Hiroshi Sugimoto: Becoming an Artist | Art21 "Exclusive"

Episode #141: Filmed in his New York studio, artist Hiroshi Sugimoto recounts his student days studying Western philosophy (Hegel, Kant, Marx) in Tokyo, encountering Oriental philosophy (such as Zen Buddhism) in California, and his interest in the history of Modernism—all schools of thought that demonstrate "the human ability to see things in a different way."

Central to Hiroshi Sugimoto's work is the idea that photography is a time machine, a method of preserving and picturing memory and time. Sugimoto sees with the eye of the sculptor, painter, architect, and philosopher. He creates images that seem to convey his subjects' essence, whether architectural, sculptural, painterly, or of the natural world.

Learn more about Hiroshi Sugimoto at: http://www.art21.org/artists/hiroshi-sugimoto

CREDITS | Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera: Mead Hunt. Sound: Merce Williams. Editor: Mary Ann Toman. Artwork Courtesy: Hiroshi Sugimoto. Video: © 2011, Art21, Inc. All rights reserved.

Hiroshi Sugimoto: Becoming an Artist

When I was a college student in Tokyo, my study was German Philosophy and also Marxist Economics,

And also, Hegel, Kant... I was trying to catch up with the Western philosophy.

Socialism and Communism--now it's been taken as a kind of a failed theory or failed thinking,

But, back in that time, that was one of the dream theories of how people can live together peacefully and nicely.

And then, when I moved to California, everybody was talking about the Zen and Buddhism,

So, I spent like three years in California studying Oriental Philosophy by myself to catch up, actually.

[Laughs] So it goes the other way around.

1974...Well, that was the kind of flower movement--flower children movement--so I was really into that.

[LAUGHS]

So I didn't pay that much attention to the serious art.

Only after I moved to New York in 1974, I started realizing how important and interesting art can be.

Do you see this? It can be spottable.

I'm very interested in early 20th Century, 19th Century movement of Modernism.

So, it's like an idealism, in general. And soon Realism and Dada.

That's also trying to search the expansion of the human ability to see things in a different way.

So, they are all like very ambitious adventurism in a way.