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A Faithful Art

Makoto Fujimura and the redemption of abstract expressionism.

Mar 7, 2005, Vol. 10, No. 23 • By DAVID GELERNTER
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MAKOTO FUJIMURA'S PAINTINGS ARE A joyful gusher from a well that had long run dry--or so the world assumed. Abstract expressionism has yielded little that is new in recent years. Granted, some distinguished abstract painters who made their mark in the 1950s and 1960s continued to paint in the new century: Robert Natkin (born in 1930), Gerhard Richter (born in 1932), and Cy Twombly (born in 1928), for example, and Andrew Forge, who was born in 1923 and died in 2002. But younger abstract artists able to make original, striking paintings have been scarce--which is one reason among many to celebrate Fujimura.

He was born in Boston in 1960 and educated at Tokyo National University as well as at Bucknell in Pennsylvania, and he paints in a manner that is all his own--a manner that is just as commanding and compelling as de Kooning's, Pollock's, or Rothko's. He is not yet the equal of these legendary masters, but he might be some day; his talent is large.

The world has begun to notice. Fujimura's recent one-man show in Manhattan, "The Splendor of the Medium," was full of striking pictures. It closed in December but left a first-rate catalogue. Fujimura has had many shows in the United States and Japan, and museums are beginning to buy his work. (He is also on the board of the National Endowment for the Arts, as am I.) Fujimura condemns "the splintered and degraded aesthetic language of the day" and argues that his paintings must help "to redeem the language of art." These are inspiring aspirations.

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