Artist Jan Baum Gallery, Los Angeles Private collection Egan and Rosen, New York Private collection, New York (acquired by the present owner from the above)

Colette, New York City by appointment

Jan Baum Gallery, Los Angeles, “Takako Yamaguchi,” 1995 Egan and Rosen, New York “Takako Yamaguchi Smoking Women,” September 18 - October 23, 2021

Sorry, I am late with my two cents. I stopped smoking two months ago and it’s been harder than usual to collect my thoughts. My future wife told me she would not marry a smoker, and Dr. Kruger said he would no longer investigate my episodic hypochondriac panic attacks as long as I still smoked. So, I didn’t have much of a choice. I have been obsessing over Takako Yamaguchi for a while — especially over this particular painting. I could actually see it from my own living room, hanging in the apartment across the street. It’s probably the effects of nicotine withdrawal and the ensuing lack of self-control that led me to knock on my neighbor’s door and ask him to sell his painting at auction. The rest, I suppose might become history. But to come back to smoking, Yamaguchi’s Sofie and Muffin is a story of guilty pleasures. Takako is from Japan where smoking is deemed socially “ok” — just not for women. The reclining figure, probably a pictorial avatar of the artist herself, shows a confident lady indulging shamelessly in the unforgettably delicious taboo known as smoking. In my opinion, this representation is, in itself, another guilty pleasure of the artist. A guilty pleasure that is even more frowned upon in the holier-than-thou art world: the act of engaging with the beautiful and the decorative, the mother of all hubris. Decoration in Art is akin to what tobacco is in life. Decoration and beauty can be “faddish” and prone to time and malignant mutations. Art with a capital “A,” on the other hand, has put much effort (and lobbying) into earn its timeless and nonperishable status. So much so that it has often shied away from anything that could be deemed too trendy or decorative. In the name of artistic longevity — and avoidance of mauvais goût — beauty and moments of instantaneous retinal satisfaction have, for the most part, been filtered out of recent art history. It is true that toying with seduction can be intoxicating, but it’s mostly toxic, if not lethal. Just look at the hazardous fog of Instagram-friendly art produced in the last five years that is polluting our feeds and nervous systems — it’s already going up in smoke! Thanks to her deep understanding of Japanese aesthetics and Art Nouveau — the Dark Arts that have successfully mastered decoration — Yamaguchi stands like a fearless samurai on her razor-sharp Katana, finding the perfect balance between timelessness and seduction. There are seven Smokers, probably Yamaguchi’s best series. One is already in the collection of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. They are in very strong hands. So, the next Smoker will probably double this one’s price. You know why? Because she is good, and because her works are RARE. Painting is like smoking if you do it with moderation you get more lasting power. 🔥 ⚔️ 🥷 🚬

During the course of her 40-year career, Japanese artist Takako Yamaguchi has mined the intricate recesses of art history to create a style that is distinctly her own. Yamaguchi’s paintings weave a repertoire of motifs sourced from Japan’s rich aesthetic tradition, ranging from woodblock prints to decorative screens and kimono textiles, with recently neglected or seemingly outmoded traditions from across the globe. Painted in 1995, Sofie and Muffin emerges from the artist’s most well-known series — collectively referred to as Smoking Woman. As with her earlier works, the Smoking Woman rummage through what the artist fondly refers to as, “the trash-heap of discarded ideas.” Many of these ideas — including decoration, sentimentality, and even beauty — have emerged as banal or even kitsch within the contemporary zeitgeist that emerged in the post-war era and continued to thrive through the 1980s. The Smoking Woman pay tribute to prominent turn-of-the-century movements that elevated the intersection between art and design. Oscillating between Art Nouveau, Arts and Crafts, and early French graphic arts, Yamaguchi’s Smoking Woman borrow from an era that so heavily leaned on Japonisme and the aesthetics of Japan — a move wherein the artist recycles and reclaims her own cultural heritage. The paintings are punctuated by women donned in striking garments lounging in distinctly feminine poses (often with their pet cat). Set against a flat, geometrically patterned backdrop the fanciful curl of cigarette smoke guides the viewer across the composition. The works are hauntingly simple, yet exude the all the feminine beauty — and decadence — of the dawn of dawn of the 20th century. From the golden gleam and bold patterning of Gustav Klimt’s Stoclet Frieze, to the eerie domesticity Pierre Bonnard’s cats, and the bold line work of Toulouse Lautrec’s bold lithograph posters. Yamaguchi’s Smoking Women speak to the notion of “art-for-arts sake” and Maurice Denis’s idea that “before everything a painting must decorate. The choice of subjects or scenes is nothing. It is by the value of tones, the colored surface and the harmony of lines that I can reach the spirit and wake up the emotions” (M. Denis in an interview for L'Écho de Paris, 28 December 1891). Sofie and Muffin is more than something to consider, it’s a painting to look at and enjoy.