■Borrow the style of religious paintings to embrace the devils inhuman

Oyamada experienced World War II during his most auspicious period in his twenties. When he experienced the extreme wartime experience, he saw the human figure that he could not normally see. And in the 1950s he became the age of his late thirties, he chewed up the intense experience under wartime and sublimed it in painting expression. Many people appreciate his works of this time as such. He borrowed a style of traditional Christian religious paintings. Perhaps he needed the universality of that style.

There is his painting "Pieta".Pieta is Italian, meaning mercy. The religious painting Pieta is a kind of image of the Virgin and Child. Drawing in Pieta is the figure of the Virgin Mary holding the crucifixion of Christ, crucified and taken down from the cross. Many painters and sculptors are making works based on Pieta as a motif. For example, the sculpture of St. Peter's Basilica, produced by Michelangelo, is famous. There, Christ seems to feel dignity even though it is a dead body. And Virgin Mary is a grieving mother who lost her beloved child with a pure appearance, and at the same time her mercy and compassion are transmitted. The sculpture by Michelangelo and "Pieta" painted by Oyamada have the same pose and positional relationship between Christ and Mary. Therefore, Oyamada follows the style of Pieta. However, in Michelangelo's sculpture, it is composed of rounded curves as a whole, the circle is warmth, the viewer imagines mercy and charity. On the other hand, Oyamada's paintings are composed of straight lines, giving a viewer of the angular gistogism impression as a whole. As this "Pieta" has a strong sense of tension, the viewer of this painting feels a tragic elevation and astonishment. Let's actually look at Oyamada's "Pieta". The Virgin Mary located in the center is an isosceles triangle. Christ lying parallel to the base of this isosceles triangle, that is, horizontally. The composition of these two people is a combination of a triangle and a straight line. She not only has a triangle outline, it is composed of a combination of triangles. Her mouth and nose are vertically aligned in an equilateral triangle. This means that her mouth and nose are facing upwards. She is lifting the lower jaw. It is facing upward, that is, looking up at the heavens. It is elevation. However, her eyes are represented by what the downward triangles lie side by side. Although she is facing the face to the sky, her eyes are turned downward. Here is the confrontation relation. And the outline of her face is a downward triangle. Also, as I said at first, her posture is an upward facing isosceles triangle. Here her face and direction of the body are opposite, a conflict relationship is born. She has a hierarchy of alternating triangles like nesting. In other words, she has a multilayered structure in which upper and lower binomial conflicts are layered. What is creating this confrontation is an angular shape composed of straight lines called triangles. This makes the binomial confrontation more sharp. Furthermore, in coloring, being confined to monochrome by the opposite two colors white and black, it is fueling the confrontational relationship. The geometric screen made up of triangles is static and massive as a whole, but the tense feeling up to the stinging things with confrontation is stretched among them. Here again, let's focus on her face. Her face is multi-layered conflict. When we see her face, I recognize a strong tension. Specifically, it is a strong emotion that protrudes and those conflicting or confusion. From the strong tension with conflict, expression of emotion such as intermediate calmness or compassion can not be born. It is possible to interpret such a figure of Virgin Mary as a figure caught in despair such as grief, fear, anger, despair, curse against the threat of my child Christ being deadly dead It is. She is drawn in black and is depicted as a spooky person who can not be distinguished from men and women. On the other hand, let's move attention to the lying Christ. The appearance of this Christ seems to be a dry mummy, and it is free from sanctity and sorrow. Also, the head of Christ is drawn as a skeleton. The body is warped, legs and hands are rigid. The Virgin Mary holds the Christ which began rigid after death. It is not in a state that can hope for revival very much. For example, as a figure that received an abuse of crucifixion of Christ 's corpse, the acts blurred religious sufferings that totally carries on human suffering and original sin and so on, Holbein' s He is not doing drawing dead bodies with real true figures like" The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb ". I thought about the reason for that. He could not draw the dead body of Christ calmly like Holbein. Compared to him, Holbein seems to be an objective observer. In other words, Holbein keeps a distance to what Christ has encountered. That's because Holbein is not a party. As mentioned at the beginning, Oyamada experiences an extreme situation under wartime. At that time, he should have been a bystander. Therefore, he was unable to be a bystander in the extreme situation that he became an indelible figure of Christ. If he was among the people throwing stones in Christ, would he be able to capture the imageof Christ calmly? He also felt lied about fearlessly that the Virgin Mary of "Pieta" embraced the Christ of unrepentant appearance, with a mercy expression. For him, humans are sublime, but there are places like animals at the same time. Even if Christ and the Virgin Mary carry the sins of mankind, or that they have given compassion to mankind, they are also human beings. So they should also have aspects that are animal. He should be told to disgustingly in the wartime that in extreme circumstances human animal aspects will emerge. So, in the situation of "Pieta", if the Virgin Mary and Christ are love or religious, it means that they are not human beings. That same applies to Oyamada himself who draws "Pieta". So, he could not draw in realism. When we look at "Pieta" as a whole, we will talk about an unpleasant atmosphere or impressions of strange power. As mentioned above, it is said that Oyamada carefully designed the screen composition and drew "Pieta". Its contents are as described above.

Let's look at the "Mukashi no Seijya(Old Saint)". A man with limbs like a bird is sitting on a chair. He has a nail inserted in both hands and is fixed to the ceiling with a string, both feet are also fixed to the floor. It is like the appearance of Christ crucified. However, his cheeks can be handled, beards are all-you-can-grow, shin and toes are thin and bent like birds. Contrary to the work title of the saint, he can not feel dignity nor dullness of love. There is a liquor bottle behind him, he is a poor and oppressed man rather than a saint. Moreover, it gives to those who see the comical impression. Oyamada has this screen composed of a rectangle. Red is impressively added in the dark color arrangement of black and blue. Unlike the dark serious "Pieta" and "Harituke (crucifixion)", the impression of "Mukashi no Seijya(Old Saint)" as a comical impression is that red is inserted in the screen. In addition, the symmetry equilibrium is inevitably collapsed in the screen composition by geometric figures. Therefore, the feeling of tension in the screen composition is diminished. This is one reason why this picture is producing a comical impression. We get a comical impression because we are not immersed in this painting and are looking calmly. In other words, we do not feel direct force like "Harituke (crucifixion)" in this painting, but inspiration is inspired.

似たような構思います。

■Comment to the extremely subjective Oyamada’s paintungs

What I will mention below is my subjective image, not an objective fact about Jiro Oyamada and it is not generally recognized about him. I think that he is not a painter blessed with natural talent. He was carrying a handicap of the body, so he had no choice but to choose his profession within a limited range. For him, the painter is the result of having no other choice.

からは、しています。