赤瀬川原平・三木富雄「共に1937年生まれ、真のダダイストだった」

珍説 – 駄々イズム

「なぜ、耳を作るのですか?」という質問に「耳が私を選んだ」と答えた三木富雄だが、私なりには、こんなふうに考えてみた。 ある日の朝、喫茶店でモーニングサービスのバタートーストとコーヒーを食べなが らふとパンの耳は耳の形をしてないのになぜ、耳というのだろうかと。パンの辺縁部、 パンの端っこじゃなくて、という思いが突然湧き上がってきた。トーストにはついて くるのに、サンドウィッチになるとパンの耳は切り捨てられ、美味しいものなのに、 なぜか捨てられてしまう。切り離された耳、そうか!頭の横についていて音を聞くと いう機能を持った耳を切り離し、存在の意味を取り除いてボイド化すれば面白いこと になるぞ!衛生技術学校で歯科技工士の勉強をしていた三木にはすぐ、入れ歯とか義肢のように装着される肉体から取り外された状態のそれらは、単に物質化し純粋造形 物になると気付いたのだろうと。 赤瀬川原平の場合はこんなふうに考えてみる。渋谷駅から道玄坂あたりで1日サン ドイッチマンをやって千円もらった。今日初めての食い物、喫茶店のトーストセットを食べた。店を出るとポケットには七百五十円しか残っていない。あの千円札が勝手 に増殖すれば良いのになぁー!!!1日がレディーメイドだ、自分を置き去りにして 勝手に過ぎてゆく、全てはボイド(空っぽなのだ)宇宙の缶詰!千円札柄の模造紙で何でもかんでもくるんでしまえば、全て意味を失いその中身は空っぽと同じだ!やっ た!!吉村先輩はネオダダオルガナイザーズとかいた紙を身体中に巻き付け透明人間 のように銀座を闊歩した。もう俺たちは誰にもみられない透明オブジェに変身したのだ。

隠れ蓑だ!忍者だ!ダダダ打だ!おしまいだ!

2022 年 4 月 兒嶋俊郎

Strange story – Dadaism (珍説 – 駄々イズム)

“Why do you make ears?” To this question, Tomio Miki answered, “Because ears chose me.” Well, but I thought of it in my own way.

(Miki’s monologue)　One morning, while enjoying buttered toast and coffee of the morning service at a coffee shop, I suddenly wondered why ‘bread ears’ (*This is a unique expression of Japanese but we call the edge part of bread ‘Pan-no-mimi’ translated as ‘bread ears’) are called ears, not the edge of the bread nor the end of the bread, even though they are not shaped like ears. This thought came to me out of the blue. Bread ears come with toast, but they don’t with sandwiches; the bread ear is cut off and somehow thrown away even though it’s such a delicious part. Detached ears… Oh I see!

If you detach the ear, which is attached to the side of the head and whose function is to hear sound, and void it of any meaning to its existence, you’re in for an interesting ride! Miki, who had studied dental technology at the School of Hygiene Technology, immediately realized that dentures and prostheses simply will be materialized and become purely plastic objects as they were removed from the body to which they are attached.

In the case of Genpei Akasegawa, I think of it this way.

(Akasegawa’s monologue)  I worked as a sandwich man for a day around Shibuya station and received 1,000 yen. I ate my first meal of the day, a toast set at a coffee shop. When I left the restaurant, there was only 750 yen left in my pocket. I wish those thousand-yen bills would multiply on their own! A day is a readymade, it passes by on its own, leaving you behind, all void (empty) canned in the universe! If you wrap everything in imitation paper with a thousand-yen bill pattern, everything loses its meaning and its contents are as good as empty! Yes! Yoshimura-senpai strolled through Ginza like an invisible man with a piece of paper with “Neo-Dada Organizers” written all over his body. We were now transformed into invisible objects that no one could see.

It’s a cover of invisibility! I’m a Ninja! Dada-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da! I’m done!

