Yasuo Mizui


Yasuo Mizui was a Japanese stone sculptor who lived in France. He preferred abstract form in public sculpture within architectural contexts and took part in several symposia on sculpture in Europe, the US, Israel, and Japan.

Biography

Yasuo Mizui entered into Kobe University in 1944. During World War II, he worked as technician at a company and learned casting. After his graduation in 1947, he entered Tokyo University of the Arts and majored in Sculpture. He was taught by Kazuo Kikuchi and Hirakushi Denchū. The reason of shifting his interest from mechanical engineering to sculpture was because he hoped of possibility of power of art, which has no frontier nor war and he chose "Art casting – Casting daibutsu" as his thesis.
After graduation from Tokyo University of the Arts in 1953, he obtained a scholarship from French government to study further at École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris from 1953 to 1958, where he learned monumental art and sculpture from Alfred Janniot and Marcel Gimond. He apprenticed Apel·les Fenosa from 1954 to 1958 while studying at the university. While visiting the atelier, Fenosa assigned Mizui to create one piece of work made by clay every day upon his arrival. After several months, Mizui felt despair from his own creativity. However, he managed to create one at the last minute. This experience helped his subsequent career to attend the International Sculpture Symposium and to create large monumental works under the French program 1% for art.

Works for Olympic games in Japan and France

He has created walls of sculptures Les murs des fossils for Tokyo Olympic games in Tokyo, Japan in 1964 and Microcosme et macrocosme for Winter Olympic Games in Grenoble, France.

Les murs des fossils
Yoyogi National Gymnasium is arena for athletic games, located in Yoyogi Park, Tokyo, designed by Kenzo Tange and it was built between 1961 and 1964. Mizui received a request from Tange in February 1964 and created the wall of art with ten other assistants in Kitagi island for three months, then, delivered it to Tokyo in August for completion. Foreign media introduced its works in September.
The length of the large abstract wall of reliefs is 93 m in total. They consist of 408 pieces of 1 m 82 cm x 60 cm x 30 cm Mikage stone and the total weight is 160 tons. These Mikage stones come from Kitagi Island, also known as "Stone Island", in Okayama, Japan.
His concept Walls of Fossiles expresses 10 landscapes in his deep involvement with experience of life and nature-like memory as fossils; Travel – Flame – Weight – Perfume – Obsession – Water – Wisdom – Sound – Time – Light. As always, he carved all works by hand using chisels and large and small hammer.
"Macrocosm and microcosm". Two walls of 40 m – the "macrocosm and microcosm" – are expressed as the maximum and the minimum of the world. "The Maximum" symbolizes the great life of nature as Sun, Forest, Mountain, Sea, and River beyond the individual matter and "the Minimum" symbolizes the inner conflict of human beings. They express the world of nature and human beings. Tadao Takemoto, who translated the book "Anti-retrospective" by André Malraux, often referred to Mizui about him. During the term, he, Minister of Cultural Affairs under Charles de Gaulle regime, who has deep knowledge of arts, visited the Olympic Village. He saw the wall of art and said to Mizui "Excellent!".

1% for art

In France, the law of 1951 provides that 1% of the state budget is spent on the decoration of public buildings with artwork. The majority of the works of Mizui in France are created under 1% for art. He has been built 26 sculptures between 1968 and 1982. For The first order from French cultural ministry was to create sculpture at Bordeaux University in 1968, where he built Jet d'eau pétrifiée . This request was made after his reputation towards Microcosme et Macrocosme at Winter Olympic games in Grenoble. Le Mur qui s'ouvre is a retaining wall. The artist used molds of expanded polyester material that cut through the electrical resistance, a very specific technique that Mizui has obtained from his engineering background.

Symposium

The sculpture symposium gave Mizui an opportunity for a new direction to develop and promote a sense of sculptural monumentality in the urban beauty. It also provided competitions among artists to demonstrate one's ability to create the same material. This movement has been achieved since 1959 in :de:Symposion europäischer Bildhauer 1961–1963|St. Margrethen in Germany. The first participation of Mizui was in Austria in 1960. He discovered the charm of work from large stone blocks of 4 meters. In 1962, he created the work, Clef d'amour before the Berlin Wall in Germany. The new bank had the slogan of this symposium: "The wall to the east, creating a sculpture to the west." The Symposium was awarded German critique prize. He stated " There is a wall between east and west. The wall he created a sad story every day. Our silent anger supported this meeting." Location of the statue has been moved and currently presented at Berlin Square in Germany. The following year in 1963, he participated International Sculpture Symposium at Manazuru City, Kanagawa Prefecture in Japan, as a leader, under the financial support from Asahi Shimbun Company, where 11 other sculptors from eight different countries also participated.

Diagonal Yin Yang

There is a Fontaine-de-Vaucluse near to Lacoste where Mizui lived. This is a mysterious fountain, which has a love story, dated back to the 14th century. He stated: "Why not, Nachi Falls gush somewhere in France as the rain hollows constantly rocks the fountain." When he visited Nachi Falls in Japan later on, his heart and body trembled in front of the cascade and he was convinced: " Waterfall Nachi had really pierced the earth and it rebounds into Fontaine-de-Valucluse." He, at the age of 70 years old, realized "Diagonal Yin Yang" was divided between Japan and France; Two paths, two unfinished cultures. He often questions the place of the two extremes in his sculptural work where he felt caught between the Hammer and Anvil. Along with these two realizations that coexist in his work, one under the influence of another, the Yin and Yang characters are also identified by Mizui, Japan as, and France as. This assimilation takes more consistency with the movement that brings these two countries. It is in the conversation and the confrontation between the aspects Yin and Yang, which constantly oppose each other, are answered, push, and embraces he discovers, though this sculpture as a new form. River, a house, or a woman's appearance, are as Yin elements. While a flower, a tree, an animal, and a patron will generally have the character of Yang. He constantly questions the expression of his sculpture in terms of strengths Yin or Yang. He himself says "The response looks like a mask play between truth and falsehood." Mizui heard by his friend, Tadao Takemoto, who is the writer of Andre Malraux and Nachi Waterfall; André Malraux said "Nachi Waterfall is the backbone of the Shintoism."
Diagonal Yin Yang is a series of 40 stone sculptures, made in Japan for the exhibition at Gallery Tatuno Hiranomachi, Osaka, Japan, in 1965. After this exhibition, all his works were transferred to France, in the garden of his residence in Lacoste. Two statues were offered on the occasion of the exhibition at Luxeuil-les-Bains in 2013.

