About This Print and This Series

EVENT As the conditions are prescribed by my individual sense for both physical and metaphsical [sic] space of life, my <EVENT> seems to aim at the metamorphosis by means of the <PLAY> of combining the conditions. And, though everyday life stands as one of the conditions, usually it does not tend toward the direction of re-creating its temporal-dimension. Or, the play might be the one for the metamorphosis, by means of taking in the dimension with the reason to combine which is undecided till it be completed; or the (unconsious) [sic] dimension without any reasons at all.  - AY-O-

The date in the notebook is April 10, 1973.  It was the day when I made No. 261 “ <Then, Mr. Ay-o got drunk by the Rainbow> <Very popular story>  <Event for prints> <Rainbow glass>” at the office of 3M Company, 48 St., Lexington Ave., New York.  About a week earlier, Alison Knowles, a neighbor of 20 years whom I worked with at Fluxus, asked me to go with him and try the color copy machine.  They charged $80 an hour to use the machine and he wanted me to share the cost.  3M Company had just leased out the newly developed machine for public demonstrations.  Both my colleagues and myself could not resist novel things.  Anyone who tried out anything new with any success could claim it to be his original. During a panel discussion in Japan I was corrected by someone who said that that was not originality but priority.  But still I believe such is what originality is.

I had been for some time secretly setting my sights on the color copy machine because my constructions, paintings, prints were taking too much time to be completed.  I had tried my hand on such media as the 16mm. movie, still photography and Polaroid.  But they didn’t appeal to me.  Ultimately it boiled down to the question of color, and I thought that was what my work was all about.  The idea of the color copy machine had tempted me, but I felt too lazy to ring them up for an appointment.  So, Alison’s invitation delighted me.

We brought together every kind of material we could think of and discussed how to try them out.  The hourly charge was the same regardless of how many copies we made.  Even a single second should not be wasted. That day, Alison and I spent 30 minutes apiece on the machine, paying $40 each.

A week later, I made up my mind and went back to 3M Company alone with all conceivable materials in hand in addition to a number of rainbow-colored objects.  I had made an appointment to use the machine for three hours.  The thought of my $80 winging away every hour really worked me up almost to orgasm.  I tried to keep cool. If I was sure nobody would come into the room, I would have stripped myself down and made my own body the theme of my printing.  Machines tend to bring on a development too complex for us to follow.  I tried to control the rhythm of the color print machine as mathematically as I could.  Of the many things I brought there, wine glasses and bottles gradually became the main subjects.  I was the lone conductor of an event.  I flirted with the machine.  I thought that a great deal was achieved.

Now I have little hesitation about counting this among my best works, although I owe very much to Mr. Aoki of Nantenshi Gallery who published it in disregard of profit.  I took about a week to compile what I had got on the machine. Then I went back to 3M to make three copies of the final result, which I called my original print by the 3M color copy machine.  I called the work resulting from the first event as the original and regarded it as the plate for printing.  (The original print was shown at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1976.  It was eventually purchased by the museum.)  At that time I pasted up this series of prints here and there to see how they would appeal as a medium.  It turned out that the color of the prints began fading after a few months even in the shade.  The fear caught me that the prints would soon go out of sight.  So I decided to go back to Japan and make a silk screen out of it.

Arrangements were made with Nantenshi Gallery to have the prints phot-processed into a silk screen by Mr. Sukeda.  We needed some very good photomechanical process.  Then I was lucky to find Komine Sehihan Co., which gave me all-out support, profit or no profit.  Technically, each silk screen took six plates made through color dissolution.  Since the series consisted of 38 prints, Mr. Sukeda’s studio in Fukui soon became packed with their blocks.  I had used a scarlet case for my “Rainbow passes slowly”.  This time I made it purple, the color on the other end of the spectrum.  For the portfolio designed by Mr. Matsumura, I wrote a brief message myself, sparing the common practice of asking someone to contribute one.  Thus my Portfolio ’74 came into being.

The portfolio has as many as four titles.  Although each of them seems somehow to identify the theme, the portfolio has come to be best known as “Mr. Ay-O got drunk by the Rainbow.”  Some people told me that the preposition “by” in this title is strange.  But Alison said it did not matter.  I would like more people, a lot of people, to see this work of mine.  I would like them to add it to their collections, so that it will be appreciated the world over.  This, I think, is a nice piece that fully expressed what I wanted to say.  I even had some extra luck there: the machine broke down the moment I got drunk and produced an effect that would otherwise have been impossible.