Art: Makoto Fujimura’s Bugle Call to Artists

By Sharon Fujimoto-Johnson
On the release of Operation Homecoming:
Epistles of Injury (Random House, 2006), artist Makoto Fujimura reflected on the
connection between the arts and the writings of war. “If you remove works of art
that do not in some way relate to, or respond to wars, our cultural landscape
would be full of holes,” he writes. In light of this reality, Fujimura goes on
to delicately weave together icons in
the arts and recent events in a bugle call to artists. “[This bugle call] begins in a belief that our
lives are to be lived for others,” he says, “To the extent we are able to do
that, to that degree we will see a new language of expression that is not
self-centered, but self-giving and generous.” Fujimura’s blog post is well worth reading.
Mentioned: J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of
the Rings,” C.S. Lewis’ “The Problem of Pain,” 20th century masters Rothko
and Mondrian, T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” Picasso’s “Guernica,” Iraq, Amish
school shooting, Jesus’ realism, etc.
 
Makoto Fujimura was born in 1960 in Boston,
Massachusetts and was educated bi-culturally between the US and Japan. Fujimura
graduated from Bucknell University in 1983, and received an M.F.A. from Tokyo
National University of Fine Arts and Music with a Japanese Governmental
Scholarship in 1989. Noted artist and critic Robert Kushner says of Fujmura’s
work, “The idea of forging a new kind of art, about hope, healing, redemption,
refuge, while maintaining visual sophistication and intellectual integrity is a
growing movement, one which finds Fujimura’s work at the vanguard.”
 
Read the full article on Makoto Fujimura’s
blog, “Refractions”.
Visit Makoto Fujimura’s web
site.