赤瀬川原平・三木富雄 共に 1937 年生まれ、真のダダイストだった。

赤瀬川原平さんも三木富雄さんも、過去にそれぞれの展覧会は開催してきましたが、お二人を一緒に取り上げさせていただくのは初めてのことになります。 表題にもありますように、お二人は1937年(昭和12年)にこの世に生を受けています。 私ごとですが、私は1947年(昭和22年)生まれですので、お二人は私より10歳年上になります。私にとって、このお二人を結ぶ鍵は、国分寺の嘗ての我が家(祖父児島善三郎旧邸)と当時前衛芸術の先頭を切って走っていたアーティスト吉村益信さんの存在です。 吉村さんは私より15歳上の1932年(昭和7年)生まれですから、二人より5歳年上ということになります。その吉村さんが旧児島善三郎アトリエに下宿しだしたのが1954年22歳の時です。新宿の磯崎新さん設計のホワイトハウスができる前のことです。その頃から、後にネオダダのメンバーになるような連中がアトリエの中や外でしょっちゅう集まってどんちゃん騒ぎをしていたことをよく覚えています。 赤瀬川さんは父親の転勤で4歳の頃から大分県大分市で育ち、中学時代から吉村さんなどが活動していたグループ「新世紀群」に出入りしたりしていまし た。そんな縁があって、名古屋の高校を卒業してから武蔵野美術大学を受験するために上京した折に、国分寺の吉村アトリエ(旧児島善三郎アトリエ)に寓居することになったようです。 一方話は変わりますが、最初に吉村さんが使っていた児島邸敷地北側にあった家作には、後に独立美術協会に所属する岐阜出身の河尻隆次さんが入りました。そこへよく遊びにきていたのが、河尻さんと黙鬼会というグループで同人だった三木富雄さんでした。三木さんは、びしっとした格好に丸メガネをかけ、 ボンネット型の大きなアメ車に乗ってきていました。篠原有司男さんのおばさんで銀座でバーを経営していた郁子さんと同棲していた三木さんは、羽振りが 良く格好よかったのです。少年の私はその姿を眩しく見ていました。二人は1958年の第10回読売アンデパンダン展あたりから顔を合わせていたと思われますが、1960年に赤瀬川さんが吉村さんらと結成したネオ・ダダイズム・オルガナイザーズに三木さんは強く誘われたが固辞したという話があるので 間違いはないでしょう。吉村、赤瀬川、三木は共にマルセル・デュシャンを信奉し物質と精神の間を漂流しながら伝説のダダイストとなってゆきました。 話は戻って、彼ら二人が生を受けた1937年はどんな年であったかを振り返って見ましょう。この案内状の表の年表のとおり、今から丁度85年前です が、まるで昨今の世界と重なるような時代背景です。その後、日本と中国は長い戦争状態となり、アメリカをはじめとする連合軍から厳しい経済封鎖を受け遂に国際連盟を脱退しドイツ、イタリアと共に第二次世界大戦へと突入してゆきました。悪夢は再来するのでしょうか。 占いの天命説をまともに信用する訳ではありませんが、同年に生を受けた二人のアーティストが一人は通貨模造という国家権力へのオモチャ的挑戦、そしてもう一方が、耳という器官が持つ聴かないという不服従(聞こえませんぬ伝兵衞さん)をいつの間にか、自らの手でアートとして発表し、生涯を通じて逃れられない烙印のように背中に背負って生き続ける事となりました。他の同時代の作家たちも多かれ少なかれ戦争の影響を受け、戦後は右へ行ったり左へ行ったり、具象と抽象の間を行ったり来たりしながら、いつの間にか大学の先生になったり、売れっ子の作家になったりしました。しかしこの二人は世間にはご意見無用といった感じです。赤瀬川さんは小説家、漫画家、考現学者、イラストレーター、路上観察学界のメンバー、美学校の講師などマルチタレントぶりで、世間をケムに巻きました。三木さんは40歳の若さで亡くなりましたが、常に周囲に謎を振り撒きながら、イブ・クラインやピエロ・マンゾーニのように自らを迷宮化して自身の人生を封印しました。お二人を本展のタイトルにあるように真のダダイストと呼ぶのはなぜかというと、没後大きな評価を受けていながら、その芸術活動に主だったイズムや同調者も持たず作品としても多くを残さず、自らの生き方の断片をコラージュしたりフロッタージュするように撒きながら、証拠品はいっぱいあるのに核心へ辿り着けない迷宮入り事件みたいに難解だからと言えるからでしょう。

2022年4月  兒嶋俊郎

Genpei Akasegawa and Tomio Miki – Born in 1937, True Dadaists.

