Scarcity, Abundance, & Imagination: An Interview with Makoto Fujimura

an interview with Makoto Fujimura

Makoto Fujimura is an internationally renowned artist, writer, and speaker. His artwork, which draws on traditional Japanese techniques, has been categorized as “slow art.” In April of 2019, we had the privilege of sitting down with Fujimura for a lively conversation at a coffee shop in St. Louis.

How do you justify spending time, effort and money on art when there are real material needs in the world? Do you think that your lavish use of materials expresses a biblical sense of generosity?

Yeah, so in Mark 14 Jesus responds to Mary breaking that jar worth a year’s wages. I don’t know what the average income in St. Louis is, but probably like $65,000 dollars, right? So, she held this $65,000 jar and wasted it that evening before Jesus was to go to the Cross. And the disciples answered with a very pragmatic answer that the world gives any artist, “You should not be wasting your time playing music when the world is stricken with poverty and all these issues, disease and all these issues.” The epistemic assumption which you have to go after is the notion of scarcity. There’s a faith in scarcity, that we have either succumbed to or believe in so much that it threatens our existence if somebody breaks open a jar of nard and wastes it. And Judas’ reaction was the reaction that everyone has: “you could have sold that and given the money away!” Jesus’ answer is “leave her alone.” That’s the Gospel. “Leave her alone. She has done a beautiful thing to me and wherever the Gospel is told, what she has done will also be told.”

The Gospel of Jesus is one of abundance. It causes you to shift from the epistemology of scarcity to the epistemology of abundance. It has to. Where is that extravagance? Where is that gratuitous excess? Where is that bold risk when you proclaim the gospel?

I no longer justify what I do as an artist just because I’m an artist. I defend it because of the Gospel. I say this is important to me, not just because I save up to get the best gold, the best materials possible. I do it not because I want to create beauty, but because our Lord deserves it and this is about the Gospel. Unless I do this, some part of me is living in the scarcity mindset; some part of me

is succumbing to pragmatism, utility and efficiency. So people who live in a scarcity mindset—it doesn’t matter if they’re billionaires living on Wall Street or somebody in a poor district in the South—there will be people who are living next door who live in abundance, not from what they have, but in their minds and in their hearts.

When my mother passed away, I painted the casket before it was cremated. Fortunately, a lot of my work is on paper so I can do the prep work in my studio, load it up, and bring it. And so here’s what I did: I used the best materials—it’s my mom, she deserves it—gold and platinum and oyster shell and all that. And I did it on the best paper; fortunately, my training allows me to do this. My brother was like, “Are we going to save this, or...?” And I was like, “No, no, no. The whole purpose is that it’s going to be brought down.” So, the most meaningful art that I did in my life lasted 24 hours. The most meaningful work was to be burnt up with my mom. And she deserves it because she gave me this gift and she is the one that nurtured it and allowed me the confidence to be an artist, and I want to honor her, send her off in the right way.

You know, a friend of mine who is an architect said when Princess Diana died, there were millions of roses on London Square. And he said, “Did anybody think that was extravagant or wasteful?” So the question is not, “Is it expensive?” The question is, “Is the person, the object of whatever you’re honoring, worth that extravagance?” If Princess Diana deserved that, then there’s no question when you’re talking about Jesus! I mean, if you don’t believe that Jesus was the Son of God, maybe it looks stupid. But shouldn’t we look stupid to an unbelieving world with our generosity and with our beauty and with our mercy? I think that’s great, why not! So that’s the Gospel. It’s not about art or “Is it expensive?” It’s about worship.

In the past you’ve mentioned trauma in association with art and how there is a need for something generative to come out of trauma. In light of being in St. Louis right now, how can art, visual or otherwise, not only reflect but refract tragedy?

It goes back to us being able to collaborate and create something out of tragedy. So the Harlem Renaissance, the history of jazz, the blues—you think about not just the music, but how it comes from a broken place, from a place of darkness. You have to have a language of art that is, in a sense, not marketable or success-driven. You have to return the arts to the gift economy or gift preset, and let it be a gift to the world. And don’t worry about labels or categories, but work on something to create impossibility in a given moment. So you set up impossible scenarios, and these could be anything from a cellist on front lines in Sarajevo playing Bach, or it could be Israeli artists doing graffiti with Palestinian artists on the wall built to separate them. The Lewises and Tolkiens of the world all set up these impossibilities and created work out of them. Just by doing that, you’re reconciling and using the gifts you’ve been given to communicate beyond the lines. It may not look like something that you want to share in Sunday school. It may look rather transgressive, because anything that is prophetic first looks to be transgressive. So we need ways to protect and nurture that work without letting it be shattered by the institutional expectations of the church or university or government. Art needs to be relocated to a place of safety and of experimentation and collaboration. Then I believe you’ll have something lasting that can change the world, but it may not look like it at first.

In light of Tolkein’s artistic and historic context, how do you view his work?

