Message from Kazuo Nakamura,
Director of the Nakamura Keith Haring Collection
- My First Encounter with Keith Haring
- 1December 28 1987 is the day I saw my first Keith Haring work. I was on a business trip to New York and saw “People’s Ladder” in a gallery. It looked like a comic strip, and yet there was a message which touched me deeply. I couldn’t understand why such a lithograph was so expensive and wasn’t sure whether I should buy it or not.
- One day before departure I made up my mind to buy it. Keith Haring’s art conveys in its deceptively simple lines a lot about humanity and its strengths. That was the start of my Keith Haring collection. Each work was acquired over the past twenty years sometimes with much wondering, sometimes with internal conflicts, but always with plenty of excitement.
- Light and Dark, from Chaos to Hope.
- Nakamura Keith Haring NThe Nakamura-Keith Haring Collection’s central theme is “Keith Haring’s World: From Chaos to Hope.” It is the world’s first private collection entirely dedicated to exhibiting Keith Haring’s art.
- In the 1980’s when Japan was booming with the “bubble” economy, America was experiencing extended inflation, an economic slowdown, high unemployment rates and a dramatic increase in big city crime. New York’s period of light and dark was the backdrop to the little more than ten years of Keith Haring’s stellar appearance upon the New York art scene and his creative activity. Some of Keith’s art reflect hope and aspirations in direct reflection to the period’s mood. At the same time, many other of his works express the insanity lurking within society and in human beings. He left behind his own unique take on the “Light and Dark” sides of life.
- The objective of the Nakamura Keith Haring Collection is not only to exhibit works of Keith Haring’s art. In order to help visitor’s experience Keith’s message, the architect Atsushi Kitagawara created a space evoking Keith’s “Light and Dark”. Through viewing Keith’s art and through a spatial experience of Light/Dark, the Collection aims to impart some of Keith’s insights and aspects of his life, as well as the ambiance of 1980s New York. We hope to share some of Keith’s boundless energy and his dreams.
- Where the power of Nature and pure sensibilities meet
- Kobuchizawa is located at the foot of the Yatsugatake mountains, surrounded by verdant nature. It is also a site where the Jomon Culture flourished (Japanese equivalent of Neolithic and Bronze Age). In Japan it is one of the areas with the longest hours of sunlight and at altitude 1000 m has been an environment particularly conducive in nurturing nature.
- Although the art of Keith Haring was born in the urban setting of New York which is quite distinctive (and perhaps distant) from nature, they both seem to generate power; the limitless power of life. The energy created by the world’s greatest metropolis on one hand, and the power of nature in Yatsugatake combined with the primitive power of Jomon archaeology face-off to share a strong and pure sensibility which makes the setting of Kobuchizawa for the museum seem so appropriate. Their synergy awakens the senses, making us more open to appreciate the messages Keith tries to communicate in his art as well as the nature cradling it.
