FERENC VARGA
On Sculpting Statues
In the Age of Technoculture and Mass Media
A thesis of sculpture in the age of sculpture’s antithesis
Ph.D Dissertation
Faculty of Fine Arts
Kyoto City University of Arts
2005
Translated from the Hungarian by
WILLIAM PRUNKL
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
First Part:
An Explanation of Four of my Works
1. An Unsuccessful Experiment in Denying the Sculptural Propensity
2. Stone Faces Carved by Human Hands
3. Scroll of Gazes
4. Non-conceptual Statue
Second Part:
The Depths of the Statue’s Quality
1. The level of the sculptor’s way of seeing
2. The joy of work well done, as one of the sources of the statue’s quality
3. On the gaze preserved in the statue
4. On material as the bearer of sculptural quality
Conclusion
Notes
INTRODUCTION
Anyone who wants to sculpt a statue in this day and age must face up to answering even the most
fundamental questions regarding his work. An image carved of real material cannot hope to
compete nowadays with the torrent of images of the virtually real. A machine technology casts
such natural human work into doubt. In this age of popular subcultures and mass media, we can
hardly even speak of such concepts as talent or vocation without irony. The economic model of
consumer society fundamentally delimits our way of thinking, and this perfectly mercantile system
the “spiritual person,” the artist, can hardly avoid.
That I begin my writings here with this summary sketch of the age might make more
believable my claim that I did not become a sculptor due to the influences of my environment.
Indeed, to become a sculptor I have had to stand up to and against the very age in which I live. In
this regard I must mention here a few personal details. My high school teacher actually
recommended against my pursuing my calling as a sculptor, because he feared that in so doing I
would not find my place in modern society. For this reason I studied biology and chemistry at my
first university, and after graduating also taught these subjects in high school. Despite the fact that
I really loved the natural sciences and teaching as well, I nonetheless continued to feel a strong and
unremitting inner drive to sculpt. Thus one day I quit teaching and presented myself at the
Hungarian University of Fine Arts in Budapest. Later I also studied at the Master of Art Training
Institute in Pecs. Though I could learn the sculptor’s art very well at these universities, I
nonetheless gradually had to come to grips with the fact that in the context of contemporary art,
sculpture is unexplainable. As for the works that I prepared at that time, they probably had closest
affinity with the works of the Minimal Art or Arte Povera movements (or to those of the Mono-ha,
the latter’s Japanese equivalent), and because several of my teachers remarked that my work
seemed Japanese, I went to Japan to study. When I began my study at the Kyoto City University of
Arts, however, the Mono-ha school had long since gone out of fashion. In its place I encountered
the young J-pop generation. This encounter, among others, inspired me to thoroughly reexamine
certain theories of contemporary art to conceive for myself what meaning a return to the sculpting
of statues – in the most intrinsic and fundamental sense of the activity – might yet retain, even in
this age.
A work I completed in 2000 marked a changing point in my thinking. This work was a walk. I
selected a pebble from the gravel of a nearby Kyoto parking lot, placed it in my pocket, and
walked with it to the northwest until I reached the Sea of Japan. There I washed the pebble in the
seawater, and walked back with it again to Kyoto. I then set out towards the southeast with the
pebble in my pocket, and walked all the way to the Pacific Ocean. In the water of the ocean, I
washed the pebble. Arriving back in Kyoto, I placed the pebble back in the gravel of the parking
lot where I had found it. I walked 960 kilometers over twenty-two days, in winter, alone – or
rather, together with a pebble. The pebble registered no visible change. This walking work
differed from earlier pilgrimages of Land Art artists in that they generally documented their routes
with photographs. My route I documented with a pebble. A photograph is a copy of the
appearance of reality. A pebble, however, is an actual piece of reality. In the fact that I
documented my walk with a pebble rather than pictures, I sacrificed the demonstrable and the
visible. In place of this sacrificed appearance, however, and embodying the act into the pebble as a
kind of capsule, I achieved a reality.
Superficially it may seem that with this work I have accepted the paradigm that endlessly
expands the boundaries of what can be considered art, so that its concept – already seemingly
boundless – might be expanded yet further. Actually, however, during those twenty-two days of
walking to complete the work, I grew convinced that although the quest for the new is a good thing,
its price includes being unable to use the work of my hands and the sight of my eyes. Talent,
knowledge, the work of hands, and the sight of eyes bear the very significance of being. Their
denial is a waste. From the point of this realization all other motivations gradually began to lose
significance for me. Ever clearer became my understanding that I could not find the inner cause of
this propensity to sculpt in anything other than in the desire to use my hands and my eyes. These
very words – “my hands move” – “my eyes see” – present such profound meaning, however, that I
chose to assign them as the very basis for the explanation of my work.
Thus my research began in nothing more or less than the moving of hands and the seeing of
eyes. I embarked on a series of experiments to discover the sculptor’s place in an age that does not
accommodate his work. I first tested myself to see if I might be able to free myself from the
propensity to sculpt, as the message I receive unceasingly from the age in which I live is that it
would be better for me to abandon sculpture. I explored further to discover whether certain
irreplaceably sculptural qualities might exist, that is, qualities that are born only through the work
of the sculptor’s hand and eye, and which cannot be reproduced even by a theoretical machine
technology in the present or future. My works, then, were experiments. At the same time, while
these experiments do conceptualize the notion of sculpture, they are themselves statues in form and
substance, more exactly, stone figure statues, in fact, self-portraits. At first hearing the notion of
conceptually carving self-portraits may sound self-contradictory, but I would suggest that the
simple source of this impression is that the concepts of contemporary art tend in their majority
toward the antithesis of sculpture. What might prevent us, then, from once producing not another
antithesis of sculpture, but rather a concept that becomes its thesis? This in fact was the very
method of my work: finding out that experimental conceptual method that would serve not as the
antithesis of sculpture, but as its thesis. Let us examine now these experiments in turn, and see
where they lead us!
First Part
AN EXPLANATION OF FOUR OF MY WORKS
1. An Unsuccessful Experiment in Denying the Sculptural Propensity
In those times and cultures which forbid, oppose, and denigrate sculpture, or simply do not allow it
a place, two options remain for one who would yet sculpt statues. Either he extinguishes in himself
the propensity to sculpt so that he might call himself a member of society, or he severs every
connection with his environment, frees himself from dependence on his society and his age, and
creates a place for himself and for his statues – alone, in this great wide world. I proposed to
myself the following hypothesis in regard to this extinguishing of the inner drive to sculpt. If I
create the most utterly primordial and fundamental statue that I can ever even theoretically
produce, then the need to continue sculpting ceases to have any meaning, as I have thus completed
its final task. He who descends to the bottom of the sea can descend no deeper. The desire to go
deep must disappear of its own accord once we touch the sea floor. Likewise the sculptural
propensity must disappear, once we have sculpted the fundamental statue.
The self-portrait is the statue closest to the subject. In the case of the self-portrait the sculpting
hand and the sculpted hand, the eye that sees and the eye seen, are in a particular way inseparable.
No object can be more primary than the self-portrait. Compared to it any other figure, any other
form is circumstantial, special, or willfully designated. The abstraction or stylization, the
transcription of natural forms depends on the sculptor’s taste, intention, and judgment, and thus any
form partaking of his style is circumstantial, special, and willfully designated: qualities
contradicting the requirements of primacy. The primary, the fundamental statue must be sculpted
as naturally as possible, with as little stylization as possible. No form can be more fundamental
than the naturalistic self-portrait, life-size, full-body, in the most natural unforced physical position,
that is, lying down.
For the purposes of this experiment, one which intends to delve into and understand the very
depths of sculpture, and whose objective is no less than the sculpting of the primordial statue, a
corresponding and appropriate material is necessary: one which will remain unchanged for as long
as possible in the future, and at the same time, which demands for its working to completion the
greatest technical sculptural skill, the most intense manual labor. For these reasons I chose a hard
stone, black granite, for the statue.
I put my own clothes on the statue, clothes I had actually worn, and in this the work exceeded
mere resemblance to its subject, achieving actual identity with it. In the interest of the unity of the
statue and its clothes, I carved one of its shirt buttons out of stone.
I chiseled a sphere-shaped space within the eyeballs of the statue, a space likening to the form
of the inner transparent material of my own eyes. Where my eyes are transparent, let the eyes of
the statue be transparent as well. Through a small hole in the discus of the pupil one could peer
into the empty dark space of the statue’s eye. As I register the phenomenal world on the inner
surface of my eyes rather than the outer, I judged the inner surface more essential. Let the eye
surface forms of the fundamental statue resemble the truly essential forms of my eyes. Peering into
the eyes of the statue, I could perceive on my own actual retina the image of the sculpted retina of
the stone eyes. I brought sculptor and statue, subject and object together in a relationship as close
as possible between the retinas of eyes staring into one another.
With the help of mirrors and photographs I fashioned a life-size copy of my own nude body
out of clay, in as precise and detailed a manner as such material and techniques allowed. I then
prepared a plaster mold of the figure, on which I worked out yet further details, and finally carved
the granite statue on the basis of the plaster model. I transferred the form of the plaster model onto
the stone using a traditional pointing tripod technique. Finally I carved very fine details especially
on the face, hands, and feet of the granite statue, details impossible on the plaster model, as only
stone could sustain them. The work took ten continuous months, working practically every day,
from early morning until late at night.
