On the Shoulders of Giants
The world seen by Akira Zakamoto. "In artists alone, it is known, adult life is the natural continuation of childhood; this is why artists are said to be great children." — Alberto Savinio.
Of my first meeting with Akira Zakamoto I undoubtedly remember my poorly concealed attempt to detect on his face some reminiscence of Oriental features: nothing doing — Akira is not Japanese, nor does his family tree contain ancestors from the Land of the Rising Sun. Then, reading his biography, which describes him as abducted by extraterrestrials, I wondered with some curiosity what kind of painting he might do. After meeting an artist, I often try to intuit the kind of painting they make. Children — many of them — caught in their most natural expressions, but also, and above all, in their most incredible ones. No, I would not have expected Akira to paint, not only but principally, children. Childhood lives within and beside each of us, even though it is the one dimension from which we are all, irremediably, excluded. It is a multiform, fascinating universe, yet at the same time unknown and mysterious.
For centuries it has solicited the attention and creativity of philosophers, poets, writers and artists; it is a journey backward that few have been able to resist, and that each of us, in different forms, has at least once in life tried to undertake. Perhaps because it represents, at once, our past and a possible future of ours. Fascinating, no doubt. Disquieting, no doubt. The truth is that childhood, seen from afar, always takes on a feeling of intense melancholy, because it is the lost world, and above all represents a unique, unrepeatable way of feeling, seeing and touching, of which adulthood has lost direct knowledge. In children we envy the wonder with which they look at things, with which they seek to probe the mystery of life. Naïve? No, quite the opposite. And Zakamoto's canvases prove it. Let us forget the blond heads and delightful forms of cherubs. Akira's children are true giants — not only in stature — keepers and bearers of an ancient wisdom that is at the same time still in the making. And so we adults are the dwarves on the shoulders of these child-giants, and climbing upon them we have the chance to look beyond. Beyond the visible, beyond the tangible. Beyond all that binds us, and forces us, to the present.
Let us not, however, be fooled by Zakamoto's canvases. Because, despite their constructive essentiality, they carry messages that are not immediately or easily decoded. By essentiality I mean the clean, linear balance that dominates each of his painted pages. Looking at one of his works, we are quick to notice that everything is exactly in the right place, that there is nothing excessive or that disturbs the eye, no useless and superfluous descriptiveness meant only to fill the space. Absences and presences are skilfully balanced by the hand of an artist who, in my view, is not interested in pleasing at all costs. Akira has absorbed the history of twentieth-century art and at the same time seems to have wiped it clean. His works have no past — and so it is pointless to look for citations and connections with it — but they have a present that lives and cries out, overbearing, in every single detail. Let us therefore consider Zakamoto a realist painter of our times, who does not shout his denunciation of contemporary society but sublimates it and, in sublimating it, indirectly condemns it. He subverts the world we know, changing the balance of power among things: he takes us by the hand into a Lilliputian world in which houses suddenly become small and children become giants who, not by chance, almost always turn their backs to us. He takes us to a beach where a group of mature women are towered over by the giant figure of a little girl dressed in the Chinese flag, who emerges from the sea and runs swiftly toward the shore: here is the sublimation of reality, which nevertheless takes on the contours of a warning about what the future may hold for us. But his is also the world in which Agnese magically loses herself among the clouds, in which Matteo — little boy and hero at once — is a Superman resting from the labour of carrying us on his shoulders.
His is the world we can see through the gaze of the child who, hopeful and with his snack bag in hand, begins his first day in the future. And it is a world that, despite everything, fills us with hope and that we like.
Of my first meeting with Akira Zakamoto I undoubtedly remember my poorly concealed attempt to detect on his face some reminiscence of Oriental features: nothing doing — Akira is not Japanese, nor does his family tree contain ancestors from the Land of the Rising Sun. Then, reading his biography, which describes him as abducted by extraterrestrials, I wondered with some curiosity what kind of painting he might do. After meeting an artist, I often try to intuit the kind of painting they make. Children — many of them — caught in their most natural expressions, but also, and above all, in their most incredible ones. No, I would not have expected Akira to paint, not only but principally, children. Childhood lives within and beside each of us, even though it is the one dimension from which we are all, irremediably, excluded. It is a multiform, fascinating universe, yet at the same time unknown and mysterious.
