James Suzuki, Where Are We Going?

1957, painting, oil on canvas

James Hiroshi Suzuki completed Where Are We Going? in 1957, when he was 24. With its bright, shimmering upper register and horizontal orientation, Where Are We Going? evokes a history of landscape painting and suggests an interest in the colors and shapes found in nature. Where Are We Going? was originally exhibited in 1957 at New York’s Duveen-Graham Gallery on a platform in the format of a folding screen. The rich blues, soft brushwork, and triptych format of Where Are We Going? recall Alma Thomas’s Morning in the Bowl of Night, also on view in this gallery.

The link between Suzuki and Thomas is not only visual: the same year that Suzuki painted Where Are We Going?, he had a solo exhibition at Barnett Aden Gallery in Washington, D.C., which Thomas helped to found. The next year, Suzuki participated in four museum exhibitions, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston.

Suzuki studied art in Japan before moving to the U.S. in 1952. He continued his education at the Portland School of Fine Arts in Maine and the Corcoran School of Art in Washington D.C. A lifelong teacher, he retired from Sacramento State University in 1999.

 

WHAT AM I HEARING?

The Japanese koto string melody at the beginning of the soundscape is the same tune as the beat towards the end. Clips of insects and a brook throughout the track represent the allusion to nature imagery in the painting and Suzuki’s greater work. There are gentle synthesized sparkle-like sounds that add an element of abstraction, reflecting the loose brushwork of the painting.