午夜剧场

The word "curator" may have finally become established in the public consciousness. It refers to the work of a museum professional who collects and exhibits artworks. I have been doing this job for over 40 years, and if someone were to ask me, "What exactly is your trade?" I would answer that I am a man who has supported his family by "borrowing other people's paintings and hanging them on walls." What I teach at the university is mostly related to that field.

During the four years of the COVID-19 pandemic, I was able to publish four books, so I might have managed to maintain my dignity as the head of the household.

I am not the type of person who writes about things thought up in the head or studied in books. Therefore, in this book, I have only written about things I know through my body. It is a detailed account of what I have felt physically through touching objects as a curator, covering artworks and formative arts in general. What makes this different from my previous works is that it includes writing about music, which has been a long-cherished wish of mine. Not only is it written there, but it is paired with my specialty, art; they are placed side-by-side, compared, parodied, and written about by "using them as a pretext."

My special skill as a curator is the bold technique of taking artworks—which are usually displayed on the same wall based on era or trend—and separating them from their time and space to bring them together from afar for an "encounter." Because of this, some people might look askance at the work, wondering, "Isn't this a bit of a stretch?"

There are likely many works that write about or point out the so-called contemporaneity of art and music, but this is not a display of such academic insight. It is, so to speak, an essay written with a bit of humor and wit about things that have become connected within my personal experience. I have put in the effort to ensure that the work itself stands as a piece of criticism, or rather, as a superb piece of literature (or so I intend).

It is a work of confidence where I aimed for such supreme skill, but on the other hand, it may still be a case of "the sun is setting, and the road is long." The late Hisashi Inoue once said: "Make difficult things easy, easy things deep, and deep things interesting..."

However, from my next book onward, I am considering quitting these slightly complicated art essays and switching to food essays, which is another of my great specialties.

Ryu Niimi

Art Diver

392 pages, 3,300 yen (tax included)

*Affiliations and titles are those at the time of publication.