Sanctuary at Western Sunset

Tom Nakashima, Sanctuary at Western Sunset, 1992, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Gail and John Enns, 2008.38

Tom Nakashima visited Japan for the first time in 1988, inspiring the third generation Japanese American to take a deeper look into his heritage. As a form of meditation, painting is a way he explores his relationship with Eastern and Western cultures, conveyed through autobiographical imagery and a fluid use of symbols. A large chapel dominates the scene in Sanctuary at Western Sunset. It is a safe haven, a place of refuge inspired by two of Giotto’s fourteenth-century frescos in the Arena Chapel in Padua, Italy. For Nakashima, the structure serves as a path to Japan and a visual representation of safety across cultures. A translucent fish, a self-portrait of the artist, approaches the threshold of the chapel as if embarking on a journey across the sea. Painted in thick, gestural brushstrokes, the fish casts a solid shadow as the sun sets over the mountainous horizon.

Title

Sanctuary at Western Sunset

Artist

Tom Nakashima

Date

1992

Location

Dimensions

101 ¹⁄₂ x 120 ³⁄₈ (257.9 x 305.9 cm)

Credit Line

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Gift of Gail and John Enns

Mediums

oil

Mediums Description

oil on canvas

Classifications

Painting

Highlights

Art by Asian Americans

Keywords

Architecture Exterior

Object Number

2008.38

Palette

Linked Open Data

Linked Open Data URI

Videos

Date

June 27, 2019

Transcript
Information

TOM NAKASHIMA: This painting, the whole sanctuary, is a series that I did that started, I think, around 1984 or ‘85. I'm Tom Nakashima. I'm sitting in front of my painting, “Sanctuary at Western Sunset.”

I wanted to use the image of the Giotto sanctuary. So I had the image from art history and then I thought what can I put in that? What's interesting? And I went down to Eastern Market, which was about three blocks from my studio at the time, purchased a mackerel, brought it back, and built a little cardboard sanctuary, and put ropes on it and kind of hung it up entering into the sanctuary. So that's how the image began. The fish indeed was a self-portrait of sorts.

I'm Japanese-American. The fish, of course, is very Japanese. All of my work has both the Western side and the Eastern side. And when I first went out to, I guess I was maybe five or six, when we went out to Seattle or someplace along the Pacific, and I remember looking at the ocean, and the first thing I thought is, "If I could swim well enough, I could go to Japan." There was nothing between me and Japan but this ocean.

I tended to make large paintings. This one here, I think, is eight feet. I had this feeling, that a painting should be bigger than a human being, that paintings were more important. Paintings were things of a high aesthetic order, and power, and because of that, they should be made big, that painting in general should be given this special status.

Artist Tom Nakashima discusses the significance of the fish in this work, his relationship to Eastern and Western art, and his belief in the monumental importance of paintings.

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