of Francis’s Edge painting, Untitled, 1966, Tokyo, ca. 1969–70. Photographer unknown.

an attraction that grew into romance. There was a special tenderness in their rapport. In 1965 he wrote her a short poem and sent it to her via telegram from Santa Monica to Tokyo:

Fig. 119 Teruko Yokoi with one of her paintings

in Paris, 1961. Photo by Charles Gimpel, London.

THERE IS ALWAYS

Fig. 121 Teruko Yokoi, Schlucht am Abend (Evening Gorge), 1977.

Egg tempera and collage on paper, 62.23 x 46.73 cm (24 1/2 x 18 1/4 in.). Artwork © Teruko Yokoi. Photo courtesy Heather James Fine Art.

A POND

A FROG

A WAVE

A CLOUD

AND YOU AND ME 130

SAM

Francis’s friend Elaine Anderson asserts, in the film The Painter Sam Francis, that “there were many women who were his muses, but Mako was very special. He was like a little boy about her” (Perkins 2002b). The couple married in 1966 in Santa Monica (Mako sent handwritten wedding invitations to friends and family) and had two sons together before the end of the decade, Osamu William Francis and Shingo Jules Francis. Shingo eventually became a successful and widely exhibited painter himself.

Many of his paintings deal with negative space and compositional framing devices in ways influenced by his father’s Edge and Matrix series.

While Mako Idemitsu’s home movies show idyllic family togetherness in the pool and seashore in Santa Monica, the realities were more complicated. Francis’s affairs and frequent business trips were trying.

Her letters to him, archived at the Getty Research

131

Fig. 120 Teruko Yokoi with Sam Francis’s first child,

her daughter Kayo Francis Malik in Bern at Yokoi’s exhibition at Galerie Kornfeld, 2019.

Photo by Nelly Puigventos, Switzerland.

Fig. 122 Left to right: Sam Francis’s sons Osamu and Shingo with their

mother Mako Idemitsu in front of Francis’s Edge painting, Untitled, 1966, Tokyo, ca. 1969–70. Photographer unknown.

an attraction that grew into romance. There was a special tenderness in their rapport. In 1965 he wrote her a short poem and sent it to her via telegram from Santa Monica to Tokyo:

Fig. 119 Teruko Yokoi with one of her paintings

in Paris, 1961. Photo by Charles Gimpel, London.

THERE IS ALWAYS

Fig. 121 Teruko Yokoi, Schlucht am Abend (Evening Gorge), 1977.

Egg tempera and collage on paper, 62.23 x 46.73 cm (24 1/2 x 18 1/4 in.). Artwork © Teruko Yokoi. Photo courtesy Heather James Fine Art.

A POND

A FROG

A WAVE

A CLOUD

AND YOU AND ME 130

SAM

Francis’s friend Elaine Anderson asserts, in the film The Painter Sam Francis, that “there were many women who were his muses, but Mako was very special. He was like a little boy about her” (Perkins 2002b). The couple married in 1966 in Santa Monica (Mako sent handwritten wedding invitations to friends and family) and had two sons together before the end of the decade, Osamu William Francis and Shingo Jules Francis. Shingo eventually became a successful and widely exhibited painter himself.

Many of his paintings deal with negative space and compositional framing devices in ways influenced by his father’s Edge and Matrix series.

While Mako Idemitsu’s home movies show idyllic family togetherness in the pool and seashore in Santa Monica, the realities were more complicated. Francis’s affairs and frequent business trips were trying.

Her letters to him, archived at the Getty Research

131

Fig. 183 Sam Francis, Liga, 1978. Acrylic on paper, 49 x 35.5 cm

(19 5/16 x 13 in.), painted in Los Angeles (Santa Monica).

Private collection, Los Angeles. Photo courtesy Bonhams.

208

as his personal leitmotif. He was always trying to reconcile God and the devil. In undated missives, now catalogued in his archives, he cryptically writes: “Christ and Anti-Christ must be accepted . . . but?” “Heaven and hell live in me. My body is the flesh of Hell, the flesh of Heaven.” “Every night, hell marries heaven.” In an unflinchingly candid autobiographical poem, he describes himself as suspended between heaven and hell, “struck by his own thoughts as if they came to him from above or below . . . as a complex, artful, deceitful, and inscrutable being . . . every color a mask; as one who, even though often running away from himself, will always come to himself again and again.”