The experiment was not successful in eradicating the desire to sculpt from my consciousness.
I have a strong suspicion that for me there will be no more opportunities to deny the sculpting of
statues. I have come to describe my state of mind during the sculpting of a statue as that of a
“person in his place.” This is the state of one who completes his task, who fulfills his life’s
calling. I cannot imagine a state more honorable than that of a person in his place. No other state
of being can possibly compare for me with this idea of a person in his place: not the state of one
“discovering the new,” nor that of a person “meeting the expectations of his age,” nor that of one
“working for the good of society.”
If even after so much toil and effort a person cannot escape his propensity to sculpt statues,
then we must determine that a certain “image-sculptor archetype” exists. Image-sculpting is no
mere cultural apparatus occasioned by the necessities of society, religion, or politics, but rather the
natural, irresistible, and undeniable propensity of certain people, independent of their times and
cultures, which certain societies have used to their advantage, and others have marginalized or
even prohibited. In other words, the origin of image-sculpting is not found in some public social
stipulation, but rather emerges from a natural inner propensity of certain people. I do not cast doubt
with this statement on the significance of the cultural lineage of certain image forms, nor on the
theoretical importance of the paradigm of individual art-historical periods. In asserting that even in
iconoclastic periods (that give voice to theories announcing the end of sculpture), certain people
are born who are unable to deny their propensity to sculpt statues, I merely mean to emphasize that
in the course of art-history societal institutions have offered only very superficial explanations of
sculpture. Independent of the possibility of better times and cultures, we must search for the origin
and final reason for sculpture within the image-sculptor himself.
「鳥飛んで鳥の如し。」 “The bird files, and it is like a bird.”(1)
The sculptor carves statues, and is like a sculptor.
After a year of consideration, I judged that it would be best to destroy the statue. But in fact I
cannot rightfully call it a statue, and it was for this very reason that I had to smash it into tiny
pieces. It was not a statue purely, but rather a conceptual work. Its completion was meaningful as
an experiment and nothing more. I achieved the results of the experiment, and the work thus
fulfilled its purpose. I can confidently write now, however, that I will conduct no such experiments
in the future. From this point on I want only to sculpt good statues, and should I succeed in doing
so, will not destroy them.
2. Stone Faces Carved by Human Hands
It is impossible to carve a neutral face. Without exception some expressive aspect – a gaze – will
appear, even if the sculptor doesn’t want it to. The face of a statue gazes not only because its form
is that of a face, but also because a person carved it, because it is the work of human hands and
human eyes. With extensive practice it is possible for the sculptor to direct the facial expression of
a statue, but the existence of its gaze does not emerge from his will. The sculptor himself is the
most surprised when in the course of carving the work suddenly the gaze appears, and as the work
progresses, an ever-changing, endless richness of subtle facial expression. I seized on this
experience for the concept of Stone Faces Carved by Human Hands.
First of all I prepared a clay copy of my face and cast it in plaster. On the basis of the plaster
model I carved stone faces out of hard dark stone using hand-held instruments (that is, only a
hammer, chisel, and sanding stones) precisely, sensitively, humanly, with a sculptor’s bearing. I
carved several faces from the same plaster model. Despite the fact that the model for the faces was
the same, however, and that each face was its exact copy, a different gaze emerged on each face.
The only explanation for this fact is that human hands carved the faces, not a machine. The
person in his place, filled with the joy of being that good work brings, does not work in order that
he might express something. In the traces of the work of the hands and eyes an endless richness of
ineffable meanings accumulate. At their appearance the sculptor himself is amazed, as they have
been born of his hands and eyes, but not of his will. What could be a greater novelty than that for
which its creator too is a surprise?
Walter Benjamin’s position, that serially reproduced works lose their “aura,” their selfparticular, here and now quality, obtains only in the case of mechanical reproduction.(2) However
many times I might carve that same statue from the same stone source, even if its copies resemble
each other so much as to be mistaken one for another, each one will possess a self-particular, here
and now quality. The reason for this is that a mortal human being has sculpted them, who, though
carving a copy of the same form again and again, has in so doing made use of unrepeatable periods
of his lifetime. From this fact emerges the “self-particular quality.” In the case of a machine, it
makes no sense to speak of the unrepeatable periods of its life, thus in the machine’s work there is
no “self-particular quality.”
In the course of carving the same face several times one comes intimately to know the
differences between the work of a human being and that of a machine – the subtle facial
expressions in their infinite variation and, more mysteriously, the tiny emerging differentiations of
the power of the gaze. A robot will never be able to carve a statue with a luminous gaze. Or
perhaps it is enough to say that a human being will never recognize any real gaze in a statue carved
by a machine. Only human hands can carve a human face.
Acheiropoietos (painted not by hands) was the name given to that curious icon of the
Byzantine tradition considered as a divinely created image. In those times, when master artisans
still painted images, there came a need for an image attributable not to man, but to his origin, to
God. Nowadays it can hardly be considered in the natural order of things that a human being
would paint or sculpt images. These days machines prepare the images. We have gradually come
to a state of affairs in which we must look on an image actually painted or sculpted by human
hands as a kind of relic: an image created not by machines, but by the creator of machines. Such
images, the “amechanepoietos” (painted not by machine) of our day and age, closely approximate
in their supernatural significance the Akheiropoietos of the Byzantine tradition. The Byzantines
considered a beautiful image as a kind of miracle, a glimmer of the divine. We in turn must
consider as a miracle an image in which there persists even a little something human.
3. Scroll of Gazes
The idea for the Scroll of Gazes grew from the previous work. When I lined up the stone faces
and, as an experiment, drew irises onto their eyes with a white pencil, I encountered an amazing
sight. The contour of the eight eyes on the four faces implied a chain, a geometric pattern differing
from the organic forms of the faces precisely for this geometric quality. I saw in fact a kind of
double image, like an image drawn separately on two glass panes set exactly on top of one another,
and then displaced in a slight shift. As the iris is a circular form, the irises of the right and left eyes
are interchangeable, and the face itself can be rotated about the circumference of the iris. With this
emerged the Scroll of Gazes, an infinite series of interlaid faces, in which the irises of the eyes
form stabile and unchanging circumference centers, and about which the faces can be rotated at
will and endlessly. The contours of the faces dissolve into chaos, while the irises of the eyes
organize into a kind of crystalline grid.
All the macroscopic forms of the human body are organic with the exception of the quasigeometric form of the iris. Through these circular forms we look out upon the world. Even if we
grant Jean-Luc Nancy his assertion that “our world no longer wants to mean the cosmos,”(3)
nonetheless we look at that world through the circles of the iris. Even if we see the world
described in Baudrillard’s writings, one fractal, fragmented, wreaked into parts,(4) we still have no
other eyes to see it, than ones in which the iris is round.
Scroll of Gazes (detail)
4. Non-conceptual Statue
This work was created to be nothing other than a well-sculpted statue. This was my most important
work to date, a summarizing work. I reach far enough with this work to make meaningless talk of
the styles and trends of our age, the market and the theater of its art world. The work makes no
meaningful allusion to any transient societal or political problems, says nothing about individual
style, says nothing new, interesting, or peculiar. Only the work of the hands and eyes remains.
Even expressions of “my hands” or “my eyes” lose their significance. Only two expressions retain
any meaning: the “work of hands,” the “sight of eyes.”
I chose the human form as the subject for the statue, and within this, the self-portrait. The
carving of the human face is after all the most difficult task in sculpture, and thus offers the greatest
possibility to do work well.
The relationship between man and stone, between someone and something, can be called a
dialogue only if it occurs strictly between the two of them, with no interference from a third person
or thing. If I accord importance to this dialogue between man and stone, between someone and
something, then I can choose no other subject than that of the self-portrait.
It is possible to carve a self-portrait, possible to make a copy of one’s own face, with a cast of
mind that does not claim it as one’s own, that sees it rather as simply a piece of nature. And in
truth, I would only be able to claim my face as my own if I had myself created it. But I did not
create my face. I merely received it. What is more, I did not receive it forever, and must
eventually return it. My face in fact forms a part of nature. A self-portrait carved with this cast of
mind has nothing to do with self-expression. Such a self-portrait is motivated by the strong
conviction on its creator’s part that he must use his hands and eyes – which likewise he has merely
borrowed for the purpose of making use of them. To this conviction belongs the search for
primordiality, and the most primordial image is the self-portrait.
What serves the ego as a truly effective tool in its ascendancy, in its preservation and
continuity, is not its image after all, but its name. If I do not write my name on my self-portrait, in
a few generations’ time no one will know whom it portrays. The image loses its connection to my
individuality, and will be nothing more than the portrait of a person. A name, however, cannot
likewise lose its identity, because name is identity itself.(5) If we find a statue at an archeological
dig inscribed with the portrayed subject’s name, everyone naturally considers it the image of that
historical person. To that sculpted wood or stone is ascribed the identity of some poet or warlord
from long ago. If however we find a statue with no name inscribed upon it, we consider it the
statue of someone, as the statue of a person. Should my colleagues who know me doubt that I did
not carve my self-portrait for the purposes of self-expression, I can chisel at its base the words
“someone” or “just a person.” What a beautiful state to be simply “someone.” Not “anyone,” but
“someone.” Not just anyone, like a machine produced in series, but just someone, like a person
without a name. The question comes up then: for whom is the statue created? The answer is
logical. As “someone” and not “anyone” created the statue, it follows that “someone” and not
“anyone” should behold and receive it.