For centuries it has solicited the attention and creativity of philosophers, poets, writers and artists; it is a journey backward that few have been able to resist, and that each of us, in different forms, has at least once in life tried to undertake. Perhaps because it represents, at once, our past and a possible future of ours. Fascinating, no doubt. Disquieting, no doubt. The truth is that childhood, seen from afar, always takes on a feeling of intense melancholy, because it is the lost world, and above all represents a unique, unrepeatable way of feeling, seeing and touching, of which adulthood has lost direct knowledge. In children we envy the wonder with which they look at things, with which they seek to probe the mystery of life. Naïve? No, quite the opposite. And Zakamoto's canvases prove it. Let us forget the blond heads and delightful forms of cherubs. Akira's children are true giants — not only in stature — keepers and bearers of an ancient wisdom that is at the same time still in the making. And so we adults are the dwarves on the shoulders of these child-giants, and climbing upon them we have the chance to look beyond. Beyond the visible, beyond the tangible. Beyond all that binds us, and forces us, to the present.
Let us not, however, be fooled by Zakamoto's canvases. Because, despite their constructive essentiality, they carry messages that are not immediately or easily decoded. By essentiality I mean the clean, linear balance that dominates each of his painted pages. Looking at one of his works, we are quick to notice that everything is exactly in the right place, that there is nothing excessive or that disturbs the eye, no useless and superfluous descriptiveness meant only to fill the space. Absences and presences are skilfully balanced by the hand of an artist who, in my view, is not interested in pleasing at all costs. Akira has absorbed the history of twentieth-century art and at the same time seems to have wiped it clean. His works have no past — and so it is pointless to look for citations and connections with it — but they have a present that lives and cries out, overbearing, in every single detail. Let us therefore consider Zakamoto a realist painter of our times, who does not shout his denunciation of contemporary society but sublimates it and, in sublimating it, indirectly condemns it. He subverts the world we know, changing the balance of power among things: he takes us by the hand into a Lilliputian world in which houses suddenly become small and children become giants who, not by chance, almost always turn their backs to us. He takes us to a beach where a group of mature women are towered over by the giant figure of a little girl dressed in the Chinese flag, who emerges from the sea and runs swiftly toward the shore: here is the sublimation of reality, which nevertheless takes on the contours of a warning about what the future may hold for us. But his is also the world in which Agnese magically loses herself among the clouds, in which Matteo — little boy and hero at once — is a Superman resting from the labour of carrying us on his shoulders.
His is the world we can see through the gaze of the child who, hopeful and with his snack bag in hand, begins his first day in the future. And it is a world that, despite everything, fills us with hope and that we like.
Il mondo visto da Akira Zakamoto Nei soli artisti si sa che la vita adulta è la continuazione naturale dell'infanzia, per questo si dice che gli artisti sono grandi fanciulli. Alberto Savinio Del primo incontro con Akira Zakamoto ricordo senza dubbio il mio malcelato tentativo di scorgere sul suo volto qualche reminiscenza di fisionomia orientale: nulla di fatto, Akira non è giapponese, nè ha nel suo albero genealogico antenati provenienti dalla terra del Sol levante. Leggendo poi la sua biografia, che lo racconta rapito dagli extraterrestri, mi ero chiesta con una certa curiosità che tipo di pittura potesse fare. Mi capita spesso di cercare di intuire dopo aver conosciuto un artista, il suo tipo di pittura. Bambini, tanti, colti nelle loro espressioni più naturali, ma anche e soprattutto in quelle più incredibili. No, non mi sarei aspettata che Akira dipingesse, non solo, ma principalmente, bambini. L'infanzia vive dentro e accanto a ognuno di noi, nonostante sia una dimensione, l'unica, dalla quale siamo tutti, irrimediabilmente, esclusi. àˆ un universo multiforme, affascinante, ma al tempo stesso ignoto e misterioso.
Sollecita da secoli l'attenzione e la creatività di filosofi, poeti, scrittori e artisti, è un viaggio a rebours a cui pochi hanno saputo resistere, e che ognuno di noi, in forme diverse, almeno una volta nella vita ha tentato di intraprendere. Forse perché rappresenta, al tempo stesso, il nostro passato e un nostro possibile futuro. Affascinante, senza dubbio. Inquietante, senza dubbio. La realtà è che l'infanzia guardata da lontano si tinge sempre di un sentimento di intensa malinconia, perché è il mondo perduto, e rappresenta soprattutto un modo di sentire, vedere, toccare, unico e irripetibile, di cui l'età adulta ha perduto la diretta conoscenza. Dei bambini invidiamo lo stupore con cui guardano le cose, con cui cercano di indagare il mistero della vita. Ingenui? No, tutt'altro. E le tele di Zakamoto ce lo dimostrano. Dimentichiamoci le teste bionde e le forme deliziose degli amorini. I bambini di Akira sono dei veri e propri giganti – non solo nella statura – depositari e portatori di una saggezza antica e al tempo stesso ancora in divenire. Ed ecco dunque che noi adulti siamo i nani sulle spalle di questi bambini-giganti, e arrampicati su di loro abbiamo la possibilità di guardare oltre. Oltre il visibile, oltre il tangibile. Oltre tutto ciò che ci lega, e obbliga, al presente.