Perhaps his most poignant dialectic, though, his most primal inhabitation of the opposites embodied in ma, lay in his most personal experience of absence and presence: the absence of his beloved mother, Katharine Lewis Francis (who died of a heart attack in her early forties, when he was only 12), counterweighed against the haunting, aching, constant presence of her memory. Katharine was both form and non-form to him. She was the ghost in the white space. “I lost my mother when I was 12 years old,” he wrote in 1986. “That was a momentous event in my life. As a child I choked back a lot of that stuff and internalized everything. Children have to do that. It’s a necessity. I had to refind her. That just gave me added impetus to deal with ‘the feminine’ in a different way than I had when I was young . . . I carried on a conversation with my mother through the dream image.” Margaret Francis, his widow, believes that his “quest for the mother had to be internalized: the Jungian analysis, this huge grief . . . He was a big fl irt and a big womanizer. He appreciated women in every sense.

He wasn’t afraid to show his feminine side. He turned it into: ‘Where do I find the mother?’ It was as if the muse of his paintings was his dead mother.

He was entranced by her all of his life” (Perkins 2007). This is echoed by Liga Pang during our conversation in 2018: “He sometimes talked about his mother. He called me ‘Mother Earth.’ He must have a void or a hole in himself. Maybe that’s why he ate a lot—to fill it up.” “The forest is my house,” he wrote in an undated, untitled poem, “dark, quiet, like my dead mother.” Another undated journal entry in his hand reads cryptically:

Man’s first word MA (mother) and last.

In those evocative white voids, then, so thoroughly dissected by Japanese critics, Francis may have been painting something that transcends nationality and culture: grief. In grief the concrete and the universal become one. The particular loved one is gone, lost in the universal ocean of death. The specific and the symbolic merge. This is also what happened with Sam Francis and Japan. The particular and the universal met in a meaningful instant—the particular paintings and all the words trailing behind them.

After years of entertaining, indulging, and dismissing comparisons and speculation about his art and Japanese art, Francis finally arrived at a place of comfort with the idea that his sensibility and the Japanese sensibility had come into sync.

Perhaps no artworks better illustrated this than two ambitious performance pieces he orchestrated in the late 1960s. For Sky Painting (1966), he hired five helicopters to fly over Tokyo Bay, spraying canisters of colored gas in a broad, arcing, aerial dance of gesture and chroma: yellow, red, blue, magenta, and white. The Tokyo-based newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun had commissioned the piece, and Francis eagerly accepted, riding along in one of the choppers, directing the action, and taking photographs.

The old Army Air Reserves man was back in the sky once more. The following year he created Ski/ Snow Painting for a ski resort in the mountain town of Naibara, dispatching skiers rather than helicopters to once again paint the air with color. As Peter Selz describes it: “He designed a pattern according to which colored smoke was ejected from canisters held by a number of skiers. A moving configuration of mysterious colored veils was seen against the white mountainside, an eloquent comment on man’s relationship to nature” (1975, 95). He had used the sky and the snow as negative space as surely as he

209

Fig. 183 Sam Francis, Liga, 1978. Acrylic on paper, 49 x 35.5 cm

(19 5/16 x 13 in.), painted in Los Angeles (Santa Monica).

Private collection, Los Angeles. Photo courtesy Bonhams.

208

as his personal leitmotif. He was always trying to reconcile God and the devil. In undated missives, now catalogued in his archives, he cryptically writes: “Christ and Anti-Christ must be accepted . . . but?” “Heaven and hell live in me. My body is the flesh of Hell, the flesh of Heaven.” “Every night, hell marries heaven.” In an unflinchingly candid autobiographical poem, he describes himself as suspended between heaven and hell, “struck by his own thoughts as if they came to him from above or below . . . as a complex, artful, deceitful, and inscrutable being . . . every color a mask; as one who, even though often running away from himself, will always come to himself again and again.”

