Exploring Beauty Born from Brokenness with Artist Makoto Fujimura

What hidden truths can an artist's perspective reveal about our world? And how can beauty often emerge from the depths of brokenness? Join us as we dive into a captivating conversation with renowned artist Makoto Fujimura, delving into the significance of art in capturing the essence of who we are.

We also ponder the role of art in providing hope during bleak and uncertain times, drawing inspiration from artists like Frangelico, J.R.R. Tolkien, and C.S. Lewis who created masterpieces amid darkness. Makoto shares his insights on the concept of Kintsugi, a powerful reminder brokenness often proceeds beauty. Together, we examine how cultivating creativity and remaining fully present in the moment roots us to our true purpose. Don't miss this fascinating episode that will challenge your perceptions and uncover the deeper magic surrounding us in art and faith.

Topics:

• Art, faith, and the deeper magic
• Creating beauty in bleak times
• "What books have had an impact on you?”
• "What advice do you have for teenagers?"

Makoto Fujimura is a leading contemporary artist whose work has been featured in galleries and museums around the world, including The Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, The Huntington Library in California, the Tikotin Museum in Israel, the Belvedere Museum in Vienna, and the C3M North Bund Art Museum in Shanghai, China.  His process-driven, refractive “slow art” has been described by David Brooks of the New York Times as “a small rebellion against the quickening of time.”  Fujimura is the author of 4 books, Refractions, Culture Care, Silence and Beauty, and Art+Faith: A Theology of Making. Fujimura is the recipient of the 2023 Kuyper Prize for Excellence in Reformed Theology and Public Life as well as the American Academy of Religion’s 2014 “Religion and the Arts” award.  From 2003 to 2009, Fujimura served as a Presidential appointee to the National Council on the Arts.  He has also received notable recognition as a speaker, with one address selected by NPR as among the 200 “Best Commencement Addresses Ever” and by CNN as one of the top 16 “Greatest commencement speeches of all time” and is a recipient of four Doctor of Arts Honorary Degrees from Belhaven University, Biola University, Cairn University, and Roanoke College.

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Transcript

Taylor Bledsoe: 0:12

We live in an empiricist world. Reality is what we can measure and quantify, but, to quote CS Lewis, there is a deeper magic still. Artists, through their art, help us perceive this magic. But oftentimes beauty only comes from brokenness, and this is the topic of my discussion with artist Mako Fujimura. Mr Fujimura is a leading contemporary artist whose work has been featured in galleries and museums around the world, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, the Huntington Library in California, the T-Cotine Museum in Israel, the Belvedere Museum in Vienna and C.3 M North Bund Art Museum in Shanghai, china. His process-driven refractive quote slow art end quote has been described by David Brooks of the New York Times as a quote small rebellion against the quickening of time. In quote Fujimura is the author of four books Refractions, culture, care, silence and Beauty, and Art plus Faith A Theology of Making.

Taylor Bledsoe: 1:10

Fujimura is the recipient of a 2023 Kuiper Prize for Excellence in Reform, theology and Public Life, as well as the American Academy of Religions 2014 Religion and Arts Award. From 2003 to 2009, fujimura served as a presidential appointee to the National Council on the Arts, and with that I am Taylor Bledsoe, and this is the Aiming for the Moon podcast, where I interview interesting people from a teenage perspective. If you like what you hear today, please write the podcast and subscribe. You can follow us at Aiming the Number Four Moon on all the socials and check out the podcast notes below for links to our website and lessons from Interesting People newsletter. Alright, thanks to Paxton Page for the incredible new music And with that, sit back, relax and listen in. Well, welcome Mr Fujimura to the episode. Thank you so much for coming on.

Makoto Fujimura: 2:16

Oh, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Taylor Bledsoe: 2:18

Wonderful. Yeah, we kind of tend to think of our reality only through what can be measured and what is kind of deemed practical. And you talk a lot about in your book Art Plus Faith, about the perspective that an artist kind of gets on the world. So I'm curious. Could you describe this as you kind of introduce our audience to how the artist sees the world, differently than a lot of other normal people?

