About Me

What Is Art? — Reconsidering the Question After Dada

 

In a contemporary society saturated—often violently—by visual media, where those media increasingly shape human perception, language, and even value judgments, I frequently find myself asking: "What is art?" In the history of art, the post-Dada movement—particularly Marcel Duchamp’s concept of the "readymade"—shook the very foundations of the institution of art, going so far as to declare its death. If "anything" can now be considered art, what significance remains in the act of drawing?

 

And yet, the Duchampian turn was itself a reflection of the spirit of the age: nihilism, destruction, and irony. One could argue that it was a sensibility permitted only to those who had experienced the trauma of world wars. The critical spirit of that era should not be dismissed. However, can art be entirely defined by such a posture? I believe there lies, at a deeper level, a more fundamental source of creativity—one that is intrinsic to both art and the essential human condition.

 

Homo Pictor — Rethinking Art from Its Origins

 

My concern ultimately returns to a single question: "What is it to be human?" Though we share 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees, only humans have created culture and built civilization. At the same time, we have carelessly exploited our environment to the point where the sustainability of that civilization is now in question.

 

What draws my attention here is art as a mode of creativity. I believe art lies at the core of human nature and that this creative capacity is deeply rooted in the human spirit. Drawing—the gesture of visual delineation—constitutes a fundamental expression of that creativity. Consider prehistoric cave paintings. In the latter half of the 20th century, the earliest known cave paintings were discovered in southern France and were estimated to be between 30,000 and 35,000 years old. However, in recent years, the oldest cave art was discovered in Indonesia and was dated to at least 45,500 years ago. This caused a stir in academic circles, as it was suggested that the art might not have been created by modern humans, but possibly by Neanderthals. Researchers have since debated whether the work was in fact produced by Homo sapiens, rather than other archaic humans such as the Denisovans.

 

Subsequently, even older cave paintings were found in the La Pasiega cave in Spain, estimated to be around 65,000 years old, and believed to be the work of Neanderthals. These images, including bison, horses, and deer, are drawn with remarkably clear lines and are considered the world’s oldest examples of realistic depiction in cave art. Archaeological excavations in the Blombos Cave in South Africa uncovered diagonal, parallel patterns engraved on stone by Homo sapiens, dating back 73,000 years. Moreover, evidence from the same cave suggests that the community living there used red ochre pigment for body decoration, believed to be as old as 100,000 years. These discoveries have heightened expectations for future archaeological research, including a re-examination of how we define what it means to be human.

 

Whatever their precise origin, it is clear that humans possessed the means to draw long before they developed writing. The earliest known written language is the cuneiform script of the Sumerians in ancient Mesopotamia, dating to around 3000 BCE. That places a gap of at least 60,000 years between the birth of drawing and the invention of writing. Drawing thus predates language, not merely as a form of expression, but as an act of perception and a will to share experience. It was, fundamentally, an effort to bridge the gap between self and world.

 

The neuroscientist Makoto Iwata has proposed redefining the human species as "Homo Pictor"—not "Homo Sapiens" (the wise human) or "Homo Faber" (the tool-making human), but the drawing human. For him, drawing is a complex fusion of perception and expression that underlies human identity. This is no mere metaphor. Drawing is a highly sophisticated cognitive activity that integrates vision, memory, judgment, and emotion. A drawing is not "information", but "experience"—not the bearer of fixed meaning, but a trace of existence itself.

 

Line and Brain — The Neuroaesthetic Basis of Expression

 

In 2002, I encountered Semir Zeki’s "Inner Vision: An Exploration of Art and the Brain", which made a profound impression on me. A pioneer of neuroaesthetics at University College London, Zeki sought to understand, through science, how the brain perceives beauty.

 

In his book, Zeki introduces the work of neurophysiologists David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel, whose research demonstrated that the visual cortex processes all visual information—form, space, and colour—as "linear cords". The orientation-selective cells in the V1 region of the visual cortex reveal that our perception of the world is fundamentally structured through lines. Their groundbreaking discovery ultimately earned Hubel and Wiesel the Nobel Prize in recognition of their contributions to neuroscience. Zeki concludes that "the line is the most basic unit of our perception.