Here I should make mention of a thought concerning the place of sculpture. There were times
and cultures whose religious or social institutions ensured a place for sculpture. Since ancient
times sculptors have carved statues for sacred places, temples, tombs. Such institutions served as
authentic places for these sculptures, carved as they were with these very places in mind. The
museum, whose conservational and instructive functions as a social institution deserve admiration,
can yet hardly be called an authentic place for sculpture. Though the builders of the sacred sites
and temples of antiquity believed that they prepared such places for eternity, the founders of the
modern museum, standing above the ruins of some holy ground, can hardly have believed in the
eternity of their museum. Contemporary art galleries neatly and unambiguously conform in their
system to the structure of consumer market society. The exhibitions follow one after another in a
weekly rhythm. Though this system allows for quick changes in the art market, and gives everquickening opportunity for up-and-coming generations of artists to take the places of their
predecessors, it is not suitable for the preservation of artwork. The gallery gives to the work’s
exhibition a mere one or two weeks – not to mention, of course, that its authenticity as a “place”
for artwork is highly questionable from the outset. The opinions which pronounce the arenas of
mass-media or the world-wide-web as the authentic “places” for the images of our day are
obviously meaningless for the sculptor, as neither mass-media nor the world-wide-web are suitable
for the transmission and preservation of his work.
If then there exists in the present age no established place for the statue, does this mean that
the sculpting of statues should be abandoned? Not at all. The attitude allowing institutions or the
market to influence an artist’s work is one I consider insufficiently resolved. Let him who has
hands use them. Let him who has eyes use them. One cannot so entrust the value of human hands
and eyes to transient institutions and capricious markets. One can sculpt a statue in this day and
age, and it is not necessary to destroy the statue. There does exist a “place” for the statue, one that
does not pass away. The “place” of the statue is nothing other than its fate. I mean this as
seriously as possible. I name the “place” of the statue as its fate itself.
That the statue’s place is no other than its fate pertains not only to the statues of our age. It
pertains to any statue that has ever been or will be. The sculptors of ancient times worked with the
sacred site in mind, but at the same time unwittingly worked for another “place,” one yet even
more enduring. Even if the sacred site collapses to ruin, the statue’s fate as a “place” remains.
Even if we cannot name the museum as the authentic place for the statue, we can trust that it will
yet be afforded a “place,” one faithfully preserving its authenticity. That place is the statue’s fate.
Second Part
THE DEPTHS OF THE STATUE’S QUALITY
Often we hear opinions suggesting that sculpting a good statue is a simple matter of technique. If it
is purely a technical problem, however, it can hardly be worth an artist’s time. A person who has
actually had the experience of sculpting a statue and knows how good it feels to do so, can hardly
understand such facile opinions. I feel it is necessary for me to write a few thoughts about what
can actually be said about a good statue – what other layers of depth and quality it possesses –
aside from its technical considerations.
1. The level of the sculptor’s way of seeing
There were times when it was not necessary for a sculptor to write a defense of his way of seeing,
because no one doubted that he needed to use his eyes. Writing here of this way of seeing,
however, as a component of both the sculptor’s knowledge and the statue’s quality, I must
emphasize that I speak of a way of seeing and not a way of thinking. Many branches of knowledge
are built upon conceptual or operative thought, but the artist, however accomplished he may be,
remains in some sense an amateur in his conceptual or operative thinking. In this regard what
distinguishes the sculptor’s art is precisely this sculptor’s way of seeing. Necessary for its
development are a great deal of study and an exceptionally good eye – that is, a mind that sees well
and explains well what it sees. Ecological experiments have proven that proper seeing is a learned
skill. If newborn kittens are placed in a box whose walls are covered exclusively with horizontal
stripes, the kittens learn to see the image of horizontal lines, but not vertical ones. When they are
taken out of the box, they avoid wires strung horizontally, but run into vertical ones. We begin to
see as soon as we come into this world, and continue to study passively throughout our lives. The
sculptor, however, to deepen his visual ability, must learn to see not passively, but consciously and
actively.
Two critical processes define the method of this visual study: the understanding of what is
seen, and the presentation of what is understood. The skills of understanding and presenting what
is seen are nominally taught in any number of art schools around the world, yet it is hardly possible
these days to meet with a young sculptor whose works clearly demonstrate that he knows how to
see. In fact though this does not matter much today, as no one talks in contemporary art about the
ability to see. But let us think about what sorts of perspectives are at stake. The structure of what
is seen, that is, how the sight is put together – how, for example, the structure of the human body is
no less interesting than the architectural construction of a pagoda or cathedral: its mass, weight,
and balance; the proportions of the form in their tension or laxity; the rhythm of the form, its
composition, harmony, contrast; its convex and concave forms breathing, its spatiality and rotation;
how the good statue draws the observer’s attention around about it; the dance of its lines, its
definition in space; the presence of symmetry and asymmetry; the dynamics of light upon the
surface of the material; the certain dependence of the form on its material, how in rendering a clay
model into bronze one must see differently than when rendering it into stone. And the list goes on.
The sculptor can experience new depths in his knowledge of seeing with every single sculpture he
prepares.
2. The joy of work well done, as one of the sources of the statue’s quality
Here is the deeper layer in the sculptor’s way of seeing. A listener can feel the musician’s joy in
his joyfully performed music, and this joy makes the music meaningful. In the same way an
observer can feel the joy in a joyfully sculpted statue. This joy is not the same as the pleasant
cheer to be gained through entertainment. What we are discussing here, rather than cheerfulness,
would be better called happiness. Cheerfulness cannot be sad, but happiness can. The state of
happiness emerges when one is in his place, when he completes his work, his task. A joy of a
certain ontological significance accompanies work well done. The joy of living won from work
consists of two aspects, the joy of knowing and the joy of doing. This joy of living won from work
is reflected in the statue, and from it the statue obtains its meaning – its sculptural meaning. I have
encountered similar thoughts in the writings of the Indian Coomarswamy and Jean Baudrillard as
well.
In India, Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy represented that line of philosophy that sought out
the common values shared between the cultures of the East and West, rather than their differences.
He considered the work of master craftsmen working in traditional, non-industrialized societies as
the authentic form of art. He based his criticism on the recognition that in the process of
industrialization and mass production, the relationship to work changes for most people, and with
this the very meaning of the word “work” degenerates. In the place of work as vocation emerges
the notion of work as mere means to make money. Joy accompanies the work embraced as one’s
vocation, but not that engaged in for mere money. For this reason persons who work merely for
money have need for substitute joys, for hobbies, games, and entertainments. In such an age lurks
the danger that the art understood in the past as the fruit of vocation will come itself to be listed
among those substitute joys.
To see the insights in Coomaraswamy’s thought it suffices first for us simply to examine how
the words related to work have changed. The word “robot” originates from the Slavic languages,
in which it has the meaning “work.” According to its origins then we might call “robot” those tools
and devices which do work and which deserve therefore that we give the name of work to them.
These robots, these devices nonetheless are made by human beings, just as hammers are made by
blacksmiths. Now, however, it is not the person who does the work with the device, but the device
itself that does the work, while the person names the device itself “work” (“robot”). One has given
up work, this treasure and wonder, which was never called easy, but which was used in such
dignified and significant expressions as “work well done” or “honest, honorable work.” Now one
has given up this treasure and wonder, this source of joy, to a device, a machine, which cannot
know what to do with the gift as the machine is incapable of joy. I write here not of the enforced
or slave labor of sickly societies, but of the work of the master craftsmen of healthy ones. For such
masters, work is a vocation, and its completion a joy. This joy lends to their work a kind of quality
that a machine will never be able to produce.
Not only the meaning of “work” was so abused. The word “professional” has for the most part
practically inverted its meaning. In the original Latin the word professio meant a public
declaration of the essence of one’s creed and concept, that is to say, implied work done in
consciousness of some inner calling, sense of mission, or conviction. This work often called for
special talent and training as well. Thus originally a “professional” was one who worked not for
money, but out of conviction, from a sense of vocation. What has become of this word! Could we
dare to say of the pro boxers and photographers of our age that they work first of all not for money,
but in obligation to some inner calling? Today instead it is the amateur (Latin: amo, French:
aimer) who works for love rather than money. Yet there is a significant difference between an
amateur and a person who works out of a sense of vocation. The amateur does what he loves in his
hobbies, his games, his entertainments. One who works from a sense of vocation, however, does
what he does not merely because he loves it, but because he must do it, because his vocation calls
him to it. This work he loves to do, of course, but his motivation does not consist merely in his
desire and pleasure but in the knowledge of what gifts he has received, and the knowledge that the
world needs the fruits of those gifts. Thus an amateur may give up his hobby, but one who works
from a sense of vocation cannot give up his work. Should he give it up, this would not mean the
renunciation of his own desire, but rather the denial of the calling of his talents. What the amateur
gains in his hobby I prefer to call cheerfulness, while the joy of one who pursues his vocation I call
happiness. I certainly do not mean in this to denigrate cheerfulness, but do assign priority to
happiness.