Makoto Fujimura: 2:41

Yeah, great question, taylor.

Makoto Fujimura: 2:43

I do appreciate that question because I think it's often not asked or, you know, it's just assumed that the only way that we can be successful, let's say, is to measure the bottom line, or something that is even utility driven and efficient.

Makoto Fujimura: 3:02

And there's certainly something that we appreciate about efficiency and pragmatism and utility, but when it comes down to what is really important to us, and even if we remember back, even if you're a teenager, the experiences that last a long time, let's say, things that you remember are not necessarily things, certainly the things that you can't buy or sell.

Makoto Fujimura: 3:43

They tend to be intangible moments when you have experienced something beautiful with your friends or with your loved ones, or a time when you felt alone and you were struggling to understand why, or music that you heard, when your heart felt full or empty. Those things tend to be something that art gets at very well, and poetry. What I mean by art is not just visual paintings, but theater, dance, poetry, music, all of what we experience as human beings, and so I couldn't tend to think that, in a society that is driven by pragmatism and utility, the arts are even more important, because we are unable to perhaps capture the essence of who we are and the depth of who we want to be, and the art expressions allow us to get deeper into the essence of who we are.

Taylor Bledsoe: 5:06

One of the things that's very interesting is you have people who, so you have this idea of metrifying the world and personality, and then you also have this other side, that we must be very authentic with ourselves. On social media, you don't want to cover up your real self. It's kind of interesting because it's an authentic self, but it's an authentic self that gets likes and shares and everything else.

Taylor Bledsoe: 5:29

So, what do you think about the influencer culture? Is that real art or is that related to kind of metrifying the world? What do you think about that?

Makoto Fujimura: 5:41

Yeah, so technology is not bad. Anything you can critique. Even in social media, you can also turn to be part of our making, part of our way of communicating. So it's not necessarily the mechanism, although you can argue that if you only have 140 words or 15 seconds of fame, what does that do? Well, that remains to be seen, and I think what we need to have a long term perspective and to look back on things that do last.

Makoto Fujimura: 6:21

And digital media tend to be less enduring because it's not physical in the sense that art, music, any kind of experiential, somatic experiences tend to be, so we have to take that into account. But anything is a tool to create into, and I do believe that even in digital media, you can create something more enduring. Certainly not, perhaps, in a way that is being used today, but I do believe in the potential of technology to be like a paintbrush. I mean, brush is a tool, the brush is technology, it's technique, and so you have to have an artist to use it well, and the same thing with everything that has been created.

Taylor Bledsoe: 7:28

The other interesting thing is, of course, as the title of your book implies, you're also a man of faith, and specifically Christianity, and I'm sure a lot of our audience who aren't Christians are wondering. There's a stereotype of Christians that's kind of bombastic, vindictive, fundamentalist and sometimes even uncaring, and obviously it's a very thoughtful and intelligent and innovative artist. You don't really fall into that mold, so I'm sure a lot of people are wondering why are you a Christian? Why do you associate with that stereotype?

Makoto Fujimura: 7:57

That's a good question, and I certainly struggle with culture, wars, mentality, not just because of the polarization it brings, but because it's fundamentally not true to our experience and what we long for. And as a photo of Christ, i really follow Jesus, who stood on the hills of Palestine, dying hills, claiming that what we consider to be survival of the fittest, what we consider to be scarce in the world, that Jesus is bringing in a point of view that, despite facing scarcity and violence and trauma, you can, you feel yourself with the goodness of God. That brings abundance and hope. And I don't think history would be history without that notion injected into the very heart of darkness. And so, to me, following Jesus means to first of all understand that there's a historical reality, a puncture in the history of what we know to be the only truth that embedded something new And what I call new newness a Greek word there is Kainos but something that is so new that we don't have a word yet for this paradigmatic newness that shifted when Jesus claimed to be who he was And his resurrection from the dead, which is the inconceivable impossibility.