Wall of Hope

In 1985, during a project with Seita Onishi, a Japanese business man, and philanthropist, Mizui was keen on the actor James Dean. Together, they had a goal, to create a James Dean Center, which would be located in Cholame, in California in the United States, near the place of the fatal car accident of James Dean.Earlier year in 1981, Mizui had been created and placed chromium cenotaph for James Dean, commissioned by Onishi, near to the place his accident.
Mizui worked on James Dean Center project for three years, creating sketches and sculptures, as well as visiting the United States. Following a conflict of opinion with the owner of the proposed Center site, the project could not be fulfilled. Yet the "Wall of Hope" remains, a monumental sculpture dedicated to the memory of James Dean; this sculpture took three years for him to complete; it consists of 150 tons of stone extracted from the quarry of Lacoste, in the village where he lived. On one of the sides of the "Wall of Hope", he sculpted in stone the face of the film icon. "I said to myself, the three masterpieces of James Dean saved his fans from despair, the desperate walls open and give us the light of hope", the artist explains. The "Wall of Hope" was inaugurated in 2006, 51 years after the death of the actor, and, though not in California, it welcomes visitors to the garden, like an open-air museum, of Mizui, in Lacoste.

Stone and Asceticism

Mizui said: "Given the immense nature, I felt myself very small. In addition, the stone has rough context, but it is already so beautiful.
Although I talked, insulted, and sighed him, he remained transferable and quietly annoyed in spite of my pleas and anger. However, after some time, the stone started to talk. It was he who guided me; Not so! And there! Yes, like this. If I can one day to melt into the divine nothingness, my sculpture will remain as an offering to the great nature." Jean- Rosenberg, science professor at University of Poitiers, told about the sculpture of Mizui; In his non-figurative art, the temporal dimension is absent. There are no messages coded by symbols or figures. His work is cosmic. One feels the origin of life and evolution; it represents the universal entities, which have not individualized, but as they stand at the beginning of evolution.''

Métagraphie

The technique of compressing a color between two sheets of paper or two other materials gave rise to unexpected fantastic images. The artist analyzed the causality of phenomena that may be considered accidental. In other words, it is to introduce the power of the will in the creation of such phenomena, by developing a technique and practice. This process expresses the reflection, change, succession, and the fact of going beyond, beside, and between etc. Obtained by a non-reproducible process, the métagraphie implies that the artist makes the slide watercolor on waterproof paper, then lets it have the chance to act on the matter. His own response is to find the right balance between the fluidity of watercolor and the exposure time. There are similar techniques, such as pressed oil, starch-pressed, and the decal. But the manner and the choice of material of Mizui are different. An international critic of Fine Arts, Sakae Hasegawa, said in 1984: "When I saw this painting for the first time, I thought this was a picture of a snowy mountain. But looking closer, it was not a picture and this picture had a strong resonance in me, it perceives cold silence. I find this painting conveys a philosophical and meditative opening, as if he could let the silence of the heart.".

Four completed forms

;1. The sculpture of the oscillation / Oscillo-Relief, 1972–1982
Oscillo-Relief cut is the shape obtained by the vertical oscillatory motion and horizontal oscillation of an electrical resistance. This free form is not the result of a prior plan, but the technique requires precise control. Oscillo-Relief is a fundamental invention of Mizui. He applied the technique to his sculptures in 1972. He was invited for The 2nd Henry Moore Grand Prize Exhibition at Hakone Open-Air Museum, in Nagano Prefecture, Japan in 1981, created Oscillo-complex, and received Special Prize at the exhibition.
;2. The Wall Sculpture, 1964 –
"Cosmos". 360 flagstones of Comblanchien, unit of 6 cm thick, are firmly fixed on the wall. Mizui himself said, "I wanted to create a shadow graphics and light evoking heaven, earth and man.". The wall sculpture recalls, in formal terms, Walls of Fossiles and "Macrocosme et Microcosme".
;3. The sculpture "Largeg Head", 1960–1971
"Hommage à Néguev " performed on the occasion of a Symposium in Israel. About this experience, the artist expresses himself in these words: It was a real brainwashing life for two months in the Negev desert. I felt my sculpture as a drop in the sea with immensity of nature. This is the first time that I could hold chisel with sincerely humble. When I made an elliptical hole in the top part, I felt that sun light was rising towards me.
;4. The Sculpture ZIG and ZAG, 1973–1974
"ZIG and ZAG". Mizui first worked with blocks of polystyrene by cutting them to see the final shape of sculpture. He directed dozens of works like this. In the fifties, Parisian artists like to establish their workshop in Provence. The New Yorker painter, Bernard Pfriem, opened an art school to bring American students in the center of the village of Lacoste, France. This school is located in a large house located next to the ancient castle, The Marquis de Sade. He had remained relationship with the school for 20 years, taught students about stone sculpture every summer, and made one piece of work with them every year.

Selected chronology

In France

※ Currently existing
※ Currently existing
※ Currently existing