“It is, then, by the notion of a vocational living, as distinguished from earning
one’s living by working at a job, regardless of what it may be, that the difference
between the museum objects and those in the department store can be best
explained. Under those conditions, which have been those of all non-industrial
societies, that is to say when each man makes one kind of thing, doing only that work
for which he is therefore destined, Plato reminds us that ‘more will be done, and
better done than in any other way.’ Under these conditions a man at work is doing
what he likes best, and the pleasure that he takes in his work perfects the operation.
We see the evidence of this pleasure in the Museum objects, but not in the products
of chain-belt operation, which are more like those of the chain-gang than like those of
men who enjoy their work.”(6)
“…there is a profound distinction between the deliberate pursuit of pleasure and
the enjoyment of pleasures proper to active or contemplative life. It is one of the
greatest counts against our civilization, that the pleasures afforded by art, whether in
the making of or subsequent appreciation, are not enjoyed or even supposed to be
enjoyed by the workman at work. It is taken for granted that while at work we are
doing what we like least, and while at play what we should wish to be doing all the
time. And this is part of what we meant by speaking of our depreciated standards of
life: it is not so shocking that the workman should be underpaid, as that he should not
be able to delight as much in what he does for hire as in what he does by free choice.
As Meister Eckhart says, ‘the craftsman likes talking of his handicraft’: but the
factory worker likes talking of the ball game! It is an inevitable consequence of
production under such conditions that quality is sacrificed to quantity: an industry
without art provides a necessary apparatus of existence, houses, clothing, frying pans,
and so forth, but an apparatus lacking the essential characteristics of things made by
art, the characteristics, viz., of beauty and significance. Hence we say that the life
what we call civilized is more nearly animal and mechanical life than a human life;
and that in all these respects it contrasts unfavorably with the life of savages, of
American Indians for example, to whom it had never occurred that manufacture, the
activity of making things for use could ever be made an artless activity.”(7)
Coomaraswamy wrote these lines in 1937 and 1941, respectively. Many decades later, in an
already much more technically advanced age, Jean Baudrillard wrote of a human principle even
theoretically irreplaceable by machine technology.
“What must always distinguish the way humans function from the way machines
function, even the most intelligent of machines, is the intoxication, the sheer pleasure,
that humans get from functioning. The invention of a machine that can feel pleasure
is something – happily – that is still beyond human capacity. All kinds of spare parts
are available to humans to help them to gratification, but none as yet been devised
that could take pleasure in their stead. There are prostheses that can work better than
humans (or in place of humans), but there is no such thing, from the point of view of
technology or in terms of the media, as a replacement for human pleasure, or for the
pleasure of being human. For that to exist, machines would have to have an idea of
man, have to be able to invent man – but inasmuch as man has already invented them,
it is too late for that. That is why man can always be more than he is, whereas
machines can never be more than they are.”(8)
Baudrillard names this “intoxication of feeling” or “sheer pleasure of being human” as the
specifically human principle that a machine technology can never replace. Baudrillard’s words
resonate with those of Coomaraswamy, who describes as “the pleasures proper to active or
contemplative life” and “the pleasure of work” as that which filled the work of the craftsmen of
traditional cultures with art, and which has been lost in the work of modern man.
In Stone Faces Carved by Human Hands I made visible that sculptural quality that a machine
can never produce, that can only be achieved by the work of human hands. A friend of mine
brought to my attention that for contemporary observers, my work is literally unbelievable. Even if
they see them, even if they touch them, they cannot believe that such works exist. The practical
people of our age do after all think practically, and for them the existence of a stone statue carved
through long and exhaustive manual labor is incompatible with rational thought. They will rather
think that someone simply prepared a plaster mold of his own face, and then cast its negative four
times in black-colored plastic. A work that can be completed in less than two days. A few might
recognize that the Stone Faces truly are of stone, and they set hard to thinking how a sculptor
might actually carve four identical faces. It would sooner occur to them that through some special
high-temperature technology even stone could be melted and cast, than that the sculptor might
simply have sculpted the faces. Others might think that by using the mold of the face as a model,
or by using a spatial scanner, a robot carved the faces. The observers will contemplate every
conceivable newfangled method and technology before even considering the purest, simplest, most
natural solution – and for many even its possibility will not occur. The idea that someone would
make a model of his face using a mirror, and from the basis of its plaster mold would carve its copy
in stone by hand several times – using hammer, chisel, and polishing stone – contradicts rational,
practical thought. This work did after all take eight full months to complete, and moreover is a kind
of work not just anyone can do. In our time the most natural way is the least natural. In this age of
the machine and the mass, if we search for the meaning of honorably accomplished, high-quality
natural work, we can hardly find our footing.
Earlier I produced various kinds of work and it was not easy to explain what they shared in
common. What could be common among a walking pilgrimage, an ink drawing, and a stone
sculpture? With the help of my friend’s criticism I found the answer. From the point of view of
the practically thinking observer, all of my former works are madness. I walked 960 kilometers
from sea to sea with a pebble in my pocket. When I returned, many people asked me questions like
“Why didn’t you just take a car?” or “You mean you really didn’t hitchhike?” The work would
have lost its meaning if I went by car instead of walking. There is little sense in the notion of
honestly, honorably traveling 960 kilometers by car. Honestly, honorably walking 960 kilometers
– this means something. For the year I sat on that ladder drawing the tree, many people asked me
why I didn’t just take a photograph. The work would have lost all meaning were it not drawn.
There is no difference between a photo and a drawing other than that my hand moves as I draw.
And yet it is just this moving, precisely this moving of a human hand that fills the work with
meaning. The stone sculpture can be similarly explained. Stone, particularly hard stone,
represents the material most difficult – and thus least practical – to work with. For precisely this
reason, hard stone gives the greatest possibility for hard work, impossible to complete except
honorably.
I see the possibility that we consider the work of carving itself as one of the sources of the
sculptural power of a good statue, but only if we understand that work as the fruit of vocation.
Then the joy of living born of work well done fills the statue with quality, and that joy radiates out
to sensitive observers. I consider it possible to create a statue that would transmit no other message
than that it was thus well and joyfully sculpted. Such a message is especially important in our age,
the age of the machine and the mass.
One Hundred Thousand Leaves
2001, ink drawing, japanese paper, 10x13 m
(at work)
“For the year I sat on that ladder drawing the tree...”
3. On the gaze preserved in the statue
When a sculptor looks and sees, his eyes engage in not merely perceptual, but also active work.
The material then preserves the traces of his seeing-work. For this reason I can assert that
sculpture in its purest form is nothing other than the gaze rendered to material. I consider this
definition of sculpture to come closest to the word’s semantic center, and to explain in the deepest
sense sculpture’s origin, essence, and objective. Let us try now to approximate in words this layer
of sculpture’s meaning, which should prove no easy task, as it exists beyond the boundaries of
conceptual or operative thought.
In Poetics Aristotle explains the joy of seeing pictures and statues as the joy of the experience
of things and the gaining of knowledge.(9) (10) Seeing painted and sculpted images is indeed a source
of joy, in this we can agree with Aristotle. When however we examine this concept of seeing as a
source of joy from the perspective of the statue carver, and if we want to make use of that concept
in an explanation of sculpture, then we cannot be satisfied with the Aristotelian understanding. For
the sculptor the eyes do not function merely to experience things, because the sculptor also uses his
eyes to do active work. For the sculptor seeing forms a source of joy not merely in its
accommodation of the experience of things, but also because the sculptor works with his seeing.
From seeing as merely the experience of things we can attain merely the joy of the experience of
things. The sculptor, however, can have the joy of work as well, from seeing as the work of the
eyes. The joy of work consists in the joy of ability and the joy of function. The statue created in
joy preserves the traces of its maker’s joyful work, and transmits this to its observer. This joyful
work the statue preserves becomes its value as a sculpture. The material of the statue preserves
traces of the joyful work of its sculptor’s eyes: through this assessment I initially approach
understanding the gaze preserved in the statue.
Konrad Fiedler and his followers, Max Imdahl(11) and Gottfried Boehm,(12) wrote of the
transition from denotative sight to “seeing sight.” Their theory served as an explanation for both
Impressionism and Abstract Sublime painting. Incidentally, Kitaro Nishida’s aesthetics also owe
much to Fiedler’s thought.(13)(14) The explanation of my work connects with the aesthetic
implications of “seeing sight” thinking inasmuch as its proponents considered “sight, as thought” to
be ascendant over conceptual thinking; and I too have exclusively determined the work of the eyes
and hands as the basis of my thought.
“Fiedler […] demonstrates that the eye creates sensory meaning in an artistic
image. It does so not by reflecting the process of what is seen, but through the
activity of the artistic hand (its ‘expressive movement’) that extends over and beyond
the point where merely contemplative observation and interaction stops short. The
“blind” hand brings forth from seeing its own transcendence. Despite the immanent
limitation of the seeing process, this activity is not something that exceeds seeing,
but is – toying with a paradox – rather the immanent transcendence of the visible
itself.”(15)
Some point of similarity may be discovered between Fiedler’s theory and my explanation of
my work, but in fact the two strands of thought represent the inverse of one another. Both my and
Fiedler’s thinking link the eye and hand together, so intimately in fact that the two organs
participate in, if not actually take on, each other’s work. Fiedler calls the blind hand a sensory
organ, while I use the expression that the sculptor sculpts with his sight. Fiedler’s thought embarks
from a theory of sensation, while mine embarks from the work of the hands and eyes. We can
sense in Fiedler’s argument that he lends precedence to the eye in favor of the hand. The hand
merely completes the eye’s work, in that it “brings forth from seeing its own transcendence.” The
implicit sense of the phrase I have used, however, that the sculptor “sculpts also with his eyes,”
attributes precedence to the hand in favor of the eye. Fiedler orders the hand to the eye’s service,
and in this understands the hand as a sensory organ. I order the eye to the service of the hand, and
in this argue that the eye also sculpts.