Makoto Fujimura: 9:56

And that is what, later on, saint Paul writes, as in Christ's new creation. This new newness is far beyond what in new iPhone, no new innovation, no new technology can bring. It's simply a paradigmatic shift, and my faith is that that happened 2000 years ago in a very unique fashion that culminated over 5,000 years of hebraic history. That culminated in that moment And we continue to understand what that meant. And to follow Christ is also to understand that we're not certain about anything and that there's mystery involved. But I have experienced in my life certain signposts that, including art, that points the way to this abundance beneath the ashes of what we experience.

Taylor Bledsoe: 11:04

For those who have probably their only experience of Christianity has been this almost stereotype. What were your? what would your words be to those people who maybe have written it off as, oh you know, that's kind of a political thing or something else. Do you have any words of wisdom for them?

Makoto Fujimura: 11:21

Yeah. so first of all, we have to examine what we deem to be certainty And what we're sure today. you know, I always think it's interesting to look even five years back and listen to ourselves talk about what we're so certain about and find out that, you know, nobody expected I guess COVID, some predicted it, but it wasn't anything that we thought we will experience. And here we are in, you know, 2023, almost everybody alive well, everybody alive has been affected by it. right, and that kind of reality you know where, if we think anything is certain, we're wrong, you know. So let's examine that.

Makoto Fujimura: 12:16

And my certainty in faith is different from certainty in knowing what would happen. My certainty in faith is certainly a type of certainty that comes from this reality that is deposited, it's embedded, before I can have faith. In other words, it is not something that you know. that's God exists. Well, i can argue all day about you know all these evidences, but that's not the issue. you know, if this God exists, god is outside of time and space, so there's no way to know that right, in imperial, materialist fashion. So we can argue all day about evidences, but at the end of the day, it comes down to assumptions that we make about certainty, and what I believe that Jesus's appearance points to is that there is a possibility, and it could just be a possibility for many of us who struggle to believe is it? can we accept, you know, let's say, 10% chance that a pure love can exist in the universe, in a kind of way that you know, every song, every movie, every story points to right? There is this reality, that of enduring, uncorrupted love that can exist in the world.

Makoto Fujimura: 14:00

If you doubtful that, you know, 20%, 10%, 5%, can we live with 1%? Can we live with 0.0001%? Right? And if the answer is yes, even if it's minute possibility of 0.001%, that this pure love can exist, isn't it worth it to pursue that with all of our mind, heart and soul? And wouldn't, at the end of our lives, we don't find it? that's it.

Makoto Fujimura: 14:38

The pursuit of that in itself is an adventure worth taking right To have faith in this 0.001%. And so that is what I encourage young people, inquiring young people, and I challenge actually Christians who grew up in a church or who have come to believe in reality of Jesus that you know, even though you may think that your faith is certain, it doesn't mean that you know God right, because faith depends on not knowing. So that means that we can learn a lot from healthy and vigorous inquiries into you know, this journey into the impossibility, and be honest with ourselves about what we don't know and what we want to discover together. right, and so it's a journey collectively for all of us, and I have experienced that some of my atheist artist friends who are very honest about their convictions, are more helpful sometimes than speaking to brothers and sisters in the church, because they ask hard questions that are essential for understanding my own faith.

Taylor Bledsoe: 16:10

The other thing that I think a lot of people kind of forget about is, if you do believe in God, that you shouldn't be worried about some of the questions that do come, because, let's say, you do get a few really hard questions. If what you believe is true, then that's you will. maybe not you in particular, but there is an answer to those questions that can reconcile.

