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*Intuitive Arts*

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D´ici et d´ailleurs
First edition

HERMANN
Publication  2016.10.12

The point of view of the intuitive poet
In a recent article titled « Some trends of contemporary art and their deep roots », published in the second edition of For an intuitive Art, *1,I briefly described the work of Rikka Ayasaki this way:

Rikka Ayasaki, in addition to geometric paintings,« sumi-e » on canvas inspired by Japanese inks, creates indisputably intuitive paintings that can be classified between representational art and abstract art, in which colours blaze in a frenzied and twirling dance, producing their own material and their own shapes.

I should have added that three tendencies are emerging from this painter's work, a series titled « Passions » which combines the colours of western art with the unique oriental shades, a series titles « Windows » made up of ink paintings on canvas, and a series titled « Black and White », paintings on Japanese Washi paper. The series « Windows » is inspired by the Japanese technique of sumi-e, using only black ink. The achievement of the painter is real, since she cannot correct anymore the painting she created, as is possible with oil painting for example. The painter has to concentrate herself before painting on the canvas, feel in harmony with nature and deeply meditate. Sumi-e, that we could tend at first to assimilate to geometric painting, is therefore much more than that. It is spiritual art. In his essayConcerning the Spiritual in Art and in Painting in particular, Kandinsky has in a perfect way analyzed the spiritual dimension of art, and in particular of the effect of colour.

If, in the « Black and White » paintings on Japanese Washi paper, still respecting an oriental tradition, Rikka Ayasaki does not use all the colour range as is, on the contrary, the tradition in the western world, notably in Europe, she does it, and in a really masterly way, in the « Passions» series, to which I was alluding before.

This is to say that her work is becoming a crossroad between cultures. This transculturalism gives an extremely rich dimension to her palette, all the more that it appears to result from an amazing mastery. The goal is to reach the celestial, through the effect of transparency. Here, it is not the poet anymore who makes himself the « thief of fire », the fire of intuitive flash. According to me, this type of painting requires from the spectator a lecture which is intuitive in itself, since in this case, one definitely reaches « the second vital result of the contemplation of colour, which provokes a vibration of the soul », as Kandinsky declares in Concerning the Spiritual in Art.*2Intuition does not try to interpret itself, but manifestsitself on the canvas in a brilliant way, everything coming from sensation. The painting resulting from a flash, depending on the immediacy of feelings, although being different and more modern, reminds the mastery and genius of painters like Turner or the Monet of the waterlilies. The object « made intuitive », seen in its dazzling reality, is so stunning that it cannot manifest itself clearly but only in a certain fuzziness of intuition. The colours, of an unbearable beauty, as with Chagall for instance ­ talking only of the exceptional genius of the colorist ­, dissolve themselves in each other. The lines, the outlines do not exist, even the horizon itself fades in such a way that we do not know anymore if what we see is abstract or figurative art, as in the most puzzling paintings of Turner and Monet, notably, whom I just mentioned. It happens that it is nor the former nor the latter, but painting arisen out of intuition, what I call« intuitionism ».

*1 Editions D´Ici et D´Ailleurs, Meaux, 2011. Première édition, Anagrammes / La Tilv, Perros-Guirec, Les Celtes suivis de Pour un Art de l´intuition, 2003.
*2 1954. Gallimard, folio essais, 1989, p. 107.

For these reasons, I consider Rikka Ayasaki to be one of the greatest modern painters. One can find in her style what characterizes the work of some contemporary poets or writers, like Yves Bonnefoy ou Philippe Jaccottet, or, in the oriental field the painter and writer Gao Xingjian (2000 Nobel Prize for litterature, year that cannot be more symbolic for new art), whose essay For a new Aesthetic I had mentioned back in 2003 in my For an intuitive Art, which advocated an intuitive art moving away from the concept - as does also Yves Bonnefoy -, drawing a bridge between East and West.

I consider that Rikka Ayasaki is moving in a similar space. At first glance, when I discovered her work in an art gallery in Paris, I understood that I was dealing with one of the greatest intuitive artists of our times. I think that Gao Xingjian would not contradict me, he who, when he is painting, and although his country of origin is China, almost always uses ink only and he who does not stop advocating a non-conceptual art arising out of the deepest intuitions of the artist, art that necessarily borders on the spiritual, as Asia teaches us so well.


Eric Sivry - Proffeseur, Writer, Poet -

(Translation)


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