Fiedler calls the hand blind. I call the eye lazy. Without the hand, the eye of its own accord
does not want to actively work. Its drive to function can be satisfied in the mere observation of
things. The hand is the reason for everything. Its drive to function cannot be satisfied in mere
observation. The hand must move if it wants to function, before it can return to motionless
materiality. The hand can achieve the meaning of its existence only through motion. For the
purposes of this motion the hand calls the eye to its aid. The hand makes meaning of the seen, and
thus prepares the hand for its work. “The ‘lazy’ eye brings forth from the hand its own
transcendence.”
The question presents itself, how I can reconcile a theory of the “seeing sight,” according to
which the eye makes meaning in a sensory capacity, repudiating conceptual thought, with the fact
that recently I have been carving figures, in fact, self-portraits. After all, it is unavoidable that a
figure would have some conceptual content, as a figure is a person’s image, a person who,
moreover, has a name. Earlier I wrote that it was possible for me to carve a self-portrait with an
essentially indifferent attitude toward myself, in which I observe myself as a mere someone, a
nameless man. Fiedler’s context permits me to take this thought even further, to suggest that I can
even consider myself a mere visual phenomenon. And in fact that is how I work. As I carve I do
not think that the reproduced or carved form is that of my own face. It is merely a form for which
the eye makes meaning, and prepares the hand for its work. If that is so, then what would be the
purpose of my choosing my own face as a subject? I have explained the gaze preserved in the
statue as the traces of the work of the hand and eye. However indifferently I consider myself, the
hand and eye that complete the work are nonetheless parts of my body. For this reason, if I am
searching for a subject for this gaze preserved in the statue, I cannot find anything more totally
appropriate than this very body, the body to which the hand and eye accomplishing work belong.
Keiji Nishitani, philosopher of the Kyoto School and student of Heidegger, investigated the
reasons for the nihilism of modern man and his possibilities for overcoming it.(16) His thinking is
defined by the values common to Christianity and Zen. For me the following thoughts have proven
the most instructive of those found in Nishitani’s books.
“We can look at the living as they walk full of health down the Ginza and see, in
double exposure, a picture of the dead. […] This kind of double exposure is true
vision of reality. […] The aspect of life and the aspect of death are equally real, and
reality is that which appears now as life and now as death. It is both life and death,
and at the same time is neither life nor death. It is what we have to call the
nonduality of life and death. ”(17)
The idea of the inseparability of life and death can be forged into relationship with the timeless
character of the gaze preserved in the statue. I photographed myself as I worked, as I carved a lifesized granite statue of myself. My statue can remain unchanged for five or six thousand years or
perhaps even longer. What I carved was a nameless self-portrait, the image of a living man. As,
however, in five or six thousand years it will be the image of a person who died five or six
thousand years before, if I would give it a title, even now I should choose something along the lines
of “a man who lived five or six thousand years ago.” In the photograph I prepared as I worked,
the image of the now living person and that of the one who died long ago are visible together. The
two images do indeed closely resemble one another, and fit together on a sheet of paper. There is
an irresistible attraction in seeing something which five or six thousand years from now some
distant generation will also see – in seeing myself the way someone five or six thousand years from
now will see me. And since for that someone, my statue will be the image of a totally unknown
and nameless person, even now I look at it that way, as the image of a totally unknown and
nameless person.
Observing the sculptures of ancient times I can also see how the hand of the sculptor from long
ago moved about the form, how he shaped the clay, chiseled and sanded the wood, the stone.
Ancient statues are like a kind of double exposure photograph, in which we see the one image with
our eyes and the other with our mind. The ancient self-portraits are especially interesting. Upon
the image that we see in material reality with our eyes, another, that of the painter or sculptor who
died long ago arises translucently in our minds, shifting, hovering about the material image, before
merging into it, and making it luminous. As he sculpts, in his mind the sculptor sees the future in
which he will be no longer, only his statue will. Likewise, as he looks, in his mind the observer of
the statue sees the past in which the sculptor still lived. The statue connects and communicates
between their two minds. The content of this communication is the gaze preserved in the statue,
nothing other than the work of the sculptor’s hand and eye, its quality won from the joy of its work.
I cannot resist here one more thought concerning the timeless character of the gaze. While it
enough to once understand a conceptual work, to go once to its exhibition, a statue we can see any
number of times, and it does not become boring, because we constantly discover profounder depths
in the statue’s gaze. What calls the observer again and again to the statue is not primarily
amazement in its formal beauty, but much rather the possibility of dwelling once more in its gaze.
As written language intimately connects with cultural innovation, conceptual art brings along with
it a presumed valoration of the quest for the new. Ideas can nonetheless be understood to their
depths, and because of this understandability can be categorized. With this act of categorization,
however, a space becomes vacant in the conception’s place, which must be filled with a new
conception. Thus the very comprehensibility of a concept carries with it the necessity for a
continuation, a new concept. In contrast to this, we can never fully plumb the depths of the gaze.
However long we dwell within it, it always contains something for us that we would call new
content, if one could at all use the word “new” in connection with the timeless gaze. If we solve a
scientific problem with operative thought, we go beyond it. If we understand a conceptual artwork,
we go beyond the concept of that work. One cannot, however, ever go beyond the gaze. While a
scientific problem or artistic conception arose in the past, was solved or assimilated, and was
written up in the science or art-history textbooks – or will so arise, will be so solved, assimilated,
and written up – in other words, while such problems and conceptions exist in the past or future of
the course of history, the gaze preserved in a statue neither “was” nor “shall be,” but rather “is.”
Although in his treatise Eye and Mind Merleau-Ponty writes of the “gaze” exclusively in the
context of painting rather than sculpture, I nonetheless feel an affinity with his contemplations.
“The enigma is that my body simultaneously sees and is seen. That which looks
at all things can also look at itself and recognize, in what it sees, the ‘other side’ of its
power of looking. It sees itself seeing; it touches itself touching; it is visible and
sensitive for itself. It is not a self through transparence, like thought, which only
thinks its object by assimilating it, by transforming it into thought. It is a self through
confusion, narcissism, through inherence of the one who sees in that which he sees,
and through inherence of sensing in the sensed – a self, therefore, that is caught up in
things, that has a front and back, a past and a future…
This initial paradox cannot but produce others. Visible and mobile, my body is a
thing among things; it is caught up in the fabric of the world, and its cohesion is that
of a thing. But because it moves itself and sees, it holds things in a circle around
itself. Things are an annex or prolongation of itself; they are encrusted into its flesh,
they are part of its full definition; the world is made of the same stuff as the body.
This way of turning things around [ces renversements], these antinomies, are
different ways of saying that vision happens among, or is caught in, things – in that
place where there persists, like the mother water in crystal, the undividedness
[l’indivision] of the sensing and the sensed.”(18)
“The enigma is that my body simultaneously sees and is seen.” The enigma of our own body’s
vision-visibility we all can experience only in and through ourselves. We cannot insinuate
ourselves into another’s vision-visibility. An exception here is the self-portrait, in which the
vision-visibility of the sculptor’s own body is made observable to others. He opens up for others
the window of the enigma of his own body’s vision-visibility. Others can see the sculptor as he
sees himself. The image thus connects and communicates between the seeing of two people. The
self-portrait goes deeper than this as well, in that it makes available to one person’s seeing the
experience of the self-seeing of another.
Substituting then Merleau-Ponty’s terminology into the relationship between the sculptor and
his self-portrait, from the expression of the undividedness of perceiving and perceived we achieve
the expression of the undividedness of statue-sculptor and statue. In this form the expression,
while retaining its original meaning – as the sculptor is at once the perceiver, the self-portrait is at
once the perceived – gains new meaning as well. My body “sees itself seeing,” and also sees the
image of itself seeing. It “touches itself touching,” and also touches the image of itself touching. It
sees the image of itself seeing, sculpted through the work of its own eyes. It touches the image of
itself touching, sculpted through the work of its own hand. My body with its own eyes sees the
result of the work of its eyes, with its own hands it touches the result of the work of its hands,
which is nothing other than the image of my body. My body’s image forms from the traces of the
work of my own hands and eyes, visible to my eyes, touchable with my hands. Something in these
formulations recalls a mirror, and at the same time suggests something more than a mirror image,
suggests something that a mirror lacks.
“The mirror itself is the instrument of a universal magic that changes things into a
spectacle, spectacles into things, myself into another, and another into myself. Artists
have often mused upon mirrors because beneath this ‘mechanical trick’ they
recognized, just as they did in the case of the trick of perspective, the metamorphosis
of seeing and seen which defines both our flesh and the painter’s vocation.”(19)
The self-portrait resembles a mirror, which is no accident as the sculptor uses a mirror in its
preparation. The self-portrait partakes of the mirror’s essential quality inasmuch as it changes me
into the other and the other into me. In Merleau-Ponty’s words this “metamorphosis of seeing and
seen” defines the vocation of the painter or sculptor. The gaze of the mirror is qualified as an
illusion, a phantom, in Cartesian thought, or as an instance of “subjectless perception” in the
natural sciences. What can we say about the gaze of the self-portrait? Can we understand the gaze
of the self-portrait without getting lost in a labyrinth of illusions?
