Hiro Yamagata Interview: Embracing Uncertainty and the Creative Expression of Jonas Mekas

Hiro Yamagata expresses uncertainty about the label of "artist" and reflects on his upbringing and early interest in art. He draws parallels between Jonas Mekas' approach to filmmaking and the improvisation seen in music, and emphasizes his commitment to capturing life moment by moment, without concern for traditional structure or direction.
Modern & Contemporary artist Hiro Yamagata was born in Shiga, Japan on June 30, 1948. He was first interested in painting in elementary school and took a special art class every day after school and through high school with his art teacher, a Japanese-style painter. At the age of nineteen he left his home in Malbara, Japan near Kyoto, and began his travels. First he went to Tokyo where he stayed for five years and assisted a professor and worked in advertising as an illustrator for Coca Cola and Automotive companies. Then he went to Milan, and at age 24, arrived in Paris in 1972, where he began attending L'Ecole Des Beaux Arts and began to live his life through painting. He also painted sets for Peter Brook. At the time, Hiro was perfecting a “cartoony” illustrative painting style that was not particularly Japanese. The style did so well that his work was picked up on by an outfit in California that specializes in selling undemanding middlebrow art in bulk through venues in shopping malls. Yamagata moved to Los Angeles to oversee the selling of his art, eventually opening a studio in Southern California. In 1997-98, he set out to create Element, a six-part series of environmental installations using theater lights, holographic effects and lasers. Yamagata's desire was to overwhelm the senses by transforming the "white cube" of the gallery into a spatially infinite site where the micro merges with the macro and the limits of the real are expanded. Numerous key galleries and museums such as Tiancheng International have featured Hiro Yamagata's work.
From the 2022 Documentary FRAGMENTS OF PARADISE about Lithuanian filmmaker, Jonas Mekas. From his arrival in New York as a displaced person in 1949 to his death in 2019, he chronicled the trauma and loss of exile while pioneering institutions to support the growth of independent film in the United States. Internationally known as the “godfather” of avant-garde cinema, he inspired countless independent artists.
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Chapter Markers:
00:00 - Opening
00:07 - Hiro Yamagata Introduction
01:02 - Describing Jonas Mekas and Allen Ginsberg
02:03 - Young Hiro’s interest in art
09:59 - Leaving Japan
18:22 - First reading Beat Poetry
22:50 - Hiro meets Jonas at Allen’s exhibition
29:37 - Jonas’ archive
32:04 - Thoughts on Jonas’ diaries
33:56 - Allen’s personality
41:13 - Allen talks about Jonas
42:57 - Improvisational style of Beat Poetry and Jonas’ films
48:06 - Jonas’ filmmaking style
53:50 - Working with Jonas
01:04:56 - Last Time with Jonas
01:06:20 - Thoughts on Jonas’ passing
01:10:38 - Jonas’ freedom and flexibility
01:13:49 - Jonas’ Japanese following
01:15:41 - Jonas’ stubbornness
Hiro Yamagata, Artist
Interview Date: July 27, 2021
Interviewed By: Katie Davison
© Kunhardt Film Foundation. All Rights Reserved.
#HiroYamagata #lifestories

[@Corinthians6]

The range of colors in the paintings is so vast. If there was someone to describe some of this work to a blind individual it would fill an entire book. What is trying to be expressed in your paintings could be summarized but the same logic applies. God bless!

[@jackyarcher9749]

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