Non lasciamoci tuttavia ingannare dalle tele di Zakamoto. Perché a dispetto della loro essenzialità costruttiva sono portatrici di messaggi non immediatamente, e facilmente, decodificabili. E per essenzialità intendo l'equilibrio pulito e lineare che domina ogni sua pagina pittorica. Osservando una sua opera non tardiamo ad accorgerci che tutto è esattamente al posto giusto, che non c'è nulla di troppo o che disturbi la vista, non esistono descrittivismi inutili e superflui volti solo a riempire lo spazio. Assenze e presenze sono dosate sapientemente dalla mano di un artista a cui, a mio avviso, non interessa piacere a tutti i costi. Akira ha assimilato la storia dell'arte del Novecento e contemporaneamente sembra averne fatto tabula rasa. Le sue opere non hanno un passato – e dunque è inutile cercare citazioni e collegamenti con esso – ma hanno un presente che vive e grida prepotente in ogni singolo dettaglio. Consideriamo dunque Zakamoto come un pittore realista dei nostri tempi, che non urla la sua denuncia nei confronti della società contemporanea, ma la sublima e, sublimandola, indirettamente la condanna. Sovverte il mondo che conosciamo, cambiando i rapporti di forza tra le cose: ci porta per mano in un mondo lillipuziano in cui le case diventano improvvisamente piccole e i bambini dei giganti che, non casualmente, quasi sempre ci voltano le spalle. Ci porta su una spiaggia in cui un gruppo di donne mature sono sovrastate dalla figura gigante di una bambina vestita con la bandiera cinese che emerge dal mare e corre veloce verso la riva: ecco la sublimazione della realtà , che assume tuttavia i contorni di un monito e di un avvertimento su quello che il futuro ci potrà riservare. Ma il suo è anche il mondo in cui Agnese magicamente si perde fra le nuvole, in cui Matteo – fanciullino ed eroe allo stesso tempo – è un Superman che si riposa dalle fatiche di tenerci sulle spalle.
Il suo è il mondo che possiamo vedere attraverso lo sguardo del bambino che speranzoso, e con il sacchetto della merenda in mano, inizia il suo primo giorno nel futuro. Ed è un mondo che, nonostante tutto, ci riempie di speranza e ci piace.
Sollecita da secoli l'attenzione e la creatività di filosofi, poeti, scrittori e artisti, è un viaggio a rebours a cui pochi hanno saputo resistere, e che ognuno di noi, in forme diverse, almeno una volta nella vita ha tentato di intraprendere. Forse perché rappresenta, al tempo stesso, il nostro passato e un nostro possibile futuro. Affascinante, senza dubbio. Inquietante, senza dubbio. La realtà è che l'infanzia guardata da lontano si tinge sempre di un sentimento di intensa malinconia, perché è il mondo perduto, e rappresenta soprattutto un modo di sentire, vedere, toccare, unico e irripetibile, di cui l'età adulta ha perduto la diretta conoscenza. Dei bambini invidiamo lo stupore con cui guardano le cose, con cui cercano di indagare il mistero della vita. Ingenui? No, tutt'altro. E le tele di Zakamoto ce lo dimostrano. Dimentichiamoci le teste bionde e le forme deliziose degli amorini. I bambini di Akira sono dei veri e propri giganti – non solo nella statura – depositari e portatori di una saggezza antica e al tempo stesso ancora in divenire. Ed ecco dunque che noi adulti siamo i nani sulle spalle di questi bambini-giganti, e arrampicati su di loro abbiamo la possibilità di guardare oltre. Oltre il visibile, oltre il tangibile. Oltre tutto ciò che ci lega, e obbliga, al presente.
