Foujita: La Vie – Everything Passes

“Now I have neither happiness nor unhappiness.

Everything passes.

This is the one and only thing I have thought resembled a truth in society of human beings where I have dwelled up to now as in a burning hell.

Everything passes.”

(Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human)

Leonard Tsuguharu Foujita, La Vie, 1917

Japanese artist Leonard Tsuguharu Foujita fell in love with Western art at a very young age and in 1913, at the age of twenty-seven, he moved to Paris. The role of an exotic eccentric in Montparnasse surrounded by fellow artists, foreigners and eccentrics fit Foujita like a glove. A person as vibrant and theatrical as he was belonged there. Some of the artists from his artistic gang were Modigliani, Chaim Soutine, Juan Gris, Picasso, and Henri Matisse. Foujita’s painting “La Vie” is an example of his early work in France and the style of the painting reminds me so much of Modigliani. The painting shows a woman dressed in blue, set against the background of a solitary sandy beach with a single little boat, stranded and confined in sand instead of floating freely and being carried by the waves. The woman’s oval and slightly elongated face and the shape of her eyes remind me of Modigliani’s melancholy and mysterious mask-like female faces and also of the silent marble Brancusi’s Muse. Simplified and geomentric looking, her head and also the strange position of her hands seem as though they were borrowed from some archaic scuplture, or seen in a dream. The cheeks are bright pink and the fingers slender and long. Her head leans on her right in a very exaggerated way, as if this mysterious woman is bowing her head down, not from shame, but as a gesture of both a realisation of the defeat and calm acceptance. The waves in the water behind her are breaking and hitting the sandy shore then retreating in a rhythm of nature which neither of us can stop or influence. The mood that I feel in Foujita’s painting “La Vie” resonates with me strongly and serves almost as a sacred message to a feeling that is always inside me, sometimes more hushed and sometimes awaken like a volcano, like a wound that never heals, it brings anguish wrapped up in nostalgic rosy cover of sweetness. This feeling is the painful awareness of transience of everything, the powerlesness against the fast and unpredictable currents of life, the best way I can describe the feeling that the painting awakes inside me is by sharing a much loved quote from Gabriel García Márquez’s novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude”: “Upset by two nostalgias facing each other like two mirrors, he lost his marvelous sense of unreality and he ended up recommending to all of them that they leave, that they forget everything he had taught them about the world and the human heart, […], and that wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end.” Everything passes, every spring and summer once gone are gone forever, a flower will bloom and wither and nothing can resurrect it, memories are pale and hushed shadows, tears cannot bring back a love once lost, and all change is inevitable, c’est la vie… So what else can we do but bow our heads down like Foujita’s silent and solemn muse and let the river of life flow, for our resistence would only bring anguish and ache.

Leonard Tsuguharu Foujita – Little Girl With a Doll

Leonard Tsuguharu Foujita, Little Girl with a Doll (Fillette a la poupée), 1950-51

Japanese artist Tsuguharu Foujita was born in a rich, aristocratic family in Tokyo and he had an urge to study Western art since a very early age. As soon as he had graduated high school, he wanted to move to Paris to study the art he so admired but was advised by a family member to stay in Japan for a little while longer and study Western art there. In 1913, at last, Foujita moved to Paris and settled in Montparnasse where he quickly befriended fellow bohemians and artists such as Chaim Soutine, Picasso, Henri Matisse and Modigliani. Foujita was a vibrant, extroverted and eccentric addition to the artist’s colony in Montparnasse. Some of his eccentricities include wearing a lampshade whilst going to the opera and pretending that it was a common thing in Japan; he was known for throwing big, lavish parties and wearing eye-catching clothes and haircuts; he was married five times and each of his wives also served as his model. Women, cats, and little girls with their dolls were a common and repetitive motif in Foujita’s art. Recently these paintings of girls, all painted during the last decade of Foujita’s life, caught my attention because they are so unique and strange.

Painting “Little Girl with a Doll” is an oil on canvas from 1950-51 but at first sight it looks like a drawing, at least to me. It’s only if you take a closer look that you see the visible brushstrokes, especially on the creases on the girl’s dresses. This isn’t unusual because Foujita loved trompe-l’oeil, and he often showed little interest in the effect of volume, preferring the flatness which is a typical element of Japanese art. Standing against the grey doors a blonde girl with a ponytail is painted holding her Japanese doll. All of Foujita’s drawings of girls follow the same formula; a closely cropped girl, very pale, with thin lips, blonde hair and no eyebrows, dressed in strange off-the shoulder dresses, holding a cat or a doll, with a simple background or one showing a townscape.

These girls look out of time and out of place; their pale oval faces with thin lips, no eyebrows and thin hair make me think of late Medieval and early Renaissance portraits of damsels and martyrs. Their appearance is very different to the beauty ideal of the times, just think of Sandra Dee and how different these girls are to her. And yet, the girl’s clothes brings to mind the Rococo era; they are like little Rococo orphans, in fancy yet worn-out clothes, looking like wistful little dolls; forgotten and left behind… Painting “Little Girl with Clasped Hands” has a specially early Renaissance flair; the girl’s head-wear is reminiscent of that worn by many Tudor ladies and Henry VIII’s unfortunate wives, and the composition of a girl with the town in the background is also very Medieval. Foujita mixes all these elements together in these oil on canvases and still manages to create something unique and eye-catching.

Foujita, Little Girl With a Cat (Fillette au chat), 1955

Foujita, Little Girl With a Doll (Fillette avec poupée), 1951

Foujita, Girl With Clasped Hands (Fillette aux mains jointes), 1960

Foujita, Little Girl with a Mexican Doll (Fillette à la poupée mexicaine), 1950