Although Gallery Kojima has held solo exhibitions of both Genpei Akasegawa and Tomio Miki in the past, this will be the first time to feature them together in an exhibition. As stated in the title, both of them were born in 1937. I was born in 1947, so they were 10 years older than me. For me, the key that connects them is my former house in Kokubunji (the former residence of my grandfather Zenzaburo Kojima, a Japanese painter) and the existence of Masunobu Yoshimura, an artist who was at the forefront of avant-garde art at the time. Mr. Yoshimura was born in 1932, 15 years older than me, so he was five years older than Akasegawa and Miki. He was 22 years old when he started staying at the former Zenzaburo Kojima’s atelier in 1954. This was before the construction of the White House designed by Arata Isozaki in Shinjuku. Since that time, people who would later become members of Neo-Dada Organizers often gathered inside and outside the atelier and made a lot of noise enjoying their time there. I remember that well.

Akasegawa grew up in Oita City, Oita Prefecture, from the age of 4 because of his father’s job transfer, and since junior high school he had been in and out of “Shinseikigun,” a group in which Yoshimura and others belonged to. It seems that when he moved to Tokyo to take the entrance exam for Musashino Art University after graduating from high school in Nagoya, he ended up living in the Yoshimura Atelier (former Zenzaburo Kojima’s atelier) in Kokubunji, Tokyo. On the other hand, a Gifu native, Kawajiri Ryuji, who later became a member of the Dokuritsu Bijutsu Kyokai (Independent Art Association), moved into the house on the north side of the Kojima Residence, which was first used by Mr. Yoshimura. Tomio Miki, a member of a group called “Mokki Kai” with Mr. Kawajiri, was visiting frequently and hanging out there. He was a sharply dressed man with round glasses and drove a big hooded American car. He lived with Ms. Ikuko, an aunt of Ushio Shinohara who owned a bar in Ginza and so Miki was very rich and cool. As a boy, I was always dazzled by him. I think Akasegawa and Miki met each other around the time of the 10th Yomiuri Independents Exhibition in 1958. Actually I’m sure of it true because it is said that Miki was strongly invited to join Neo-Dadaism Organizers which Akasegawa formed with Mr. Yoshimura and others in 1960 but Miki refused it as a result. Yoshimura, Akasegawa, and Miki all followed Marcel Duchamp and became legendary Dadaists through drifting between the material and the spiritual.

Let us return to the year of their birth, 1937, and see what kind of year it was. As shown in the chronology on the front of this guide, it was exactly 85 years ago. However, it seems that 1937 coincides with the world of today, 2022. Japan and China were at war with each other for a long time, and finally Japan withdrew from the League of Nations and plunged into World War II with Germany and Italy after being subjected to a severe economic blockade by the United States and other allied forces. Will the nightmare return? Although I do not seriously believe in fortune-telling, two artists born in the same year had similar mindset of protest although their ways of approach were different; one obsessively challenged to the state power by imitating currency, and the other almost obsessionally kept creating ears, which also have function to ‘not hear’. They lived with these inescapable burdens throughout their lives. Other artists of the same period were more or less affected by the war, and after the war they moved to the right and to the left, back and forth between figuration and abstraction, and before long they became university professors or successful artists.

However, both Akasegawa and Miki went their own way. Akasegawa was a multi-talented novelist, cartoonist, modernologist, illustrator, member of “The Street-Observation Society”, and lecturer at Bigakko (an alternative art school established in 1969, which is known for their unorthodox teaching and workshops lectured by some of the most radical artists of the time and developed in opposition to the mainstream academy system). Such multi-talents of his at last brought the world to a standstill. Miki died at the young age of 40, but he was always a mystery to people around him and like Yves Klein and Piero Manzoni Miki locked away his life as a forever labyrinth.

They had no isms, which was the center of the art movement, or sympathizers and did not leave much artwork, but rather collaged and frottaged fragments of their own life. The reason why we call both of them ‘True Dadaists’, as the title of this exhibition suggests, is because despite the great acclaim they received after their deaths, they have been unsolvable mysteries. They themselves are like cold cases; there are many traces they had left for us but we will never be able to perfectly get to the core of their thoughts or ideas at deeper level.

Toshio Kojima (Gallery Kojima)