Makoto Fujimura: 16:30

That's right And that's right. The faith moves certainty from our perspective to God's perspective. That's the beauty of it is that we don't have to be right And we can be wrong, and we have faith that whatever we believe in that is not proven wrong by that. That's why, when we follow Jesus, we can be free from trying to justify ourselves and be able to serve others freely, because we don't have to work all day to try to understand how right we are. And, of course, unfortunately, the way that Christian faith has been seen in recent times has been the opposite of that, and that is completely something. Absolutely I struggle with that that my friends who I thought had a deeper faith or convictions that move beyond the temporal, would fall into these many things. That seems to me like conspiracy theories and so forth, but at the same time I also have faith that I don't have to prove them wrong because the certainty of this God as a foundation. Nothing changes that.

Taylor Bledsoe: 18:08

The beautiful part about believing in God is that your faith isn't dependent on you.

Makoto Fujimura: 18:13

Isn't that amazing?

Taylor Bledsoe: 18:14

Yes, one of the other aspects of your work is you deal a lot with destruction and decay and how we can rise up from the ashes if you discussed trauma in your particular story, and then you talk a lot about Kintsugi and the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold. And what's very interesting to me is, i mean, i think my generation is one of the I guess, the earliest generation at this point, the latest generation, whatever you wanna say And a lot of my peers and I have this perspective that well, the world seems to be, if it hasn't already, if it's not on fire, it's about to be on fire, and so we have this idea of kind of an already broken and destroyed world, and a lot of my friends and even I sometimes we had this idea of well, i as well, use it while it lasts.

Taylor Bledsoe: 19:00

And I was curious, being an artist that works with kind of broken material and fixing it and how that kind of renews, that renewal process. Should we take any of that perspective and focus it on the world as young people going into this? maybe broken, yeah.

Makoto Fujimura: 19:15

Yeah, and that kind of thinking, which is hedonism. You know, the world is not going to last, so let's have all the fun we can. It's not new, it existed since before we have history, i think. But it's very interesting that in history, in history, even though there were issues clearly telling people that the world is about to end, that there were voices that is absolutely enduring that came out of that time, including artists, artists like Frangelico, who painted during the Black plague, right, one third or even one half of his population, flourishing Florence is perishing.

Makoto Fujimura: 20:16

How could this Dominican monk, while he served those people, paint images that you can go to the Metropolitan Museum and see? and they are weighty, heavy, beautiful, golden images of hope? How could writers like JD Salinger, in the same way, or anybody else, or Emily Dickinson, right When the world was falling apart in front of them, right, jr Tolkien and CS Lewis, they both experienced the trauma of war. Ts Eddy, it was difficult to explain the fact that first, shakespeare failed to Peace the first time, sleep because of that. So he wrote poems in order to hear again the words of not just comfort but destruction and to turn them into poetry. So the world is filled with these examples. Shakespeare wrote during the Black Flag, right when he wasn't allowed to put theatre together, so he put the theatre on the other side of the river.

Makoto Fujimura: 21:29

But these examples tell us that what we're experiencing, first of all, is not unique to our time And, second of all, i think your generation has immense possibility because of what you're going through, because you don't take anything for granted, so your faith can be about despite what you are seeing and experiencing, and that can mean something, that is, you know that there is an echo, that is, you are able to resonate with those who have gone before you. You know way before you know. So you know 1500s and 1400s and way beyond, in the early church years, where people are not quite sure what is going to happen. In fact, they were pretty sure that the world was ending. What kind of hope, what kind of faith did they promote and do they talk about? These are things that I think your generation can very much be close to and attentive to, because you're experiencing the same.

Taylor Bledsoe: 23:02

Yeah, there's something about creating in the destroyed places that it's just the beauty of the art that comes out of. This is incredible and it's incredibly immense. I'm sure people are wondering like of course you have Shakespeare and you have TS Eliot, ts Lewis, and they created masterpieces. But what is the point of even trying to create if the world feels like it's about to end? Of course you could create something beautiful, but if it's going to end, well, there you go, right, and who's going to read it?

