James Lee Byars 
This text was written for the
catalogue of the exhibition called 'Silent Friendship' at the
Toyota Municipal Museum, Japan, summer 1999. (Installation
view below *) Even though James Lee Byars lived for more than
ten years in Kyoto (with interruptions between 1958 to 1968),
the Toyota Museum was the first institution to recognize the
value of his work in Japan.
The Guardian of Virtues
For months on my way to work at the Peggy Guggenheim
Collection, I observed
a tall man dressed in a black velvet suit with a black hat
and his eyes covered
with a scarf of black silk crossing the Grand Canale in a
ferry boat, a black
Gondola. He never sat down, but always stood in the middle of
the shaky boat
like a sculpture. He was conscious of every move he made,
aware of every detail
of his posture as well as the energy he emanated into the
surrounding space.
Finally, by introduction of a Venetian art critic, I had the
chance to meet James
Lee Byars, whose silent presence had been in my life for
quite some time.
“ ‘Stealing Diamonds’, I love the title of
your exhibition!” James Lee said, when
my pals and I explained the scheme to him. We had plotted to
get the old ship
yards on the Giudecca island during the period of the 1986
Biennial to show a
group of 20 young artists and a couple of rather known ones.
“May I make a contribution to this project? The title
and your initiative sounds
so wonderful.’
His enthusiasm gave us courage to realize with few means our
vision without
making compromises. At my first lunch with him and his wife
Wendy in one of
the restaurants of the Zattere embankment, he threw deep red
rubies into every-
ones white wine. The little precious seeds transformed the
common wine into a
poem. Constantly while eating and talking, James made spheres
of the roll’s soft
inside with great dexterity and precision. At the end of the
meal he gave those
gray balls to each of us as a self portrait. Hard as stone, I
saw them later on
curators’ desks, on bookshelves in collectors’
homes and many other places.
Initially I was just as much scared as awe inspired by his
presence and radical
demand for 100% attention and sharp and intelligent answers.
Often he would
say short poems during our encounters , such as ‘The old
frog jumps into the old
pond-splash!’ or ‘It is so silent that even the
chirping of the zikada sinks into the
stone ’ and mentioned that they were Japanese Haiku of a
nomad-poet called
Basho, whom he truly admired for his succinctness and depth.
Even though I
had read Haikus before, it was James Lee Byars who made me
understand the
essence of this condense communication, which can penetrate
the heart of the
listener like an arrow, because of its fine tip and then
unfold like a flower.
James Lee Byars’ contribution to ‘Stealing
Diamonds’ was not brought by any
art transport company to our venue. Starting in front of the
Biennale Park
‘Giardini’, James Lee, in a golden suit with a
golden hat, stood in a Gondola,
pointing a six meter long gold leafed needle to the sky and
slowly let himself be
rowed across the widest part of the Venice Laguna to
Giudecca. By creating a
floating sculpture, James Lee Byars turned the arrival of the
work into a
celebrative act, which he called ‘The Poet of the
Gondola’. In our venue, the
needle was laid horizontally on a pedestal made by a Venetian
furniture artisan
on the centerwall in about 10 meters’ hight. Carefully
he supervised the
positioning of his work, not giving in, until it was
perfectly symmetrical with the
center axis of the space.
“In the middle, dead center!” he repeated his
instructions, sometimes bursting
with impatience. That moment, for the first time, I learnt
about the importance of
the precise positioning of his pieces, the integrity of which
he would sometimes
defend with all his force and variety of tempers. In seconds
I realized that this
man would never compromise. I had met a man who, at first
glance seemed to
be an artist with idiosyncrasies, but in reality defended
universal laws of nature,
for which destiny had chosen him to be an ambassador.
Having a notion, that James Lee Byars, inspite of his sharply
spoken instructions,
did not stipulate difficult tasks to make himself important
and send people
sadistically around, but to stand up against arbitrariness,
mediocre solutions and
lack of awareness, let me say yes, when he asked for my
company after leaving
Venice in autumn 1986. We went to Duesseldorf, where he was
invited to have
the entire Kunsthalle and install the: ‘The
Philosophical Palace.’
The walls of the Kunsthalle Duesseldorf were not of the color
James needed for
his exhibition. He demanded scarlet (shun) on all walls.
Exceeding the provided
budget, James Lee had to use most of his honorary to have the
walls painted
thoroughly red. Without his lips moving, I heard him
constantly say: ‘Sacrifice
to attain perfection. Suffer to attain poetry. Slow down to
discover beauty.’
The windows had layers of tearmarks of rain. James Lee
demanded they would
be all cleaned to return their transparency. They were
cleaned. The space under
the major staircase had become a junk yard for things out of
favor. James asked
them to be removed. They were removed. Every motion he made
was a defense
and integrity to create an undisturbed access to beauty,
magic, space, poetry and
perfection.
During our heavy German lunches, James told me about the
miraculous
disappearance and killing acts performed by Japanese Ninjas
in total silence and
without leaving traces. He hoped that by listening to his
accounts I would be
able to behave like a true Ninja. Even though I did not learn
to climb walls or
breathe on a reed while hiding in a moat, I got a clear
insight into what he meant
by being invisible and at the same time efficiently carry out
functions. If one’s
attitude about oneself and ones relationship to the physical
environment was
pure and not dominant, one could attain a state of not being
present, not being
noticed. The third day after our arrival, we spent hours in a
martial arts shop in
the Asian neighborhood of Duesseldorf. With great pleasure,
James explained all
the vicious looking accessories and books. Finally he bought
a Ninja suit which I
was to wear from now on, when appearing with him in public.
