This work comes from the series Steady Gaze, which Saito Kiyoshi worked on for his entire career after first presenting it at the São Paulo Biennale in 1951. A large part of the image is a taken up by a black and white cat, whose eyes don’t appear to align and who doesn’t appear to be gazing at anything. The viewer might be tempted to try to decipher the cat’s thoughts by carefully observing its eyes or its appearance. They might wonder if the thing doing the “gazing” is not the cat at all, but the viewer, or the artist. For Saito, staring at something, or in other words, a “steady gaze,” was a lifelong theme that was essential for him in capturing the subjects of his paintings.
(MINAMISHIMA Ko)
This work comes from the series Steady Gaze, which Saito Kiyoshi worked on for his entire career after first presenting it at the São Paulo Biennale in 1951. A large part of the image is a taken up by a black and white cat, whose eyes don’t appear to align and who doesn’t appear to be gazing at anything. The viewer might be tempted to try to decipher the cat’s thoughts by carefully observing its eyes or its appearance. They might wonder if the thing doing the “gazing” is not the cat at all, but the viewer, or the artist. For Saito, staring at something, or in other words, a “steady gaze,” was a lifelong theme that was essential for him in capturing the subjects of his paintings.
(MINAMISHIMA Ko)