The self-portrait has a particular quality that the mirror does not possess, one born of and
accounted for by the gaze preserved within the statue. In order for my mirror image to become
visible, I don’t have to work. For the sculpting of my self-portrait, however, my hands and eyes
must work. The material preserves the work of my hands and eyes and transmits, reflects this
toward the observer, whether that observer is myself or someone else. It is in the gaze that the self-
portrait differs from the mirror. The gaze of the statue, of the self-portrait is nothing other than the
work of my hands and eyes sealed into material. Or more precisely, the gaze is the traces of the
work of my hands and eyes, which the material preserves. Returning to the explanation, this
understanding of the gaze of the statue, of the self-portrait, cannot be qualified as an illusion. The
work of a person’s hands and eyes is a pure, living reality. The traces of this work are likewise a
reality.
Following through with Merleau-Ponty, I do not look at things, they look at me. How does
this statement sound in the case of the self-portrait? I do not look at my self-portrait, it looks at
me. In what sense can I assert that my self-portrait looks at me? Of course the statue does not look
at me because I have carved eyes upon it. In fact it is not the material, not the form of the statue
that looks, but instead the gaze of the sculptor preserved therein. Although the material of the
lifeless stone preserves this gaze, nonetheless it is the gaze of an actually living or once-living
person, and for precisely this reason the gaze understood as such is not an illusion, but the purest
reality. If the statue depicts a figure, a person’s lifelike image, even then we must understand that
the subject, the form, is nothing more than a sign. The image of the face, of the eyes, is not the
gaze, but merely a sign. It is a sign of the fact that here, in this material, someone worked in order
that his gaze might be preserved and transmitted.
I have examined Merleau-Ponty’s idea of the undividedness of perceiver and perceived in the
case of the sculptor, moreover in the special case of the sculptor who carves self-portraits. In the
case of the sculptor and his self-portrait, the expression of the undividedness of perceiver and
perceived becomes particularly powerful. The sculptor as observer, the seeing of his eyes, and the
work of the carving sculptor preserved in stone, his seeing preserved in stone, are instances of one
and the same seeing slightly displaced from one another in time. The sculptor and his self-portrait,
as perceiver and also conservatum of perception, are in a special sense inseparable.
Hans Belting began researching several years ago towards the development of an
anthropological image theory. This would be an image theory applicable to images throughout the
span of history, from those used in death rituals of the most ancient cultures, through classical
image types, up to and including the virtual images of our own day. Belting dedicates particular
attention to the ancient death cults, because he sees in them the origin of the image. The living
substitute an image in the place emptied by the dead. The emptiness felt in the distance of the
departed they fill with an “image presence.”
“The experience of the body, which is conferred to the image of the dead,
culminates in the experience of the glance, the look, coming from its face. The
greeting that the face manifests, that system of signs born of the way that gazes cross
one another, transcends the effect of what is actually present. The image presence –
those eyes gazing back upon those who look – intensifies into the evidence of life,
and can be understood as a stylistic device and symbol of the image-language of reembodiment.”(20)
For me what is exciting in this anthropological assessment is this certain “image presence.”
This idea certainly connects to that of the gaze preserved in the statue. But how can we understand
the idea of the image presence in the case of these ancient cultures, and how in the case of my own
sculptural work? In ancient cultures the statue did not become an image by virtue of a technical
preparation. It became an image because it had been spiritually embodied by means of a ritual of
animation. In Egypt and Mesopotamia this ritual was called the statue’s “mouth-opening.” In New
Empire Egypt this ritual consisted of seventy-five separate rites. In Babylon they performed a
ritual during which they received into the domain of the visual image the “original image born in
heaven.”
The ancients thus considered that a ritual of animation was necessary in order for the image
presence to come into existence. How can I assert then of my own statue that it exhibits presence if
I have performed no ritual upon it? But in fact have I performed no ritual upon it? Is it not
possible to perform as a ritual and to name as such the labor itself? After all, according to my
understanding the work of the hands and eyes is charged with the very significance of being. The
very fact that my hands exist, that my eyes exist, is a miracle, and we must not desist from praising
this miracle each day. If I work with such a cast of mind, and do not forget even for a moment that
the existence of my hands and eyes is a miracle, and if every fall of my hammer sounds in praises
to that miracle, then such work deserves to be called a ritual of animation.
In other ages and cultures institutions oversaw animation. Today the sculptor who flees the
effects of cultural institutions, particularly artistic institutions, himself oversees the ritual of
animation by means of the work of his hands and eyes. We could hardly hope to discover a more
pure and fundamental mouth-opening ritual than that of the work of the human hands and eyes.
Years ago I carved a pair of contact lenses out of stone, so that I might create the closest
possible contact between man and material, that I might see the stone directly. On the banks of
Kyoto’s Katsura River I chose a type of very hard black pebble, and from this carved the contact
lenses. When I put them in my eyes, wherever I looked I saw the same darkness. I closed off the
window of my eye with a film of hard black stone. The inner transparent material of my eyeball
was completely dark, but it was a transparent material. What can be the meaning of something
being completely dark but yet transparent? Does it make sense to call the darkness transparent, if
in darkness nothing can be seen? My eyes saw nothing, but yet had created the closest possible
contact with the stone. I would gladly say that I had seen the inner darkness of the stone from
inside. However I cannot say that, because light is necessary for vision and in darkness one can see
nothing. Nonetheless I would say that my gaze was there between my retina and the contact lens.
It quivered there within my eye, pressed against the inner surface of the stone. Even in this early
work I wanted to place the gaze inside the stone. Even at this time it was obvious to me that the
gaze is not the same as seeing in the optical sense.
In the eyes of the statue that I carved for the purpose of extinguishing my desire to sculpt, and
which I called the most fundamental statue that I could possibly sculpt, I carved out an empty space
resembling the form of the inner transparent material of the eye. Let the eyes of the statue be
transparent where my own are transparent. You could see into the statue’s eyes only through a
small hole at the pupil. When with my own actual eyes I looked closely within the stone eyes of
the statue I had carved of myself, I could see there the carved image of my retina. In other words,
on my actual retina appeared the image of the sculpted image of my retina. As in the case of the
stone contact lenses where I had created the closest possible sensory contact between man and
material, between eye and stone, so in the experiment of the fundamental statue I created the
closest possible sensory contact between a person and his image, that is, between the retina of the
human eye and the stone retina of the stone statue’s eye.
My black granite self-portrait I carved with its eyes closed. The form of the cornea softly rises
upon the sphere-shape of the eyeball. Can it really be possible to carve a granite sculpture so
sensitively that even through its closed eyelids the gentle rising contour of the cornea is
perceptible? So that one could feel, even through its closed eyelids, which way the eyes of the
statue look within the stone? Can the subtleties of the gentle rising contour of the eyes, making
tiny motions beneath the soft eyelids, really be carved out of particularly hard black granite? Is it
possible to increase so much further the energetic tension between gaze and material?
The Greeks carved only the outer form of the eyeball on their statues, chiseling in neither the
iris nor the circle of the pupil. The Romans marked a circle to signify the iris. The Renaissance
masters deeply carved out the pupil, leaving a small triangular-shaped space signifying the
brilliance of the eye. In the Baroque period they carved the illusion of the eye’s brilliance in stone
with even greater virtuosity. If we suggest, however, that the gaze of the brilliantly luminous eyes
of Baroque statues is better than that of the rather simple eyes on Greek statues, then we would be
speaking of the gaze on a merely formal level. If we use the word gaze to designate a non-material
component of the statue, then we must say that the gaze of the Baroque statues is not necessarily
better than that of the Greeks. The gaze of the statue does not depend on the measure or brilliance
of its eyes, nor even for that matter on whether they exist or not, as it is possible to see a gaze on
objects prepared by the work of human hands and eyes that do not depict eyes. So certainly then
we should feel the gaze of a face with closed eyes. In fact, the gaze of the statue may perhaps
become that much purer and more powerful, precisely because its eyes are closed.
4. On material, as the bearer of sculptural quality
In the preceding chapter I established that the difficulty in explaining the gaze in words emerges
from the fact that it is an aspect of the statue existing beyond conceptual and operative thought.
We might think, then, that with this we have finished with the difficulty, and will fare much better
in writing about the statue’s material. Yet from the very start, when we try to write these matters
down we see that language is just as unsuitable for explaining the material of the statue as it was
for explaining its spirit. When we hear the word “stone,” we know what it means and can imagine
a stone. If someone is standing next to a quarry stone, however, and touches it, then something
entirely different occurs which language can hardly communicate. In the same way we can write
“wood log,” but writing the words cannot replace the living connection, which comes to being only
in the actual experience of the real wood. We could write down the entirety of measurable
physical, chemical, and biological parameters of the wood log, we could fill long pages with names
and numbers without even one mistake or miscalculation among them, yet the one truly important
experience, what it means for the sculptor to touch the wood log, we cannot scientifically measure
nor communicate. Shall we write a poem, then, about the wood log? A poem may very well be
suited to celebrate its existence, but even the greatest poem cannot substitute for the wood log’s
being. If I read a text of art-theory, or if I myself write about art – even at this moment, as I write
these words – I can theoretically accept that there is no meaning in sculpture. If I would explain
sculpture in mere words, I would wind up explaining its absurdity. The sculptor who bends down
towards the quarry stone or wood log to touch it, however, comes to entirely different conclusions.