I think Tolkien understood that trauma has to create a new language or else you are basically stuck. If you experience trauma on frontlines with your buddies dying left and right, and if you don’t start to generate something new through that trauma, you succumb to darkness. I think he instinctively understood that. Tolkien suggested writing a fantasy novel, a genre which didn’t exist at the time. He knew that such cataclysmic trauma could not be handled by ordinary means. He had to create a new language; he had to create a new genre. That’s how he dealt with this trauma. That’s how he began his journey. The Silmarillion is basically written in the frontlines fighting against fear and knowing that language has generative power.

I see my materials in the same way. When you are pulverized by life, it’s my materials that tell me that it’s through pulverization that you can contribute, that you can create something new. And frankly, many of the great masterpieces of the world, whether they be literature or art, have come out of trauma. If you remove works that didn’t have something

“The most meaningful art that I did in my life lasted 24 hours.”

Fujimura’s mother’s coffin. Photograph courtesy of the artist.

“When Princess Diana died, there were millions of roses on London Square. [. . .] Did anybody think that was extravagant or wasteful?”

to do with trauma—especially war trauma, cataclysmic trauma—you won’t have 80% of the world’s art. You won’t have Hemingway; you won’t have JD Salinger; you won’t have Dante. The list just goes on and on. So you know, as much as we like to avoid it, it is what civilizations are made of— how we respond to crisis.

How do you define and recognize joy, hope, and love that isn’t saccharine?

Joy and hope are not saccharine. The gospel hope is different from sentimental hope, and gospel joy is different from sentimental joy. So what’s the difference? Gospel hope and joy are certainly born out of pain and difficulty and darkness; but it is also connected with divine love, which is excessive, gratuitous, and beautiful. Love is embodied in sacrifice, it’s a gift of the Spirit that is supernatural. To know is love.

I have a friend who is Korean and goes to this farmer’s market in Seoul. And she said they’re all selling kimchi. They all use the same recipe, the same technique, it’s fermented the same amount, but there’s always this one long line. She says, “I tested it, I’ve tested everyone. There’s no question that grandma’s kimchi is better than the rest.” What’s the difference? I think that it’s love, it’s like the secret ingredient. It’s years and years of loving and knowing and making. And our senses can recognize that, which is amazing.

How would you define your mindset as an artist?

Often, I’m intuitively swimming into my work. Sometimes it takes me years before I can articulate what I did—the human intuition is a far more powerful base of knowledge than we give it credit for. We think knowledge is rational, informational, pragmatic, utility-driven, but really it’s not. Intuitive knowledge is at the base of all knowledge and so I think of my training as an artist is to trust that. Sometimes I don’t have the words to articulate what I’ve just done.

Many times, I wonder about the questions that we ask ourselves—how we define success. They’re often predicated upon things that we don’t think through deeply enough. So we assume that having good grades, resume building, and having a successful career is the goal of life, right? But when you grow older you realize: “I’ve attained so much in life, but it doesn’t really mean much. Like, why did I want those things? Was it so that I could fit in? Or was it so that I could impress people? Impress myself?” Even in art, these kinds of motives are unchecked. So the first thing you have to do as an artist is to just strip them all away from yourself and your art. Then, question deeply why you paint or why you write or why you do anything. If the answer is so that I can show, or I can impress people or I can have this accomplishment on my resume, you never make good work.

In your book, Culture Care, you propose that the church should be an environment where artists have a home base to come back to and be supported. Do you have any ideas about how we achieve this?

I wrote Culture Care as a practical guide for people to begin creating a community around thoughts of abundance, thoughts of how they preach the Gospel. Even if you’re not a Christian, you can do that because of abundance. Every artist has to work from abundance. Otherwise, there’s no reason to do it. It has to transgress against the normative idea of scarcity.

Marva Dawn, a great female theologian, said that “worship is a royal waste of time.” Unless I’m very intentional about wasting my time, about fighting this notion of scarcity, I don’t do it. Every Saturday I would block out two hours with nothing on the calendar. It could be time spent with family, it could be time spent with friends—but with no agenda, just to be present. So I used to call up an artist friend, maybe a Christian, maybe not. And I’d say, “Hey, come along, let’s get coffee. I just wanted to be with you! Let’s waste time together.” And they were like, “Okay, you know, alright, that’s unusual.” But the conversations I had in those times, I still remember—isn’t that funny? I have forgotten almost every single church meeting. But those two hours, I remember. I remember throwing a baseball with my kids. I remember walking with my daughter to SoHo and window shopping. I remember going to get ice cream or donuts. I remember just walking by the river and in the park. How is it that by wasting time, I actually created time. So how do we live like that with generosity, as busy as we are? You’re students so you’re probably packed. And I have a Princeton student that I was mentoring and she decided she was not going to miss a sunset. This was hard, because sometimes she would have to sneak out of her classroom because for one year, she was going to see every sunset possible.