空想美術館ーMuseum of the imagination for Nuclear Age

Huh? Do you call this place an art museum? Is this your idea of a joke? You have me bring all these children way out here to this empty warehouse, and for what? Where is the creative art museum you told me of?’

A young teacher, his group of students standing around him, challenged a man who had introduced himself as the museum curator. Appearing not a bit agitated, the curator looked around at everybody.

‘Well then, my friends, let us begin. You will notice that this art museum is completely different from any other you may have visited. Even though you’ll see no neatly arranged rows of paintings or other works of art here, please do not be disappointed or jump to conclusions. Consider this. For those to whom life itself is most precious, material things have in themselves no meaning whatsoever. Human life is a progression of dream after dream, a world of imagination, you might say. What we shall discover today is whether you can in your own minds bring art to life.

‘Okay, everyone, allow me to guide you through our museum. First of all, please close your eyes. Yes, thank you. Now, in your minds, freely paint whatever pictures you may wish to. The pictures you produce will then soon be displayed in this art museum.

‘So now you see nothing at all, eh? Well, you have just arrived at the front entrance of the Art Museum of Imagination. Don’t be impatient, just relax and let your minds do the walking, looking and painting.’ With that, the great door of this warehouse-like cavern closed with a decisive clang, shutting out the only light. All that remained with the young guests in the dark was the clear and confident voice of their guide the curator.

‘Now there, you in the front row beside your teacher, tell us. What kind of art work will you introduce to us all today?’
‘All right,’ came the small but confident voice of a girl, ‘the painting I will contribute is larger than any before in history. It is one thousand metres high and two hundred kilometres long. Oh, and it will be about ten metres thick in some places. I did not intend to make it so large, but its main theme of “biggest critical problems facing humankind in the twenty-first century” could not be well represented on any smaller surface.

‘The painting portrays the world of the year 2050. Half of the surface is in dreary black and gray. Painted onto that surface, though only dimly visible, are hundreds of giant computers and nuclear power plants surrounded by three hundred million people, young and old, men and women, all with blank expressions on their tired faces. Small children are also there, and even they have deep wrinkles covering their foreheads.

‘The other half of the canvas is filled with huge fires radiating out like great mandalas, and just on the other side you can dimly see in the background a sky of blue and a beautiful green spreading to the edges of the canvas. That’s the painting, a picture of a world brought near extinction by nuclear power and so-called high technology. As I view this, I tremble to think of what a frightening future human civilization is capable of building for itself.’

The dark room was silent for a moment as everyone viewed the completed work.
‘Thank you,’ said the curator. ‘Yes, as you said, your work is too big to fit into any other museum on Earth. It is not only the immense size of your painting that surprised me, but also the scale of the serious problem that you portray.

‘Well then, let’s put the next item on display. Yes, you next in line, what kind of art work will you create for us?’
‘Okay,’ began a young male voice, ‘what I envision is a superwide plain with tall grass and wild flowers waving in the wind. These are not the flowers you find at a flower shop, cut all to the same size and neatly arranged for sale. No, they are more like the nameless weeds that are often trampled underfoot or cut down and burned or thrown away.

‘Yes, but the beauty of those flowers and grasses living in their open world cannot even be fully expressed in oil paintings, sculpture or music. It is the gentle but powerful scene of nature itself, as it always has been.

‘Have you ever seen any place like this, or perhaps yourself felt like a wild weed blown back and forth by the winds of change? This wide and free environment itself is the best work I can present to the collection of the Art Museum of Imagination.
‘Wow! Just now I see the face of a giant worm peering out from deep in the waving grasses. Yes, in the museums of the twenty-first century, all sorts of living things, including our friend, the worm, will appear together, live together. There, my art work is complete.’
‘Well, well,’ commented the curator, ‘it appears that we are to have a most interesting collection on display here today. The works of the next forty-eight young artists will be brought in one at a time, so let’s take the time to enjoy each one.’
Judging from her frail voice, the third visiting artist to speak up was probably a slightly built girl.
‘What has grown in my imagination is something floating in the endless ocean of outer space. There among a full background of stars, three thousand great whales sing in rich, warm voices—kyuu-gruun, kyuu-gruun—as they swim about freely. The hearts of all those who hear are moved to tears by the music welling up from the soul of the whale, so beautiful and sad. And now, Earth’s largest and gentlest animal, in an even bigger ocean, yes, limitless!

‘Oh, look! Three thousand giant whales, bodies shining red, blue, yellow, purple, green, white,
orange—three thousand unique shades of colour!’

And so, a total of fifty new imaginative works of art came into being, one after another, from fresh, creative minds with their visions of the past, present and future of their world and its living things.Yet, after all, it was just another day in one particular art museum of imagination.

Written by Tajima Shinji
iclc2001@gmail.com

Oxford University Press 1999