While quality checking thousands of 5 x 5 mm size black paper
books with
golden miniature print saying ‘Beauty goes’ turn
over ‘avant-garde’ I thought of
James’s wide amplitude of creation: from the almost
invisible to the gigantic,
from the silent to the noisy, from extreme material presence
to the
incomprehensible pure idea, all united by his poetry and
aspiration to achieve
perfection, make people love beauty and grasp the essence of
the moment,
sustaining attention by crescendo-decrescendo,
piano-fortissimo.
The Ninja stories were only the hors d’oevre to
countless tales of James’ stay in
Japan from 1958 to 1969. He did not reside in this country to
find his fortune or
other precalculated reasons, but to live with and
recontextualize aspects of
Japanese poetic and sensual spirituality. Through his
performances, sculptures,
poems, and object constellation he both managed to remind the
Japanese of their
own treasures and bring the heartbeat of the soul of Japan to
the West. Having a
general letter of introduction by Yanagi Soetsu, many doors
meant for few
sprang open for James and allowed him deep insights for his
research and
prolific creation of works. Of course I don’t see his
work as Japanesque, but he
picked up on the universal truth of phenomena, which could
only appear in
Japan and destilled their essence.
While teaching at Doshisha James Lee invested most of his
spare time and
resources into his dialogue with Japan. He spent a
month’s salary to pay a Geisha
to walk with him 500 m along a ricepaddy outside Kyoto.
Or he went before dawn to the temples to wake up the priests
with quotations
pronounced by his students from Shakespeare, Gertrude Stein
and other poets.
‘Who ever loved who loved not at first sight?’
‘A rose is a rose is a rose, is a
rose...’ Joining countless sheets of Washi, folded zig
zag into a tower of an even
cube, he performed ‘The one mile paper walk’ in the
gardens of Kyoto.
Few months after we finished the Duesseldorf exhibition, I
found myself with
James Lee in Berkeley, working on an exhibition at the
University Art Museum.
More than Duesseldorf, San Francisco offered plenty of
samples to illustrate the
tales of James’ life in Japan. I felt almost
brainwashed, and was convinced, that
Japan was nothing than a bag of secrets, miracles, examples
of the most subtle
appreciation of nature and beauty, the highest level of
craftsman ship and care
for perfection, and last but not least, host of the most
enlightened form of
succinct poetry and koans.
Naturally, after James had returned to Europe, I bought a
ticket to Japan, wore
my Ninja suit during the flight, and was ready to verify what
my friend had
talked about for months. Often I had to scratch and dig deep
to find what had
nurtured James Lee, because Japan had changed between 1969
and 1987 a little.
Yet with the help of precious guides, I found what James had
talked about.
Similar to my friend, I never felt ‘finished’.
There was always another level of
subtlety to be initiated to, Shinto rituals, conversations
with Buddhist monchs,
projects with artisans, so I continuously extended my stay.
When I saw James
Lee once in a while in Europe, he pressed me out like a lemon
to receive fresh
juice from Japan. From his curiosity about what I was doing,
I realized how
much he loved and missed the country, the ‘subarashi
tokoro.’
 James Lee Byars discusses with Masahiro Aoki (seniour Curator of the Toyota M. Museum) the possibility of an installation incorporating figures carved by Enku (photo taken November 1996 at the Toyota Folk Museum) |
 Detail of installation at 'Silent Friendship' June 1999, showing the guilded marble work: 'The gate of Innocence' |
In late autumn 1996 James Lee was invited for preparatory
meetings to lead to an
exhibition in an institution near Tokyo. On that occasion, he
visited the Toyota
Museum, giving the curators an opportunity to get more
familiar with his work
by talking to him directly. Feeling very much back at home,
James extended his
stay in Japan from one week to more than two months. We
visited the Iseshrine
to pray once more under the big trees (name of shrine) and
see the holy fish in
the holy river at dusk. We fed deer in the Nara Park and
admired the Daibutsu.
We looked at Kyoto in the snow. Even though paralyzing pain
jolted through his
body frequently, James kept working, recreating old pieces
from the sixties
which had disappeared (the philosopher’s toothpick, the
philosophical walk, the
sacrifice of the flower) or getting quotations from artisans
to realize new projects,
such as a circular coat made from Nara Deer skin, an
installation with thousands
of disks made from double sided goldleafed paper, a black
stone cylinder and
many others.
 Samples of deerskin meant to be sown together to form a circular coat. James Lee Byars' room at the Nara Hotel, Nara, winter 1996/97 |
 'The sacrifice of the flower', James Lee Byars' room at the Nara Hotel, Nara, winter 1996/97 |
But his most aspired vision was to have one of his ‘One
Grain Rice Buddhas’ to
be placed in the chest of the Daibutsu. Similar to when we
had first met in
Venice, instead of using bread, James formed during his last
stay in Japan
countless, tiny spheres, each from one grain of rice. Even
though he called them
Buddhas, they also were a self-portrait, a reflection of his
own Buddha nature
and illuminated thought. He chose Kairo, to be more precise
the Pyramids of
Gizeh as point of departure, on May 22nd 1997. 
Stephan Köhler March 1999
* The 1999 installation at the Toyota Municipal Museum consisted of 'The gate of Innocence' (foreground) 'The figure for Question is in the room' (both 1986, Kavallah marble, gilded, now part of the Toyota Municipal Museum) and 'Virtue' (white silk wedding dress, courtesy Jim Butler and Morgan Thomas)
mail to Stephan Köhler
This webpage is being published with the kind permission of
the Estate James Lee Byars
Copyright Estate James Lee Byars,
Courtesy Galerie Michael Werner Köln und New York
all photos and text:
copyright Stephan Köhler (except of postcard of Gizeh/Kairo
reverse message from James Lee Byars) .