Non lasciamoci tuttavia ingannare dalle tele di Zakamoto. Perché a dispetto della loro essenzialità costruttiva sono portatrici di messaggi non immediatamente, e facilmente, decodificabili. E per essenzialità intendo l'equilibrio pulito e lineare che domina ogni sua pagina pittorica. Osservando una sua opera non tardiamo ad accorgerci che tutto è esattamente al posto giusto, che non c'è nulla di troppo o che disturbi la vista, non esistono descrittivismi inutili e superflui volti solo a riempire lo spazio. Assenze e presenze sono dosate sapientemente dalla mano di un artista a cui, a mio avviso, non interessa piacere a tutti i costi. Akira ha assimilato la storia dell'arte del Novecento e contemporaneamente sembra averne fatto tabula rasa. Le sue opere non hanno un passato – e dunque è inutile cercare citazioni e collegamenti con esso – ma hanno un presente che vive e grida prepotente in ogni singolo dettaglio. Consideriamo dunque Zakamoto come un pittore realista dei nostri tempi, che non urla la sua denuncia nei confronti della società contemporanea, ma la sublima e, sublimandola, indirettamente la condanna. Sovverte il mondo che conosciamo, cambiando i rapporti di forza tra le cose: ci porta per mano in un mondo lillipuziano in cui le case diventano improvvisamente piccole e i bambini dei giganti che, non casualmente, quasi sempre ci voltano le spalle. Ci porta su una spiaggia in cui un gruppo di donne mature sono sovrastate dalla figura gigante di una bambina vestita con la bandiera cinese che emerge dal mare e corre veloce verso la riva: ecco la sublimazione della realtà , che assume tuttavia i contorni di un monito e di un avvertimento su quello che il futuro ci potrà riservare. Ma il suo è anche il mondo in cui Agnese magicamente si perde fra le nuvole, in cui Matteo – fanciullino ed eroe allo stesso tempo – è un Superman che si riposa dalle fatiche di tenerci sulle spalle.
Il suo è il mondo che possiamo vedere attraverso lo sguardo del bambino che speranzoso, e con il sacchetto della merenda in mano, inizia il suo primo giorno nel futuro. Ed è un mondo che, nonostante tutto, ci riempie di speranza e ci piace.
The world seen by Akira Zakamoto. "In artists alone, it is known, adult life is the natural continuation of childhood; this is why artists are said to be great children." — Alberto Savinio.
Of my first meeting with Akira Zakamoto I undoubtedly remember my poorly concealed attempt to detect on his face some reminiscence of Oriental features: nothing doing — Akira is not Japanese, nor does his family tree contain ancestors from the Land of the Rising Sun. Then, reading his biography, which describes him as abducted by extraterrestrials, I wondered with some curiosity what kind of painting he might do. After meeting an artist, I often try to intuit the kind of painting they make. Children — many of them — caught in their most natural expressions, but also, and above all, in their most incredible ones. No, I would not have expected Akira to paint, not only but principally, children. Childhood lives within and beside each of us, even though it is the one dimension from which we are all, irremediably, excluded. It is a multiform, fascinating universe, yet at the same time unknown and mysterious.
For centuries it has solicited the attention and creativity of philosophers, poets, writers and artists; it is a journey backward that few have been able to resist, and that each of us, in different forms, has at least once in life tried to undertake. Perhaps because it represents, at once, our past and a possible future of ours. Fascinating, no doubt. Disquieting, no doubt. The truth is that childhood, seen from afar, always takes on a feeling of intense melancholy, because it is the lost world, and above all represents a unique, unrepeatable way of feeling, seeing and touching, of which adulthood has lost direct knowledge. In children we envy the wonder with which they look at things, with which they seek to probe the mystery of life. Naïve? No, quite the opposite. And Zakamoto's canvases prove it. Let us forget the blond heads and delightful forms of cherubs. Akira's children are true giants — not only in stature — keepers and bearers of an ancient wisdom that is at the same time still in the making. And so we adults are the dwarves on the shoulders of these child-giants, and climbing upon them we have the chance to look beyond. Beyond the visible, beyond the tangible. Beyond all that binds us, and forces us, to the present.
