The Work during the Mouring: Going to Heaven

TitleThe Work during the Mouring: Going to Heaven
Artist星野真吾 HOSHINO Shingo
Date1965
Mediumcolor and collage on paper
Dimensions183.0×90.9
ClassificationJapanese-style Paintings
Accession NumberJJ198200012000
SummaryThe artist later recalled seeing many burnt corpses during wartime when he was called up for student mobilization. He was reminded of these tragic scenes again when his father died in 1964. At the time, he was experimenting with avant-garde style in an attempt to introduce innovations into Japanese-style painting, and he was looking for a way of expressing himself directly and physically rather than just finding a new abstract or visionary style. The impact of his father’s death led him to try something new, applying paint to his own body and transferring it directly onto the canvas, resulting in a body-print technique unprecedented in Japanese-style painting. In addition to body prints, he also began incorporating familiar objects and finely rendered photographic portraits of people connected to him. In these works, he used visible forms to evoke invisible ideas, especially the precariousness of human life.

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