REMEMBERING KIICHI USUI: A Tale of Two Paintings

The first painting hangs in my family’s living room. If you look at the painting from the bottom up, you see, at first, nothing at all: fully a third of the total surface seems empty; then there is some green; not much at first, but then more and more as you gaze up into a wonderfully simple and distinct landscape: ordinary nature it is. But this is ordinary nature as seen by (1) an arduously schooled Japanese craftsman (2) who studied, and was profoundly influenced by, Chinese nature painting, and (3) who was also an American-loving and partly American-ized artist in a neo-realist tradition who brought all these influences together into a deceptive simplicity. Kiichi gave me this painting to thank me for writing an