Ah, truly, why is this world so clamorous, yet at the same time, so unfathomably lonely? Don’t you think so, too? Just stop for a moment and gaze at your own shadow. There, you will find a strange void, an emptiness that defies words, lying in wait. In such moments, a person yearns for something to cling to—be it sake, women, or perhaps, a single painting.
Today, let us speak of a man named Tsuguharu Foujita. No, I shall not bore you by tracing the pedantic outlines of his biography. Rather, allow me to chatter a bit about the “solitude” this man harbored and the secret of that “milky white” that seizes the eyes and refuses to let go.
Foujita, Léonard Foujita. That man who walked the streets of Paris with his bobbed hair, round glasses, a large earring swaying, and a cat cradled in his arms. He was the darling of a frantic era. In the nights of Montparnasse, where notorious eccentrics like Modigliani and Picasso swarmed, he swam the most vibrantly of all. Everyone loved him, and he, like a jester, performed to make the people laugh. But tell me, have you ever imagined the face that lies beneath the mask of a jester?
I suspect he strove to be “Japanese” more than anyone else, while simultaneously cursing the fact that he was “Japanese.” It wasn’t that he tried to become French and failed. What he chose was to give birth, from the tip of his own brush, to a “white” the likes of which French eyes had never beheld.
That milky white. It is not merely a color of paint. It is the color of silence. It is not the white of snow, nor the white of paper. It is like the skin of a newborn babe, or perhaps like that elegant, cold texture of silk that exists only in distant memories—that is the color.
People were struck with wonder. They asked how on earth he produced such a hue. A texture so smooth, devoid of shadows, yet profoundly deep, it overturned the common sense of oil painting. Foujita never revealed the secret. He allowed no one into his studio, and in his solitude, he painstakingly polished his ground with siccative—specifically, talcum powder. Using a fine face-painting brush, he drew delicate lines of sumi ink. He had brought the world of Eastern ink into the realm of Western oils.
However, technicalities really do not matter in the end. What is important is why he fixated on “white” to such an extent.
Imagine, if you will. In a foreign land, a man with yellow skin receives the adulation of white society. They cherished Foujita, but their gaze must have contained the sort of curiosity one has when observing a rare animal. To repel that chilly curiosity, he presented an “ultimate white” that they could not recreate even if they stood on their heads. It was his revenge, and at the same time, his ultimate self-defense.
“My white is purer, and far lonelier, than yours.”
He must have whispered this in his heart. Those milky-white nudes appear to possess warmth, yet in truth, they reject all the heat of this world. There is an absolute stillness there, as if your fingertips would freeze upon touching them.
Foujita achieved success in Paris and stood at the pinnacle of glory. Yet, the greater that success became, the deeper his solitude grew. When he returned to his homeland, Japan, he was denounced as “Westernized,” and in France, he was treated as an “exotic Oriental.” He had no place to belong. Whether he looked right or left, there was no one who truly understood his words.
In those times, he would face the canvas and apply that white. White is a color that rejects everything, while simultaneously being a color that embraces everything. Within that milky white, he built a kingdom of his own. A kingdom of perfect solitude, untainted by anyone, uninvaded by anyone.
Do you not also feel, when immersed in something, as if you have been severed from the world? The air around you becomes transparent like thin ice, and you sink into a world of no sound. For Foujita, the act of painting was a descent into the abyss of that solitude.
Later, swallowed by the rough waves of war, he returned to Japan, only to leave it once more. Finally, he converted to Catholicism and built a small chapel in the French countryside. He painted murals, fired stained glass, and ultimately buried himself within that silence.
The secret of that milky white. It does not lie in the technique or the mixture of materials. It is the crystallization of “loneliness” that a man named Tsuguharu Foujita polished over the course of a lifetime. When a person becomes truly lonely, they end up creating something hauntingly beautiful. It is a sad miracle, like a curse, or perhaps like a salvation.
Well, how about it? Why don’t you try polishing your own solitude once in a while, rather than just leaving it as mere sadness? It may not become a white that surprises the world as Foujita’s did, but a color that belongs only to you—a color only you can see—might just be born from it.
Life, after all, is a journey taken entirely alone. There are boisterous banquets, and there are nights so cold you freeze. Yet, perhaps only those who possess a “secret they will surrender to no one” within themselves, like that milky white, can truly confront this ridiculous and precious world.
Now, our talk has grown long. It has become dim outside. The city is being swallowed by that white mixed with grey of the twilight that Foujita loved. I think I shall head home now, embracing my own solitude. I hope you don’t catch a cold. And I sincerely hope that someday, you will find your own “milky white.”
For it must be so. We are all like lost children in this vast, helplessly absurd world, searching for a single tube of paint to prove our own existence. Just as the man named Tsuguharu Foujita reached that white, you, too, should be able to transform your silence into a beautiful color. Well then, until next time. Farewell.