八木一夫

Born in Kyoto on July 4, 1918, first son of the potter Yagi Issō, an important figure in modern Kyoto ceramic circles. Issō, his fellow Kyoto City Ceramic Research Center alumnus Kusube Yaichi, and others formed the Sekido (also known as the Sekidokai and Sekidosha) in 1920 as a place that celebrated respect for individuality and freedom of expression. In 1931 Kazuo graduated from Rokuhara Ordinary Elementary School and entered the sculpture department of Kyoto Shiritsu Bijutsu Kōgei Gakkō (Kyoto Municipal School of Arts and Crafts, present-day Kyoto City Senior High School of Art). There he studied sculpture under Ishimoto Gyōkō, Matsuda Naoyuki, and Yano Hanzō, drawing under Ōta Kijirō, and art history under Katō Kazuo. He graduated from the school in 1937, and became a student at the Imperial Ceramic Experimental Institute, where he was taught ceramic sculpture by Numata Ichiga, a sculpture department senior part-time researcher. Numata had studied ceramic sculpting techniques at the Manufacture nationale de Sèvres and was a sculpture department professor at Tokyo Bijutsu Gakkō (Tokyo Fine Arts School, present-day Tokyo University of the Arts). Also in 1937, he participated in a group established by Numata, the Nihon Tōchōkyōkai. In January 1939 he displayed “Cat” (1938, National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto) in the group’s first exhibition held at Nihonbashi Mitsukoshi, Tokyo. However, in May of that year he was conscripted as a relief soldier in the Osaka Infantry 8th Regiment. Dispatched to the Guangdong area of China in August, he returned to Japan in September due to illness. After recuperating at the Army Hospital in Kada, Wakayama prefecture, he was discharged from military service in August 1940 and returned to Kyoto. In his memoirs he wrote that his true connection with ceramics came when he experienced the tastelessness of the aluminum tableware used in the army and the beauty of the polychrome overglaze porcelain cups that he saw in China (Yagi Kazuo, “Watashi no Jijoden” [My Autobiography], “Geijutsu Shinchō,” May 1979 issue). During his ongoing recuperation, he entered works in the Sixth through Eighth Rekitei Bijutsu Kyōkai exhibitions. The Rekitei Bijutsu Kyōkai (Rekitei Art Association), a group whose members included the Nihonga painters Yamaoka Ryōbun, Maruki Iri, and Yamazaki Takashi, had from the prewar era onwards studied abstract art, Cubism, and Surrealism, as they continued their avant-garde activities. Around this period Yagi made ceramic vessels in reference to such overseas avant-garde forms of expression, but his father admonished him about such activities, “‘If you are drawn to the outsiders, don’t join them.’ The now deceased Kawamura Kitarō agreed, ‘First gain real ability in the official exhibitions, and then later you can become an outsider.’ ... In fact, I had not yet decided on pottery.” (Yagi Kazuo, “Shuppatsu no koro watashi no tōjishi/1”, “Nihon bijutsu kōgei” No. 437, February 1975). After he stopped entering works in the Rekitei Bijutsu Kyōkai exhibitions, Yagi finally had his entry “Tonji Ranshun” 豚児蘭春accepted by the 1946 Second Japan Fine Arts Exhibition (Nitten), marking his first Nitten acceptance. His “Glazed White Clay Jar with Grasses and Flowers Design in Three-color Glaze” 白瓷三彩草花文釉瓶 (Hakuji Sansai Sōkamon Yūbin) was accepted in the following year’s Third Nitten exhibition. He then stopped entering works in the Nitten exhibitions. In 1948 he entered “Annular Eclipse” 金環触 (Kyoto City Museum of Art) in the Kyoto Municipal Art Exhibition (Kyōten) where it was awarded the Kyōten Prize. Up until 1948 he basically continued to enter works in large public submission and organization exhibitions other than Nitten, such as his entry in the first exhibition held by the Shinshō Kōgeikai in June 1948. During that period he participated in the September 1946 founding of the Seinen Sakutōka Shūdan that centered on Nakajima Kiyoshi. The following February the group published its prospectus, in May they held their first exhibition, and their second in October. Yagi entered “Vase with Sunflower Design” 掻落向日葵図壺 (1947, National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto) in the first exhibition and “Spring Sea” 春の海 (1947, National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto) in the second exhibition. The Seinen Sakutōka Shūdan held a third exhibition in June 1948, but then disbanded. Given differences of opinion among the group members, only five – Yagi, Kano Tetsuo, Suzuki Osamu, Yamada Hikaru, and Matsui Yoshisuke — displayed works in the third exhibition. These five men then founded the Sōdeisha group in July, and the First Sōdeisha exhibition was held in September 1948 at Osaka Takashimaya. For the next fifty years, the Sōdeisha remained a leading organization in Japanese contemporary ceramics in spite of a cycle of fluctuating membership size. Yagi, as the functional leader of the Sōdeisha, was able to hold three Sōdeisha exhibitions in 1950, namely the group’s second exhibition held at the Kyoto City Museum of Art’s Office, the third at Osaka Matsuzakaya, and the fourth at Kyoto Prefectural Gallery. Starting in 1951 every