Early Mornings on 26th Street
Artist
Rikuro Okamoto
(Japanese-American)
Date1988-89
MediumOil, acrylic, wood, aluminum on canvas; 14 scenes
Dimensions27 × 142 1/2 in. (68.6 × 362 cm)
ClassificationsPainting
Object numberUAC2807
DescriptionEarly Mornings on 26th Street is a collection of 14 smaller paintings that have been joined together to create one cohesive art piece. The pieces range from heavily abstract to photorealistic and are placed in a kind of graduation. On the far left the scenes are of nature, with the cat and fish and plants, and move towards humans on the far right, with the bathers, people, and graffiti. In the middle there is more of an emphasis on the mechanical and artificial, blending nature and people with the imagery of buildings, metal , and sticks. Along with each piece in the set is included a date-range that represents the time it took to make each small scene and the season that it was made, all created in 1988 and some ended in 1989.Okamoto’s work, as he describes it, has an interest in the people and the natural facts that make up the world. His interest in the world is something that is inherent in his work, as he takes thousands of pictures of nature and the world around him to reference while he is making his art. This care for the artist’s experience is apparent here in these 14 images of early mornings on 26th street where Okamoto lives. This interest in the life around him is abstracted in this work, in the sense that some of these miniature scenes would not be visible on 26th street. With 14 distinct and detailed pictures, however, this work exemplifies the multi-cultural experience of the artist, each experience distinct in its canvas but unified in the collection of these canvases into a single work of art.
A self-described minimalist, Rikuro Okamoto is a New York artist with pieces in the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Most famous for his work, Moving Rock, Okamoto often creates art in this space between mechanical and natural elements, influenced by Paul Cezanne, though he is an accomplished nature painter in his own right. Okamoto lives in New York, and often includes the atmosphere of the city in his most recent works, many of which can be found in the Rikuro Okamoto Museum in Oita Prefecture, Japan.
Written by Alex Heath