He might dwell there for only a moment, and yet the meaning of every conceptual explanation has
vanished. He can do nothing else, he must carve the stone into a statue. It is from just such a
moment, on just such a level, that the material becomes truly interesting: the moment where
conceptual and operative thinking falls away.
Why do I choose precisely the quarry stone, the wood log as examples? After all, for
thousands of years bronze and ceramic have been used in sculpture, to mention nothing of the new
materials with which the modern age has augmented sculpture’s possibilities. Here, however, a
distinction needs to be made between the categories of sculptura and plastica. We hear often in
our age of the importance of interdisciplinary thinking, the erasing of boundaries between the
individual arts and sciences. Despite the fact – or perhaps because of the fact – that I live in an age
wishing to expand thought through this erasing of boundaries, my thinking concerning sculpture
has become, rather than more expansive, more narrowly defined and determined. In this age of the
merging of sculpture, painting, graphics, installations, photography, film, video, and digital media,
I understand sculpture in the narrowest possible definition and, furthermore, divide that definition
into two. I feel that the word “sculptor” is more pure than “artist,” and if I were to write accurately
of my work, then I would not even call myself a sculptor but would use the term “image-carver.”
Just as the nature of a sculptor differs from that of a painter, among sculptors as well two entirely
different human types exist, the modelling sculptor and the carving sculptor. Naturally there are
painters who sometimes make statues, and among sculptors, too, are those who paint or draw. I too
have done a large-scale ink drawing, but this is not so significant. One must look to see where the
works of an artist center. In this sense we can see a clear distinction between the statues of a
modelling sculptor and those of a carving sculptor. Modelling sculptors are much more likely to
consider form or space, rather than material, as the most important element of their work. For
them, clay or bronze mean generally nothing more than a material suitable for the preservation of
the form or space. The thinking of the carving sculptor, the image-carver, is entirely different. As
drawing is the natural element for a graphic artist, color for a painter, form and space for a
modelling sculptor, so material is the natural element of a carving sculptor. The modelling sculptor
works with pliable, easily formed materials (clay, plaster, artificial resin). In dependence on a
structural framework he can expand and build his statue in any direction, theoretically without
limit, and mistakes in the accumulating forms he can repair and remedy any number of times as he
works. The carving sculptor works with hard materials, negotiated with difficulty (stone, wood).
The form and dimensions of the statue are greatly determined by the form of the quarry stone or
wood log, and mistakes in carving are irremediable. The modelling sculptor is free, dominates the
material, and stands above it. The carving sculptor is not free, he does not rule over the material.
He cannot approach its natural given form without respect. We can say that the sculpting of statues
is engaged, respectful communication with material, even that the carving sculptor speaks with the
wood or the stone as he works.
A wood log is something. It loses its quality as something, however, if it is reconstituted into
plywood. Plywood is not something, but anything. In the same way, a quarry stone is something.
If it is pulverized and converted into cement, it loses its quality as something. Cement is not
something, but anything. A certain wood log, a certain quarry stone, are unique and unrepeatable
existences. One cannot standardize a wood log or a quarry stone. The buyer chooses a certain log
or a certain stone at the lumberyard or the stone-pit. The unique quality of the log or stone
becomes clearest for us, however, if we have the opportunity to come across it in the forest or the
quarry. In nature, whether the living forest or the lifeless quarry, there exists no anything. In
nature, everything is something.
The industrial standard can guarantee that anything be produced of a type of plywood, for
instance, that any sample of it will be identical to any other, replaceable by any other. If we want
to buy some plywood, we do not need to select it ourselves, we can order it by phone. We can be
sure of the quality of any piece we get of the supply. Nor does it matter what portion of the wet
cement pouring out of the mixer goes into the intended form, it is all the same. Any portion is
replaceable by any other. The cement mixer has ensured that what was earlier a material full of
character has become homogenous. The better the quality of the cement, the more homogenous.
The sculptor faces the stone. Someone faces something. Anyone and anything cannot face
each other, because neither anyone nor anything has a face. Only someone or something can have
a face. Nor can a conversation take place between someone and anything, as this would be merely
one-sided speaking. A conversation can take place between someone and something. Something
deserves respect, but with anything it makes little sense to speak of respect. One can engage in
conversation only with a partner deserving respect. This may itself be what actually determines the
particular quality of sculptura, of carving sculpture. Most painters writing of their work can hardly
avoid writing of color, because the painter lives in color. An architect cannot avoid writing of
space. The statue-modeller, the plastica sculptor, will probably write of form when writing of his
work, because the essence of his work is form. The sculptura sculptor must write of material, and
moreover, of material as something one can converse with.
“The green mountains are always walking”
– quotes Dogen from the teachings of Daokai of Mt. Furong.(21)
The continents migrate – says modern science.
Though these two statements are not about the same thing, I think we can accept both of them
in their respective orders. How should a sculptor consider them, who works in material
unchanging for even several million times his own lifespan? He knows well that no material lasts
for eternity, and knows too that, just as the continents and the green mountains, stone statues also
“migrate.” It is an important question, however, where they go. To betterment, or to worsening?
To gain or to ruin? In the case of stellar orbits, continents, or green mountains, there is no sense in
speaking of betterment or worsening. There is merely migration. With statues, however, and
generally with things made by human beings, the matter of their betterment or worsening, their gain
or ruin, does come into question. We can hardly find something nowadays which does not worsen
with time, but rather improves; whose existence is characterized not by ruin, but by gain. Take
string instruments as an example. It is a fact that many old violins sound better than any new-made
instrument. The instrument’s tone will only become more beautiful with centuries of use. Perhaps
the vibrations of daily music-making effects this improvement, perhaps the delicate moisture of the
musician’s breath, but this much is certain, that such instruments ripen with time, their sound in
two or three hundred years will grow richer in overtones. Of course no violin lasts forever. But at
least for its lifetime of several hundred years, it lives in improvement, not worsening, in growth,
not ruin. Happy is the violin-maker who dies before hearing his violin’s most beautiful tone.
Why do we argue that a statue should be made of a material characterized by improvement
instead of worsening, growth instead of ruin? Because we have named the gaze as the
indispensable determining characteristic of the statue, as its non-material content. We have argued
further of this gaze, that as it is fundamentally neither conceptual content nor even information, it is
not possible to comprehend nor to categorize away. One cannot go beyond it, and in this it has a
timeless character.
The sculptor’s task is to render this timeless gaze to material existing in time and therefore
transient. What kind of material he chooses is also the sculptor’s responsibility. Will he choose
one characterized by improvement during its limited existence, or one characterized by worsening
and decay from its beginning? We might say it does not matter, as every material comes eventually
to its end. Nothing will remain for us. This future pronouncement carries with it a past
pronouncement as well: that nothing has remained for us. For precisely this reason I would ask
then why we would not at least make a gesture toward the timeless gaze, by offering it such
material that though eventually lost, will yet still exist for hundreds, for thousands of years to
come, so that the gaze the sculptor has rendered upon it may shine there ever and ever more
brilliantly. Because nothing has remained for us, except the possibility of a gesture.
CONCLUSION
My works in recent years were experiments, in which I searched for an explanation for why
someone would sculpt stone statues – figures, self-portraits – in the age of technoculture and mass
media. Additionally, I sought to determine a uniquely and specifically sculptural quality,
irreplaceable by anything else in the present or future. Carving stone figures as an experiment may
strike many as unusual, even contradictory, but in my case proved a functional working method,
and brought many results.
Through my experiments I recognized that even in an age when society will not accommodate
the sculptor’s work, people are born who desire to sculpt statues. There are those who cannot
escape their propensity to sculpt. I showed that there is a sculptural quality that only the work of
the human hand and eye can bring into existence, and which no machine technology is capable of
producing. During the course of these experiments I developed an explanation of the gaze
preserved in material. My final experiment was the concept of the non-conceptual statue, that is, a
statue created with no other concept than that it would be a well-sculpted statue. And yet this nonconceptual statue encouraged the richest and deepest thinking.
I examined the four layers of quality of a good statue, a well-sculpted statue. In my account,
sculptural value can emerge from the sculptor’s way of seeing, from the joy of work well done,
from the gaze of the sculptor preserved in the statue, and from the material that bears that gaze.
On the sculptor’s way of seeing
The level of the sculptor’s way of seeing is the layer of the good statue’s quality that is easiest to
explain. The sculptor’s way of seeing is not a way of thinking, but a way of seeing. Necessary for
its development are a great deal of study and an exceptionally good eye – that is, a mind that sees
well and explains well what it sees. Two critical processes define the method of this visual study:
the understanding of what is seen, and the presentation of what is understood. The sculptor can
experience new depths in his knowledge of seeing with every single sculpture he prepares.
