The Ceramic Art of Anjin ABE

Anjin ABE remains a mysterious artist. His production ranges widely from traditional Bizen pottery craft designed for ceremonial tea to porcelains and sculpted works, “objects” for which he uses various materials.

His art also extends to oil painting, lacquer, bronze (both free-standing sculpture and bas-reliefs). He creates works on a huge scale, and monuments...

Recently, he has been focusing his talent on Bizen-style ceramics, but this hardly means that his other undertakings remain mere sidelines or personal musings. All his works show a special richness and the same perfection. One could say he is a protean artist, but, as opposed to those of other talented creators, ABE's works are never anything but authentic: a sign of the level of his technique.

As for the artist and near-genius Rosanjin KITAOJI, he revived several styles, particularly in ceramics but also in calligraphy, seal-making... Even with him, I sometimes sense a lack of fineness; technique is often this Achilles heel.

But here, we can feel nothing unpleasing. The works are uniformly in a direct style, simple and steeped in dignity. ABE's work applies to ceramics, with paintings as with sculpture, with all the totally natural strength of a creative instinct.

The creators hand is free and light. It is so rare to see such an artist, working in different media, move so effortlessly between traditional style and contemporary outlook...

Nonetheless, I have not always identified closely with him or his lifestyle.

Last June, I paid him a visit at the UShimado kiln. In fact, I often visit Ushimado but never before did I experience the atmosphere, the serenity in the heart of the mountains.

As this site, there are several structures, for the kilns, the residences, the studios, the meeting hall, etc. but each building is minimalist, without ornament.

I am fond of such things without pomp. From the first meeting, I immediately recognized his frank and open character, or rather on that day I didn't really notice it for it's now that I feel intensely his personality and the simplicity of the site as well as the need to create freely without slavish attachments.

Anjin ABE's ceramics take their basis in antique Bizen pottery, from the Momoyama period. This does not imply, of course, any imitation. It means that, through the reappearance of a particular style, you can take your own form as a Bizen from the Momoyama period.

We can say that in aspects of the new style there is the noticeable simplicity and sobriety of old Bizen. Compare the yakishime, which is attained by bringing mountain clay to a high temperature, to Bizens of the Edo period: the latter is painted in order to change the brown clay surface to red. Thus we need to create stronger works than the heady aroma of contemporary Bizens. To this purpose, ABE has sought out enthusiastically the necessary clay, form, kiln and firing techniques that define Bizen.

He began with painting, and when he took up ceramics as the start of the 1970s, he had to learn from the ground floor up. This, by creating eternally new experiences, confirmed his desire to render "contemporary Bizen thought."

Personally, I was astounded that Bizen could provoke such a new and splendid approach. This meditation is not yet complete, not even in theory, but it is confirmed and concretized by works. (I will list later on some negative aspects of the theory.)

We distinguish two overall facets in these works:

On the one hand, a rich tone variety thanks to the heat (yohen or "kiln changes") and on the other the fine clay quality seen on the vessel surfaces (vases, mizusashi, hachi, etc.) Traditional Bizen includes two types of yohen: "sesame grains" (goma), sangiri, "ropes of fire" (hidasuki), "peony cake" (botamochi). The effect is due not only to the surface tint; the vessel's volume and shape also play a role. The effect is due to the firing temperature of more than 1,300 degrees C. As a result, the objects take on a rock-like hardness and dissolve into the clay the rice bran ashes to produce magnificent yohen.

These works are made in anagama-style buried kiln. It is the first such I have seen; there is a single space in front and the potter places all his pieces in saggars, spacing them in the rice straw according to the yohen effect he expects. The anagama's structure draws the flames from the kiln opening to the inside as the firing progresses. In accordance with his numerous trials, ABE stops the firing at the half-way points and allows a cooling off before firing again (he calls this yasumi-yaki or "interrupted firing"). At this point, temperatures tend to even out in the kiln, climbing to the higher areas. This seems efficient. The originality of the kiln and of the technique should be noted - and is not just a coincidence. The easy-to-use kiln results from observation and meditation. We can but notice the intelligence and pragmatism at work. The products of these kilns nonetheless do not seem the result of cold calculation but rather of warmth and passion.

This is the essence of an instinctive, passionate artist. We thus acknowledge the greatness of an artist who combines thought and instinct.

Besides his work on yohen, Anjin ABE's work offers another characteristic: richness of form and forceful shaping of his ceramic sculpture volumes - even if his Bizen-style production also have splendid shapes: consider the handles, for example, or the cover knob of the mizusashi or the vases, scratched by spatula, the mizusashi themselves!

One often hears that, in terms of shape. Japanese craftsmen cannot compare to sculptors...I see among them an artist, a creator capable of a rich expressive talent, endowed with a heightened artistic power: ABE.

But his creations are not put together like sculptures.

Without further delay, let us say simply that Greek sculpture, the foundation of western sculpture, is the art of curving stone. It is an art of volume inasmuch as solid matter, such as stone, has a certain volume. On some occasions, clay models were made so that a bronze prototype could be cast. But whether in stone or not, sculpture is thus always the art of matter and space. Art critic Herbert Read notes that western sculpture is always the art of mass and space, from the Greeks to Rodin. But what we call the applied arts, ceramics in particular, is entirely distinct from sculpture, even though it remains an art of solid spaces. We are no longer dealing with an art of masses and volumes but on the contrary with an art of a fine membrane, where a curved clay surface denotes the empty space within. Ceramic creation deals therefore with that surface as with a skin or as with a hollow, in order to give it form in different ways. One can influence the hand-built shape, or the one given by the wheel, by tilting or by scarifying.

European or Chinese ceramics are almost always symmetrical, but their Japanese counterparts, especially those from Momoyoma period used for tea ceremonies, can have very complicated forms. This tradition has been preserved to our own time, without a break.

With ABE, we note this Momoyama tradition in his creative version of throwing and coiling: he bends, he adds on. This would appear to be the routine beauty of sculpture that makes stone bend. Such is the beauty of works hardened by high temperature, after being snatched from the primitive earth and set forth into as hard as stones.

In several instances, one can apply technical corrections while the works are not yet dry, but they always remain the finesse and strength of he who curves stones. In this sense, that of sculpture, such works are rare in Japanese ceramics.

The work of Anjin ABE connects pragmatism and meditation in relation to mass and aspect (yohen); it also links instinct and passion. His creation achieves, at the same time and mysteriously, Japanese traditional beauty, gentle and asymmetrical, hard and elegant.

AS for me, I hope he returns to a rather tonal creation oriented towards sculpture, to attain a greater calm and simplicity. I believe it is this which corresponds the best to his original talent...

Yoshiaki INUI President Kanazawa Art Craft University (Traduction du francais: Theodore Stanger)