Let us not, however, be fooled by Zakamoto's canvases. Because, despite their constructive essentiality, they carry messages that are not immediately or easily decoded. By essentiality I mean the clean, linear balance that dominates each of his painted pages. Looking at one of his works, we are quick to notice that everything is exactly in the right place, that there is nothing excessive or that disturbs the eye, no useless and superfluous descriptiveness meant only to fill the space. Absences and presences are skilfully balanced by the hand of an artist who, in my view, is not interested in pleasing at all costs. Akira has absorbed the history of twentieth-century art and at the same time seems to have wiped it clean. His works have no past — and so it is pointless to look for citations and connections with it — but they have a present that lives and cries out, overbearing, in every single detail. Let us therefore consider Zakamoto a realist painter of our times, who does not shout his denunciation of contemporary society but sublimates it and, in sublimating it, indirectly condemns it. He subverts the world we know, changing the balance of power among things: he takes us by the hand into a Lilliputian world in which houses suddenly become small and children become giants who, not by chance, almost always turn their backs to us. He takes us to a beach where a group of mature women are towered over by the giant figure of a little girl dressed in the Chinese flag, who emerges from the sea and runs swiftly toward the shore: here is the sublimation of reality, which nevertheless takes on the contours of a warning about what the future may hold for us. But his is also the world in which Agnese magically loses herself among the clouds, in which Matteo — little boy and hero at once — is a Superman resting from the labour of carrying us on his shoulders.
His is the world we can see through the gaze of the child who, hopeful and with his snack bag in hand, begins his first day in the future. And it is a world that, despite everything, fills us with hope and that we like.
Of my first meeting with Akira Zakamoto I undoubtedly remember my poorly concealed attempt to detect on his face some reminiscence of Oriental features: nothing doing — Akira is not Japanese, nor does his family tree contain ancestors from the Land of the Rising Sun. Then, reading his biography, which describes him as abducted by extraterrestrials, I wondered with some curiosity what kind of painting he might do. After meeting an artist, I often try to intuit the kind of painting they make. Children — many of them — caught in their most natural expressions, but also, and above all, in their most incredible ones. No, I would not have expected Akira to paint, not only but principally, children. Childhood lives within and beside each of us, even though it is the one dimension from which we are all, irremediably, excluded. It is a multiform, fascinating universe, yet at the same time unknown and mysterious.
For centuries it has solicited the attention and creativity of philosophers, poets, writers and artists; it is a journey backward that few have been able to resist, and that each of us, in different forms, has at least once in life tried to undertake. Perhaps because it represents, at once, our past and a possible future of ours. Fascinating, no doubt. Disquieting, no doubt. The truth is that childhood, seen from afar, always takes on a feeling of intense melancholy, because it is the lost world, and above all represents a unique, unrepeatable way of feeling, seeing and touching, of which adulthood has lost direct knowledge. In children we envy the wonder with which they look at things, with which they seek to probe the mystery of life. Naïve? No, quite the opposite. And Zakamoto's canvases prove it. Let us forget the blond heads and delightful forms of cherubs. Akira's children are true giants — not only in stature — keepers and bearers of an ancient wisdom that is at the same time still in the making. And so we adults are the dwarves on the shoulders of these child-giants, and climbing upon them we have the chance to look beyond. Beyond the visible, beyond the tangible. Beyond all that binds us, and forces us, to the present.
Let us not, however, be fooled by Zakamoto's canvases. Because, despite their constructive essentiality, they carry messages that are not immediately or easily decoded. By essentiality I mean the clean, linear balance that dominates each of his painted pages. Looking at one of his works, we are quick to notice that everything is exactly in the right place, that there is nothing excessive or that disturbs the eye, no useless and superfluous descriptiveness meant only to fill the space. Absences and presences are skilfully balanced by the hand of an artist who, in my view, is not interested in pleasing at all costs. Akira has absorbed the history of twentieth-century art and at the same time seems to have wiped it clean. His works have no past — and so it is pointless to look for citations and connections with it — but they have a present that lives and cries out, overbearing, in every single detail. Let us therefore consider Zakamoto a realist painter of our times, who does not shout his denunciation of contemporary society but sublimates it and, in sublimating it, indirectly condemns it. He subverts the world we know, changing the balance of power among things: he takes us by the hand into a Lilliputian world in which houses suddenly become small and children become giants who, not by chance, almost always turn their backs to us. He takes us to a beach where a group of mature women are towered over by the giant figure of a little girl dressed in the Chinese flag, who emerges from the sea and runs swiftly toward the shore: here is the sublimation of reality, which nevertheless takes on the contours of a warning about what the future may hold for us. But his is also the world in which Agnese magically loses herself among the clouds, in which Matteo — little boy and hero at once — is a Superman resting from the labour of carrying us on his shoulders.
His is the world we can see through the gaze of the child who, hopeful and with his snack bag in hand, begins his first day in the future. And it is a world that, despite everything, fills us with hope and that we like.