On the joy of work well done
The joy of being the sculptor feels through his good work – the joy of knowing and the joy of
functioning – are perceptible in the statue. This joy becomes a quality of the statue its observer can
feel. This joy is not the cheerfulness of practicing a hobby or enjoying entertainment, but rather the
happiness of the person who works from knowledge of his vocation. This joy can be joy even if it
is painful. This joy born of good work filled the works of the craftsmen of traditional societies
with art. It is beginning to slip into oblivion, however, in the age of machine technology. This
“intoxication of functioning,” this “joy of being human” is at the same time a special human
principle, irreplaceable even theoretically by a machine technology.
On the gaze preserved in the statue
While carving, the sculptor does not work only with his hands, but with his eyes as well. The
material preserves the traces of the work of his hands and eyes. The hand and eye work together
inseparably. In my explanation, the work of the hand is primary, because the hand in its drive to
function calls to work the “lazy” eye, which is otherwise satisfied with mere observation. The eye
completes the work of the hand in that it calls forth from the motion of the hand its own
transcendence. The gaze preserved in the statue is nothing other than the work of the sculptor’s
hand and eye sealed into material, which gains its quality from the joy of that work. I define
sculpture in its purest form as nothing other than the gaze rendered to material.
Between sculptor and observer, the statue transmits the gaze that has gained its quality from
the joy of work. The transmission may span a great amount of time, even thousands of years.
While looking at the statue both sculptor and observer can step out of their own time. This time
travel is not fantasy but reality, because both the sculptor and the observer are entirely real and
actual people.
The sculptor and his self-portrait, as perceiver and perceived, as seeing and at the same time
conservatum of seeing, are in a special sense indivisible.
The seeing of the eyes and the moving of the hands are of ontological significance. Because
of this ontological significance, we feel a relationship between what I have called the gaze
preserved in the statue, and the concept of the “image presence” in the anthropological approach.
Inasmuch as we can accept the ontologically significant work of the hands and the eyes as a kind of
animation ritual, then the idea of the gaze preserved in the statue and that of the “image presence”
of ancient cultures become equivalent expressions, with the restriction that, these days, the sculptor
has no power to place another’s presence into material. Through the work of his own hands and
eyes he can preserve only his own presence in the statue. His own presence, as the presence of a
person, the presence of someone.
On material
I have argued that language is just as unsuitable for describing the material aspect of the statue as it
is for describing its spiritual aspect. We can describe a quarry stone or wood log in many ways,
after all. But the living connection between sculptor and material, his actual experience of the
material, cannot be replaced by any sort of description, be it conceptual, operative, or even poetic.
Material is the natural element of the sculptor, especially of the carving category of sculptor.
The work of the sculptor, or more precisely, of the image-carver, is engaged communication with
material. This communication is the dialogue between someone and something. The image-carver
is someone by nature. He cannot become anyone, a faceless member of the mass, because then he
loses his capacity for dialogue. The materials of nature are likewise something by nature. They
cannot become anything, like the standardized, practical, but faceless materials of mass production,
because then they would lose their capacity for dialogue. We speak here of a matter of respectful
dialogue between singular, unrepeatable, irreplaceable existences. This I see as the particular
unique quality of sculptura, of carving sculpture.
The gaze has a timeless character, while the material exists in time. It is the responsibility of
the sculptor to determine to what material he will render that timeless gaze. To a material which
from its beginnings is characterized by worsening and ruin, or to a material that, though surely
eventually lost, will for at least several hundred or even thousand years ripen and grow rich in time,
and make ever more luminous the sculptor’s gaze.
I think I can allow myself here one final comment. Material cannot be transmitted through mass
media. I think this very simple fact is the reason that in this age of mass media the carving
category of sculpture, which assigns meaning first of all to material, has lost its connection to
society at large. At the same time this does not mean that we must call an end to sculpture. The
sculpting of statues can and must continue. Sculpture conceals yet numberless new possibilities
within itself. Only the sculptor changes, his cast of mind changes. The only sort of person who
can continue sculpting in our age is one who establishes for himself a foundation of spiritual
independence, and can entrust his statues, for their part, to their own fate as their authentic “place.”
This kind of attitude exceeds cynicism, that is, is so cynical that it is no longer even cynical. It is
an attitude of super-cynicism. From its very nature such a foundation strictly forbids opportunism,
and must result in high quality. My prediction is that in the future too there will be people who
know how to sculpt a wood log or quarry stone, and they will make good statues. What is certain,
though, is they will be very few, and their statues hard to find.
NOTES
1.
西谷啓治、西谷啓治著作集第 10 巻『宗教とは何か』、東京、創文社、1987 年、
182 頁 。 Keiji Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, trans. Jan Van Bragt, Berkeley,
University of California Press, 1982, p. 162.
2.
Walter Benjamin, ’The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, trans. Harry
Zohn, in ed. Clive Cazeaux, The Continental Aesthetics Reader, London and New York,
Routledge, 2000, pp. 322–343. (Walter Benjamin, ’Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner
technischen Reproduzierbarkeit’, in Illuminationen-Ausgewählte Schriften 1. Frankfurt am
Main, Suhrkamp Verlag, 1977, pp. 136–169.)
3.
Jean-Luc Nancy, ’Ami a művészetből megmarad’ in ed. Házas Nikoletta, Változó
művészetfogalom, Budapest, Kijárat Kiadó, 2001, p. 24. (Jean-Luc Nancy, ’Le vestige de
l’art’, in L’art contemporain en question, Paris, Jeu de Paume, 1994, pp. 23–37.)
4.
Jean Baudrillard, The Transparency of Evil, transl. James Benedict, London-New York,
Verso, 1993, p. 11. (Jean Baudrillard, La transparence du Mal, Paris, Editions Galilée, 1990,
p. 13.)
5.
See: Jan Assmann, A kulturális emlékezet; Írás, emlékezés és politikai identitás a korai
magaskultúrákban, trans. Hidas Zoltán, Budapest, Atlantisz Könyvkiadó, 1999. (Jan
Assmann, Das Kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen
Hochkulturen, München, Verlag C. H. Beck, 1992.)
6.
Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy, Christian and Oriental Philosophy of Art, New York,
Dower Publications, Inc., 1956, p. 15.
7.
Anananda Kentish Coomaraswamy, Ibid., p. 65–66.
8.
Jean Baudrillard, Ibid., p. 53.
9.
Arisztotelész, Poétika, 4. fejezet, 48b10–19. trans. Ritoók Zsigmond, Budapest, PannonKlett
Kiadó, 1997, p. 27.
10. Hans Jonas, ’A látás nemessége’ trans. Kukla Krisztián in ed. Bacsó Béla, Fenomén és mű,
Budapest, Kijárat Kiadó, 2002, p. 109. (Hans Jonas, ’Der Adel des Sehens’ in Organismus
und Freiheit. Ansätze zu einer philosophischen Biologie, Göttingen, Vandenhoek & Ruprecht
Verlag, 1973, p. 198.)
11.
Max Imdahl, ’Művészettörténeti megjegyzések az esztétikai tapasztalathoz’ trans. Kukla
Krisztián, in ed. Bacsó Béla, Ibid., pp. 211–222. (Max Imdahl, ’Kunstgeschichtliche
Bemerkungen zur ästhetischen Erfahrung’ in Hg. G. Boehm, Reflexion, Theorie, Methode,
Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp Verlag, 1996, pp. 282–302.)
12. Gottfried Boehm, ’A képi értelem és az érzékszervek’ trans. Poprády Judit, in ed. Bacsó Béla,
Kép, fenomén, valóság, Budapest, Kijárat Kiadó, 1997, pp. 242–252. (Gottfried Boehm,
’Bildsinn und Sinnesorgane’ in Neue Hefte für Philosophie 18/19. Göttingen, Vanderhoek &
Ruprecht Verlag, 1980, pp. 118–132.)
13.
Kitaro Nishida, Art and Morality, trans. David A. Dilworth & Valdo H. Viglielmo Honolulu,
The University Press of Hawaii, 1973.（西田幾太郎『芸術と道徳』、東京、岩波書店、
1923 年。）
14. Ken’ichi Iwaki, ’Nishida Kitaro and Art’ trans. Michael F. Marra, in A History of Modern
Japanese Aesthetics, Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 2001, pp. 259–284. （岩城見一
「西田幾多郎と芸術」、『西田哲学選集』第六巻「芸術哲学論文集」、京都、燈影
舎、1998 年、407–437 頁。）
15.
Gottfried Boehm, Ibid., p. 249.
16.
Kunszt György, ’A kiotói iskola az európai nihilizmusról és misztikáról’ in ed. Bacsó Béla,
Athenaeum humántudományi folyóirat, A fenomenológia és Japán, Budapest, 1994.
17.
Keiji Nishitani, Ibid., pp. 51–52.
18.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, ’Eye and Mind’ transl. Carleton Dallery, in The Primacy of
Perception, and Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art,
History and Politics, Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 1964, pp. 162-163. (Maurice
Merleau-Ponty, L’oeil et l’esprit, Paris, Gallimard, 1964.)
19.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Ibid., pp. 168–169.
20.
Hans Belting, Kép-antropológia, trans. Kelemen Pál, Budapest, Kijárat Kiadó, 2003, p. 175.
(Hans Belting, Bild-Anthropologie, München, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2001.)
21.
Eihei Dogen, ’Mountains and Waters Sutra’, 29th fascile of the primary version of Treasure
of the True Dharma Eye, in trans. Tanahashi Kazuaki, Moon in a Dewdrop, Writings of Zen
Master Dogen, New York, North Point Press, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1985, p. 97.