Kenzo Kitakata from Japan has made a career of writing hardboiled crime fiction. You want gangsters and the underworld? Read Ashes, The Cage and City of Refuge.
Winter Sleep, the author's fourth book translated into English, is a world away - this is a novel about artists and their art.
Winter Sleep
centers on Masatake Nakagi, age thirty-nine, an internationally
renowned artist who has recently spent three years in prison for killing
a man during a bar brawl. Since Nakagi paints mostly abstracts, we
might think of him as we would Jackson Pollock or Clyfford Still or Hans
Hofmann.
Nakagi also serves as the tale's narrator, thus we
follow the artist in his daily routine of morning run, painting, eating,
drinking and occasional sex during his stay at a secluded cabin up in
the mountains.
However, being a famous artist comes with a price
- as if he's the blue ribbon strawberry pie at the county fair, a
string of men and women all want their slice of Nakagi.
Topping
the list, there's stunning Natsue pulling up in her white Mercedes. Art
dealer and all around business sharpie, Natsue has definite plans for
Nakagi, both professional and deeply personal.
Akiko is an
eighteen-year old beauty who addresses Nakagi as sensei since she's an
aspiring artist who wishes to learn from the master. Conveniently, Akiko
is renting a mountain villa not too terribly far from Nakagi's cabin.
Forever
the man with questions, writer/journalist Nomura seeks to solve the
puzzle that is Nakagi in order to discover what it takes to be both
great artist and unrepentant murderer. If he can extract what he needs,
Nomura might even be able to write more than just an article - he'll
have enough material to write a book.
On one of his visits to the
cabin, Nomura brings along Oshita who is much more than just another
thirty-year-old art student - Oshita claims to have come from Nakagi's
heart. And another thing about Oshita: like Nakagi, he's also a
murderer. But Oshita got off from going to prison due to the testimony
of a psychiatrist pronouncing him 'incompetent'.
Kenzo Kitakata
frames of his tale thusly - clean and simple, not a trace of complexity
or mystery hovering around the edges, a most befitting frame since (and
this is the critical point about Winter Sleep) the real fire, the sweet juice, the Dionysian core of the novel revolves around the creation of art.
Sure,
there's an element of suspense in the closing chapters (a crime
fiction author just can't help himself) but to repeat for emphasis: Winter Sleep
is a novel about artists and their art, the foremost artist, of course,
is Nakagi, but there's also Akiko and Oshita. To underscore this point,
I'll segue to a number of direct quotes.
Nakagi trots up the
stairs to his second floor studio where he previously had drawn one line
on a huge canvas. He tells us, "I soon became totally engrossed. Using
charcoal, I covered the canvas with black lines. I started to see
something in the blackness. At that point, I stopped. I had been
standing in front of the canvas for three hours, but it felt like a
second. I could usually work only in natural light, but when a fit like
this came, it didn't matter."
I hear echoes of art critic Harold
Rosenberg announcing back in the 1950s that many abstract expressionist
artists approach their canvas as “an arena in which to act” rather than
as a place to produce an object. “What was to go on the canvas was not a
picture but an event.” Rosenberg termed such an event "action
painting." From a number of Nakagi's reflections and observations while
creating, I had the definite impression he was a spiritual brother to
those American action painters.
"A painter leaves behind
paintings the way a hiker leaves behind footprints; once he's made them,
they're just there, belonging to no one."
Nakagi's statement
here speaks to his identity being neither entwined nor defined by any of
his past artworks. One has the feeling Nakagi is on the cusp of a
creative explosion, similar to when Jackson Pollock transitioned to
applying paint to his canvas positioned on the floor.
Akiko and
Nakagi in conversation where Akiko says, "Landscapes and still lives and
people are easy to paint because you can see them. It's harder to paint
what's in your heart. You can't see anything there."
"Well, there are feelings," I said.
"You've had a lot of practice putting those feelings into color and form, haven't you sensei?"
"I've had a lot of practice drawing what I see as I see it."
It's
that 'as I see it' that makes all the difference. As an artist and
creator, Nakagi judges himself living on a completely different plane
from what he terms 'ordinary human beings'. There is a hefty dose of
Nietzschean philosophy here (in the sense of artist as spiritual seeker
and visionary expressing in and through art). A question one can ask
while reading Winter Sleep: To what extent does moving through
life as an artist contribute to Nakagi's apparent indifference to
conventional rules and moral codes?
Nakagi critiquing Akiko's
drawings: "Sketching is something like - it's like drawing yourself.
That's what all painting is, really. But you aren't trying to see
yourself clearly."
One detects how radical and transformative
Nakagi's Nietzschean view of art: the finished work doesn't reveal the
apples or trees or model one uses as a subject as much as the work
reveals the soul of the artist.
Nakagi speaking to Oshita: "I'm
me. I'm not you. You say you came from my heart, but you can't paint
like me. You're not me. You're you."
Such a powerful dynamic -
Nakagi recognizes Oshita did truly comes from his heart but painting and
artistic expression are on a completely different plane. What Oshita
needs to paint is not being in touch with Nakagi but Oshita being in
touch with Oshita.
I could go on with offering commentary on dozens of other direct quotes. Winter Sleep makes for a rich, compelling read. If you're into art, that is.
Japanese novelist Kenzo Kitakata, born 1947
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