Japanese Collector

The Japanese Collector

1990
Acrylic on wood
108 x 87 cm
Private collection

This painting I made in 1990. It shows the Japanese collector Ryoei Saito, who paid the enormous sum of 82.5 million dollars for a Van Gogh painting at a Van Gogh auction at Christie’s in New York in 1990 … (considering that Van Gogh had not sold a single painting during his lifetime, except one to his brother).
It was particularly frightening to think when I read a press report about Ryoei Saito that he wanted to be cremated with all his artworks in case of his death! Among them Renoir’s “Au Moulin de la Galette” at $78.1 million, as well as the portrait of Dr. Gachet! This Van Gogh painting had been donated to the Städtische Galerie in Frankfurt am Main in 1911. In the course of the “Degenerate Art” campaign, it had to be removed from the Städel and came to the Kramarsky family, who took it with them on their emigration to America at the end of the 1930s. It was on loan to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, where Saito saw it… And now that he owned it, he wanted to take it with him to his death…!
As a painter who grew up in Frankfurt and studied 10 semesters at the Städel Hochschule, I had the idea for the painting “The Japanese Collector”.
I started with several preliminary sketches, for example a sketch of the collector Saito, above him the painting, Vincent Van Gogh with bandaged ear, smoking a pipe, below the Japanese sitting casually on a throne-like chair with Van Gogh’s pipe and himself with a bandaged finger stump (among Japanese gangs it is customary to sacrifice the little finger for a crime!)
Well, I discarded this idea in the final version, because it is not my place to assign this collector to the Japanese Maffia… The sketch is documented in the museum catalogue KunstHausWien.” (Mathias Waske, 2005)

Cover image for the publication:
“Was vom Japaner übrig blieb: Transkultur – Übersetzung – Selbstbehauptung”, Essays (Iaponia Insula / Studien zu Kultur und Gesellschaft Japans) Paperback – 23 January 2013
ISBN-13: ‎ 978-3862052509

January 3 @ 12:00
12:00 — 13:25 (1h 25′)

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