Makoto Fujimura: 23:32

Who's going to see it? Well, when it comes down to it, art poetry anything we create is not transactional. It doesn't. You know, just because I don't have an audience to create to, or I knew that the world was ending tomorrow, it doesn't mean that I don't create, because if I'm true to myself and if I'm true to my creativity and imagination, i am creating out of love, right? And I believe I haven't believed that love is eternal, it's not temporal, and I don't own it. So I am doubly charged to say that if my painting, if I'm working here in the studio, and if I knew that the world was ending today, that would be exactly what I want to be doing, because it comes out of my love. I have cultivated this love through my hands into these surfaces, and that is the expression that I believe is a portal into the new creation anyways.

Makoto Fujimura: 24:42

So what we should do is be faithful in whatever the ways we can, and to create a communal way where we can encourage each other to remain faithful to what we have been called to do, which is to create into the future. No human being has ever survived if that person is not creating into the future. There's some hope right that allows us to get up in the morning, to go to study, go to work, and so that means it's not just about now, it's about all of humanity. Right, have to answer that question, and some place along the way people have said yes, this is worth doing, despite what we see, despite what we've experienced, despite what we think is going to happen, and we're going to create something that is utmost our capacity to make create excellence, because we care about it.

Makoto Fujimura: 25:59

If you love something, you care about that And you want for that, whatever you make, to be something that can be shared, so that impulse doesn't change. And I think in a bleak time, we benefit by this unique sanctification or this process of being refined by the fire purified That allows us to lock in on something that only I can do, only you can do, into the world. God has created each of us very uniquely And therefore, what we can make, if we can understand our limitations and understand that we are unique in that sense, then not trying to prove yourself to the world but being faithful to you, what you are made to do, then that becomes essentially the language of hope that will be passed on to the next generation.

Taylor Bledsoe: 27:16

In Kintsugi, you can only add the gold after the pot has been broken which is very interesting So we have to wrap up now because we're running out of time, But the last two questions I have. The first one is what books have had an impact on you.

Makoto Fujimura: 27:32

So I have referred to The Oroja NT Wright's book Surprised by Hope, which I recommend highly, and another book I have been recommending to people especially younger generation is a book by a philosopher, esther Meek M-E-E-K, and it's a little book called A Little Manual on Knowing, and I recommend that to anybody, whether Christian or not, going into universities or any effort to learn anything you know, because it's about how we know what we know, and technical term is epistemology, but how we know what we know is essential in understanding how we learn and how we can grow in learning.

Taylor Bledsoe: 28:33

And then our last question is what advice do you have for teenagers?

Makoto Fujimura: 28:37

Yeah Well, I have advice for teenagers as anybody who is trying to create, faced with scarcity, mindset and model and you know, ground zero ashes in front of us to persevere in being present in, In whatever the circumstances you find yourself, in being present with people, certainly with your friends and family, but being present even in pain and isolation. And being present also enjoys and triumphs that you experience. And that takes a discipline, You know. We think well, we go after a goal and we can accomplish that and we think that's for fitting. It is in that sense.

Makoto Fujimura: 29:39

But many successful people tell me, especially artist types, when they found that pinnacle success, it didn't provide the satisfaction to them And I think that's being amplified by social media today that your immediate success, let's say, of getting followers to listen to this podcast.

Makoto Fujimura: 30:09

Well, you have a goal and that's a worthy thing, to be ambitious and to challenge yourself to get there. But being present in success is actually harder than learning to be present in failures, because we have so many voices thrown at us right And we kind of are trying to accommodate because we became successful or whatever. We have a responsibility And I found that that is true of a teenager as much as it is for anybody who's attaining some success, And it's very important to understand that we are, first of all, created to be creative and we have been given a unique pinhole of creativity to live into and to exercise our imagination, to create that which we have been called to do, which actually creates the future, And all of us need that and we can rejoice in that. But let's be accountable. Let's be accountable to being fully present in those moments.

Taylor Bledsoe: 31:25

Well, thank you so much, Mr Fujimura, for coming on the podcast. I really enjoyed our conversation.

Makoto Fujimura: 31:31

Same here, thank you.