On the other day, I went to the exhibition of the Jean-Michel Folon. It was held in Tokyo Station Gallery.
Tokyo Station Gallery is located on top of the real entrance of Tokyo station. From there you can literaly look down on the busy traffic of people going in and out of the station.
Tokyo station was renovated a few years ago, reborn as a completely new station with shopping center and other facilities.
Past week I was in Seoul, Korea. Right near the Seoul station. There was a building exactly look like Tokyo station, an old one before the renovation. Surely it was built by Japanese during the war. My mother was actually born in Seoul during the Japanese occupation. Because of that reason, I was grown up, listening to all kinds of stories of the war time. I personally disagree with the idea of building that signifies Japan in other countries.
The idea of bringing something that is significant Japan forcefully into the other country is a total ego that should not be tolarated. However it is true that an old Tokyo Station was a symbol of Japan for quite sometime, with Japan. And within Japan, this effort to save the heritage of the station and at the same time, renovate it, have it reborn as a total new facility is fantastic.
Now as for Mr. Jean Michel Folon, I have to admit that I did not know anything about this Artist Jean-Michel Folon, but it was a beautiful exhibition. I was attracted by so many of his beautiful works.
This gallery itself was fairly small space with several exibition rooms and many people were going around. At times, there was a little traffic jam around the exhibition, because the rooms were rather small and corridor was not very wide.
The interesting thing was I found people tend to stop for longer time when they look at the wall where Artist profile or the explanation of the art was written, comparing to the artist’s works. I couldn’t say for sure but it certainly felt that way.
For me, most of the time I’d like to feel the art without any preconception. The profile of the artist or the explanation of this particular work sometimes become even an obstacle to this concept. Maybe it’s because I’m an artist. When I create music, I always hope listners enjoy my music as is.
Herbie Hancock, the jazz pianist, the master, once wrote “These days people are not interesting in the artist itself anymore. They are interested in who made that art”. Herbie Hancock used the word “these days”, becuase (I suppose) nowadays we have technologies that allow us to listen to the performance done in any place in the world anytime we want to, or these days just by tapping the phone we can access to all kinds of information. In old days, physically going to the jazz club or the concert hall was about the only way to enjoy the music.
From the Artist side, we would like listeners to appreciate what we do purely without any preconceptions.
When I play in Jazz clubs, sometimes audience comes up to me and say,”The music was great, but I’m sorry I haven’t studied Jazz enough”. In response to that, I always say there’s absolutely no need to study music to enjoy. The music is for you to enjoy in anyway you want to.
No, this is very true. The less preconception, the better.
However, when I think back to the time when I first started listening to jazz, I recall I always liked to get to know who were the artists and what kind of backgrounds they have. A lot of preconception so to speak.
This is not wrong, either.
So, If somebody say that receiving the art without any preconception is the idea coming from Artist’s ego, I don’t think I can argue about it.
To find the way to balance the difference between The attitude of Artist and the attitude of art viewer or listener might be the biggest challenge that Artists face nowadays.