Perhaps his most poignant dialectic, though, his most primal inhabitation of the opposites embodied in ma, lay in his most personal experience of absence and presence: the absence of his beloved mother, Katharine Lewis Francis (who died of a heart attack in her early forties, when he was only 12), counterweighed against the haunting, aching, constant presence of her memory. Katharine was both form and non-form to him. She was the ghost in the white space. “I lost my mother when I was 12 years old,” he wrote in 1986. “That was a momentous event in my life. As a child I choked back a lot of that stuff and internalized everything. Children have to do that. It’s a necessity. I had to refind her. That just gave me added impetus to deal with ‘the feminine’ in a different way than I had when I was young . . . I carried on a conversation with my mother through the dream image.” Margaret Francis, his widow, believes that his “quest for the mother had to be internalized: the Jungian analysis, this huge grief . . . He was a big fl irt and a big womanizer. He appreciated women in every sense.

He wasn’t afraid to show his feminine side. He turned it into: ‘Where do I find the mother?’ It was as if the muse of his paintings was his dead mother.

He was entranced by her all of his life” (Perkins 2007). This is echoed by Liga Pang during our conversation in 2018: “He sometimes talked about his mother. He called me ‘Mother Earth.’ He must have a void or a hole in himself. Maybe that’s why he ate a lot—to fill it up.” “The forest is my house,” he wrote in an undated, untitled poem, “dark, quiet, like my dead mother.” Another undated journal entry in his hand reads cryptically:

Man’s first word MA (mother) and last.

In those evocative white voids, then, so thoroughly dissected by Japanese critics, Francis may have been painting something that transcends nationality and culture: grief. In grief the concrete and the universal become one. The particular loved one is gone, lost in the universal ocean of death. The specific and the symbolic merge. This is also what happened with Sam Francis and Japan. The particular and the universal met in a meaningful instant—the particular paintings and all the words trailing behind them.

After years of entertaining, indulging, and dismissing comparisons and speculation about his art and Japanese art, Francis finally arrived at a place of comfort with the idea that his sensibility and the Japanese sensibility had come into sync.

Perhaps no artworks better illustrated this than two ambitious performance pieces he orchestrated in the late 1960s. For Sky Painting (1966), he hired five helicopters to fly over Tokyo Bay, spraying canisters of colored gas in a broad, arcing, aerial dance of gesture and chroma: yellow, red, blue, magenta, and white. The Tokyo-based newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun had commissioned the piece, and Francis eagerly accepted, riding along in one of the choppers, directing the action, and taking photographs.

The old Army Air Reserves man was back in the sky once more. The following year he created Ski/ Snow Painting for a ski resort in the mountain town of Naibara, dispatching skiers rather than helicopters to once again paint the air with color. As Peter Selz describes it: “He designed a pattern according to which colored smoke was ejected from canisters held by a number of skiers. A moving configuration of mysterious colored veils was seen against the white mountainside, an eloquent comment on man’s relationship to nature” (1975, 95). He had used the sky and the snow as negative space as surely as he

209

One of the world’s preeminent Abstract Expressionists, California-born painter Sam Francis (1923–1994) first traveled to Japan in 1957, quickly established studios and residences there, and became active in a circle of avant-garde artists, writers, filmmakers, architects, and composers, including members of the nascent Gutai and Mono-ha movements. This book chronicles those connections as well as his complex and evolving relationship with East Asian aesthetics from the 1950s through the 1990s.

From the very first exhibitions Francis had in Tokyo, critics linked his evocative use of negative space with the Japanese concept of ma (間), a symbolically rich interval between objects or ideas. This shared pictorial and philosophical syntax laid the foundation for a feedback loop of mutual influence that spurred frequent collaborations between the artist and his Japanese contemporaries, extending into the realms of printmaking, ceramics, music, poetry, publishing, and performance.

This is the first full-length monograph to explore an important but sometimes overlooked milieu in postWorld War II art—a dialogue between Eastern and Western sensibilities that prefigured our current era of global interconnectedness and cross-cultural exchange.

Printed in Italy ISBN 978-3-85881-861-4

SCHEIDEGGER & SPIESS

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