Third Thursday/Robert Sainsbury Lecture: The Presence of Absence with Rebecca Salter, President of the Royal Academy of Arts (2021年 11月 18日)
Note: I was unable to find Rebecca Salter’s official designation, so have refered to her as ‘Ms’, this will be corrected once I can confirm her proper appelation.
Sarah Barrow, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Arts and Humanities , introduced the guest speaker Rebecca Salter and the fifth lecture in the series, which began in 2014 in honour of Robert Sainsbury. The Robert Sainsbury Lectures are the brainchild of Professor Steve Hooper, focusing on African and Asian art, as well as the various organisations and departments established in the name of the Sainsburys’, which focus on archeology, anthropology and art history.
The lectures celebrate what she described as a ‘constellation of expertise’ and tonight’s lecture celebrates his memory but also the twenty year anniversary of the Sainsbury Institute, better known as SISJAC. This is also the first time such a lecture has been held on campus, as opposed to at the Sainsbury Institute or at the Cathedral.
Dr. Simon Kaner then took the podium to introduce Rebecca Salter, tonight’s speaker, and briefly summarised her life and work. She is interested in art, architecture and aesthetics, especially printing, which led her to authoring two books. After returning to the UK, she has exhibited both in London and internationally. Her work explores the complex relationships between Japanese and English art and she has also undertaken architectural works in the UK. She was elected as the first female President of the Royal Academy of Arts in 2019.
Ms Salter began by discussing how she struggled to decide what and how to talk, whilst acknowledging a four decade relationship with Japan and its art. She also discussed the important role of failure as an artist, something many of the artists she met as a student never discussed. Living in Japan, however, taught her that failure teaches success.
She started with a quotation from writer Soseki Natsume, from The Three-Cornered World, before explaining her academic background. Then her obsession with Japan, specifically the Heian period and the Genji picture scrolls, on which she wrote her thesis. She studied Ceramics in Kyoto and received a scholarship however she couldn’t speak any Japanese.
In April 1979, she arrived in Japan ‘understanding nothing’ and it is one of her most precious memories. The art school was one familiar aspect, as well as the atmosphere of students studying, however she became a ‘masterless’ student or ronin as her teacher had passed away prior to her arrival.
She saw the art world through the eyes of her fellow students but these students were also trying to find a place for themselves within it. We all see the world, she explained, but everyone uses different filters. Living in Japan fundamentally changed her work, as she stayed for six years, and occupied a unique place in society. She explored Japanese paper, sumi-e and ink, eventually settling on architecture.
She ‘moved from a world defined by walls, to one defined by the floor’ becoming immersed in the ‘rules of Japanese space’. Ms Salter’s talk then moved into the main body of her talk, on how we perceive pictorial time and navigate texture. Movement and time are important aspects of Japanese art, as well as nothingness.
Ms Salter then explained her connection to Ise Grand Shrine, the most important jinja in Shinto and one of the holiest sites in Japan. The site ‘rests’ every twenty years as the buildings are taken down and remade. There she discovered the importance of nothing and the void.
She discussed her work at St. George’s hospital, creating a subliminal space using bamboo panels and LED lights to guide visitors and patients towards a reception desk.
She also discussed utsuroi (移ろい), a word normally defined as ‘transience’, which initially defined the moment a kami entered a space, but to Ms Salter the word now invokes transformation and creativity. She believes that the presence of the viewer is vital to animating artwork.
She also discussed repriocity between materials, such as paper and brush, chisel and stone, as well as black and white. All of these can be read as time and she has become obsessed with ‘keeping the line alive’. She also noted how she is right handed but often draws with her left to give the impression of uncertainty in lines.
Finally she wanted to reflect on the enduring respect she has gained for incompletion and failure. However to value incompletion, you need to exist in a space where that’s okay. This is a very Japanese ethos and treasures the incompletion completeness brings. A sketch is not always a stepping stone to completion. The sketch ‘reminds of the infinite richness of the definite … Learning the lessons of omission is one of the toughest lessons an artist can learn.’
The talk concluded with Ms Salter comparing her relationship to Japan as an ‘ebbing and flowing friendship’ and returning to the initial Soseki Natsume quotation, ‘wrestling with the void’ and and how finding absence changed her perspective.
Dr. Simon Kaner returned to the podium to thank Ms Salter and the session ended was a short Q and A session with actual and virtual audience members.