 

This neuroscientific insight became the foundation for my own development of a unique line hatching method, combining Japanese sumi ink and acrylic. It also aligns closely with the Florentine Renaissance methodology of "disegno", which values drawing as a foundation of thinking and constructing form.

 

East and West, Ink and Acrylic — A Crossroads of Expression

 

In East Asian traditions, sumi ink is not merely a tool for depiction but a symbol of spirituality. In Japan in particular, the "suiboku-ga (ink painting)" of artists like Hasegawa Tōhaku evoked profound inner worlds through nature, silence, and negative space. Conversely, acrylic is a product of modern Western innovation—luminous, transparent, and versatile. My technique fuses these two distinct cultural and technical heritages. It is an experimental synthesis that seeks to integrate East and West, classical and contemporary, rational and emotional, body and spirit.

 

Through lines, I attempt to engage directly with the act of seeing, not only in terms of visible reality, but in ways that reach into the invisible. Layering lines allows me to weave veils of time and memory, edging closer to a pre-cognitive origin of vision—the primal moment before perception is filtered through language or reason.

 

To See and to Draw — An Algebraic Analogy

 

If, as neuroscience suggests, the human brain reconstructs form, space, and colour as linear codes, then the act of seeing is not a passive reflection of physical reality, but a reconstruction achieved through countless neural operations.

 

I liken this process of creation, based on the mechanisms of vision and cognition, to algebra. In solving simultaneous equations, one searches for points of intersection within n-dimensional space—a single coherent solution among infinite possibilities. For me, “drawing and painting” is about illuminating a particular aspect within the boundless realm of imagination or concept, and expressing that focus onto the two-dimensional surface of the support. It is an intellectual and creative operation akin to deriving a singular solution from an infinite equation space.

 

Each painting is a visualised resolution of such a focus—a unique convergence of thought and emotion. And this selection is never purely logical: it involves the whole being—spiritual, intuitive, embodied. This is precisely why drawing is fundamentally different from algorithmic formation.

 

Fluctuation and Spirit — The Core of Human Creativity

 

This idea also resonates with the principle of fluctuation in the theory of complex systems. That is, the elements in a system are often related in non-linear, unpredictable ways, and yet they tend towards a kind of emergent order. This unpredictability—this "fluctuation"—is intrinsic to the creative process in art.

 

Today, humanity faces an unprecedented challenge: the rise of artificial intelligence. AI can generate images, compose music, and write text. But are these truly acts of "expression"? Of "creation"? My answer is no. AI can mimic style or structure using data and algorithms, but it cannot "see". The act of seeing is bound to embodied perception, memory, emotion, judgment, and ethical discernment. It is a form of cognition rooted in "being"—in complex relationships with the world.

 

In this age of AI, art takes on a renewed significance. To "do art" is to affirm that humans are not mere information processors, but beings with spirit. AI may imitate data structures or past styles, but it cannot replicate the fluctuations born of human intuition, bodily presence, and cultural memory. These fluctuations are the very core of human creativity. They are unpredictable and unrepeatable—yet they form the most potent openings through which the artist, the viewer, and the world can connect. I strive to listen to those fluctuations, and in the moment when lines begin to resonate with one another, I seek a meaning that lies beyond language.

 

What the Line Speaks — Towards a Reclamation of Humanity

 

The line has no words. And yet, few things speak more. A single line can carve out a world, evoke memory, stir emotion, and provoke thought. The infinite interplay between lines resonates with something pre-existing within us, giving rise to "quality" from the chaos of the undifferentiated.

 

A line is a language that emerges from the depths of the human spirit. To draw is to give form to human dignity. As a "drawing human", I attempt to delve into the very depths of seeing itself—to pose the question "What is it to be human?" through the medium of line.

 

Art is not dead. It cannot die—because it is the most primal proof of what it means to be "alive". No matter how advanced AI becomes, the pain of seeing, the joy of feeling, the passion to create—these are uniquely human, and they will not vanish. I draw. And I believe, art can speak to the essence of being human.