I am not talking about the opera by Verdi. I am talking about a Japanese artist by the name of Aida, Makoto. He is the greatest living artist.
Before I discuss Aida I need a brief digression into my own art history.
When I was 13, I took a class in painting at the Henry Gallery in Seattle. I did a number of watercolors. One day when I returned for my class I saw a selection of my paintings on one wall. It took up the entire entry hall of the Gallery. This was my first and only one man show.
That was the same year I saw a large Matisse show at a major gallery. I was stunned by the quality of Matisse's work. I immediately gave myself the middle name of Henri in his honor. I did not and still do not have a middle name, but at that time I got my Social Security card and used the middle name Henri.
60 years later, my Social Security annual tax statement still shows my middle name as Henri.
A few years later at age 16, when I was at the university of Chicago I took an art class. I had to stop the professor in the middle of a slideshow to point out that one of the slides, ostensibly by the painter David, could not have been done by David. The style was too different. The professor, of course, told me what a fool I was.
At the next break I went to New York to the Metropolitan to the room filled with David paintings.
There in the middle of the room on the most prominent wall was the very painting that I said was not by David. I knew for certain that it wasn't by David when I saw the original. On the way out of the Metropolitan I bought some of the postcards of that painting and I sent one to the curator pointing out this could not have been painted by David.
Six months later I returned to the Metropolitan and the postcards were gone. There was a blank space on the wall where the painting had previously been. A year later I returned and now the wall was filled entirely with David paintings and a separate room across the hall had the original painting that had moved me to protest. It had been done by a female student of David's, Benoist, and was now recognized as an important painting.
This is by way of introduction to the artist Aida, Makoto a Japanese. I considered Aida to be the greatest living artist for three reasons.
*Number one is the variety of his media. His styles are astounding. He does everything from massive scrolls to video to sculpture to manga to public art organizing.
*Two, his technical proficiency and his superb visual power have an enormous impact on my view of the world. I see the world differently because of the images he has presented me.
*Third, and most importantly, he engages with the world with a uniqueness that is so stunning that one cannot leave his gallery without understanding something new that you had not ever seen or understood before.
I need to alert my readers that Aida will be a shock to Americans because feminists, feminist thinking and politically correct thinking will go insane over his work. Aida sometimes uses images of young girls in violent and pornographic modes that will drive Puritans nuts ..... for at least half a century.
Remember the name, Aida Makoto,the greatest living artist.
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