Michihiro Yoshida, the Mythic Modernist

From the Artist

The images in this series are from an exhibit at the Hosmer Gallery in the Forbes Library, Northampton, MA during the month of September, 2005.

Regarding the paintings Cogito Ergo Sum:

As I've said before each time I change the images on this website, I don't like commenting on my own paintings. A work of art should speak for itself. One glance at it should let you understand everything. I always wish that even a dog who looks at my painting would give one bark and begin to think something about it. But the ideal is ideal. The reality is that everywhere everyone wants a statement explaining the work.

However, because of my recent severe hearing loss, it's been hard to communicate verbally. Even facing a person one on one, I have to repeat asking what he or she is talking about until I understand the question. The situation becomes stiff. Communication is difficult. So I've been forced to rethink my ideas about artist's statements.

Cogito Ergo Sum…I think it's not necessary to translate the 17th century's French philosopher Descartes' words. Three and a half centuries have passed since he uttered them and people continue discussing the mind and the brain. While recent studies about the brain have made rapid progress, the mechanism and function of this human instrument are still only roughly mapped out. Certain phenomena reflect certain parts of the brain. And no one knows how and why the brain works. It will take a very long time--possibly centuries--to prove whether the colorful human emotions and wide and deep intellect were either given by God or are products of the brain working itself out.

Anyway I am neither a philosopher nor a scientist, so I can take the easy way to understand it based on limited common knowledge and personal feeling.

Our distant ancestor who lived in caves hunting animals, gathering wild crops and nuts, and catching fish -- was a real Nature Man. Now we are living in the products evolved by the brain-- comfortable house, with electric equipment, food, water, even surrounding nature, all produced and managed by the brain. Tradition, culture, social systems, politics, economy, transportation, communication system, technology of war and terror--all of it produced by the brain. Therefore, I can say we have spent 50,000 years to evolve from Nature Man to a Brain Man. Human history is an unstoppable challenge, an invasion of nature by the brain. But we are now beginning to think seriously about preserving nature, not its invasion. Indeed, this means the brain's mechanism finally recognizes its own dangerous situation. But does the brain have this ability?

There is a simple answer: the brain understands only itself. Another's brain is the same as Nature--a challenge, to be controlled, or it will control you. Because human history is the history of war sprinkled in between with peace. Unfortunately we are all locked in our own brain. When I recognized this, something clicked in my head. That's the theme of this series.

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I try to express in my paintings the visualization of the variety of human spiritual and emotional life--the sadness, anger, hope, joy and beauty. I use both painting and writing to explore and express my inner world and the enormous diversity of the world outside me.

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Thank you for visiting my online gallery.

Your comments are appreciated. Click the link to my email address:yoshisart@usadatanet.net.

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