year the Sōdeisha held a spring exhibition in Tokyo and an autumn exhibition in Kyoto. Around the time of the Sōdeisha formation, Yagi created his vessel shapes on the potter’s wheel, coated them in white slip, and decorated them with sgraffito or iron underglaze designs influenced by Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Joan Miró, and others. Around the early 1950s he encountered the terracotta sculpture of Isamu Noguchi and started trying to create ceramics whose constructs made use of the physiology and material quality of clay. He displayed “Mr. Samsa’s Walk” (1954, National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto), a work that is recognized today as a landmark ceramic objét, in the 1954 Sōdeisha exhibition. In the past this work was said to have been displayed that year at the Formes Gallery in Tokyo, but the exhibition review published in “Nihon Bijutsu Kōgei” No. 194 (Nihon Bijutsu Kōgeisha, November 1954) indicates that it debuted at the Sōdeisha exhibition. All of its parts were wheel-formed, and then assembled to create the final structure which was decorated with a streaked glaze with an “irabo” glaze-like feel. When first displayed it was said to reflect Yagi’s poetic expression. Later the wheel-thrown production process was noted. This led to today’s high regard for the work as an expression of how a non-vessel work was formed on the potter’s wheel, a tool for making vessels, and thus how he dismantled the authority of the potter’s wheel. Yagi would go on to present a variety of objét ceramics. In addition to the glazed “Mr. Samsa’s Walk” type, he continued to seek sculptural forms in fired clay that offered a sense of the clay itself. Starting around 1957 he began to use black pottery techniques and continued to develop his production activities at a rapid pace. Black pottery is an ancient Chinese earthenware technique in which charcoal is blown onto the object’s surface, resulting in a lacquer-black coloration after firing. Around the time of “Mr. Samsa’s Walk,” he also began experimenting with creating works made of the tubular parts that symbolize a ceramic work’s mouth. Forms that resembled folds or wrinkles began to appear at the beginning of the 1960s. This “shiwa yose de” method, whereby pinched up, folded and wrinkled sections of clay are attached to thinly extended sheets, is rooted in the desire to have the material elicit a physiological sensation. Yagi was named a part-time instructor in the sculpture department of Kyoto City University of Arts in 1957. From 1971 on he was a professor in the Department of Crafts, Ceramics course. In 1959 he was awarded a Grand Prix for his “Flower Vase with Iron Inlay” at The Second International Congress of Contemporary Ceramics, Ostend (Belgium). In 1962 he received a Grand Prix for his “Monument: Queen Consort (Hi, hi)” (National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto) at the International Ceramics Exhibition held in Prague, Czechoslovakia. He exhibited works in “The New Japanese Painting and Sculpture: An Exhibition,” held at eight venues in America including New York City, from 1965 to 1967. Of those works, his “Queen” (1964, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) and “A Cloud Remembered” (1959, Museum of Modern Art, New York) were acquired by venue museums. In 1966 he tried firing in an “anagama” kiln in Shigaraki and then displayed the resulting works that November in the “Yagi Kazuo Tsubo Ten” (Yagi Kazuo Jar Exhibition) held at the Ichibankan Garō in Tokyo. A special display of 17 works by Yagi dating from his earliest period through his most recent works was held in the Permanent Collection Galleries of the Kyoto City Museum of Art (present-day Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art). In 1967 he produced glass works, and in 1969, bronzes, with the latter displayed in the “Yagi Kazuo Dōkiten” (Yagi Kazuo Bronzes Exhibition) held at Tokyo Isetan. In July 1973 he led the Kyoto City University of Arts Silk Road Survey Team through Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran. In 1973, he was also awarded the Fiscal Year 1972 Gold Prize by the Nihon Tōji Kyōkai. The Nihon Tōji Kyōkai Prizes were inaugurated in 1954 and at first were limited to young (early career) artists. But Yagi’s timing did not accord with their system and he thus was not awarded a prize in those early years. In 1972 the Gold Prize was newly created for presentation to Yagi in honor of his achievements in the world of contemporary ceramics. In 1977 he held a solo show “Yagi Kazuo ten: Itsumo ririku no kakudo de (Always at the takeoff angle)” at Gallery Kasahara, Osaka, featuring his black pottery works titled after his own poem “Itsumo ririku no kakudo de.” In 1978 he produced new interpretations of some of his older works, including “Mr. Samsa’s Walk,” and they were displayed alongside the original works in his “Kanreki kinen Yagi Kazuo ten” held at Tokyo Isetan in commemoration of his 60th birthday. We can imagine how he would have developed from there, but sadly he died of heart failure on February 28, 1979. (Daichō Tomohiro / Translated by Martha J. McClintock) ( Published online: 2024-12-23)