The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto
The Art of the Interval: MoMAK and the Science of Delay
I. The Perceptual Encounter: MoMAK
My recent visit to the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto (MoMAK), became a practical test of the Two Dogs Art Space Axiom. By moving through the Collection Gallery and the #WhereDoWeStand? exhibition (this is a very good show) without relying on chronology or periodization, I attempted to encounter the works through a purely perceptual lens—grounding the experience in what I call the Delay. The Davidson Hypothesis (t₀ → t₀ + D) situates artistic praxis precisely in this interval between seeing and doing.
Artists are born with a pulse, not a clock. Any artwork that emerges through the Delay carries this pulse—the interval between the inception of an idea and the moment it becomes a spatial mark. This is where the scintillation of studio praxis originates: thought transforming into action, whether through an oil trace or a pencil mark, each loaded at the apogee of visual memory. This “sovereign space” must remain free from the aesthetic desires of institutions that often massage studio praxis into performative outcomes. History offers many examples of this pressure—"the official salons" that kept Cézanne out of the picture for far too long.
The museum’s necessary labor, then, is to educate societal memory on the difference between genuine aesthetic praxis and work that capitulates to institutional taste.
II. Case Studies in Sovereignty: Iwata and Fukada
In MoMAK’s Collection Gallery, I encountered two works that—despite their temporal and material distance—shared a common origin in the Delay.
• IWATA Shigeyoshi, Work -151 (1965)
A scintillating assembly of oil, wood, cotton, and iron on canvas. Its apparent simplicity belies the sustained praxis behind it. The materials vibrate with the sensation that the artist has only just stepped out of the room, leaving the work still resonating in his wake.
• FUKADA Chokujo, Hawk with Waterfall / Mandarin Ducks in Snow (1895)
A delicate color-on-silk composition, poised and precise. Separated by seventy years and radically different motifs, both works arise from the same sovereign space of delay. They demonstrate that when artists are free from the demands of patrons and industry, they produce a unity and diversity that societal memory can enjoy collectively—and even impudently.
III. The Axiom of Delay
Developed through three decades of studio practice and formalized in the 2020 exhibition Delay (Akashi), the Axiom proposes that artistic figuration does not emerge from historical sequence but from a non-temporal perceptual interval. The Delay is the structural mediator between sensation and action—the silent space where the mark is born. “When the ‘when’ of a piece is removed—when Chokujo’s work is no longer confined to its Meiji-era designation—its agency is restored as a living force.”
IV. Leonardo and the Energy of Completion
This framework allows a radical re-reading of Leonardo da Vinci. His unfinished works are often framed as failures of persistence. Through the Axiom, they become perfectly complete.
For Leonardo, a work was finished the moment the scintillating energy of the concept reached its limit. To push further would be to slip into technical virtuosity—the habitual execution of craft—rather than the living presence of the Delay. Material incompleteness becomes the preservation of conceptual spark.
V. Synthesis: Beyond the Chronological
Viewing art outside of time challenges the foundations of traditional art history. It shifts our attention:
• From History to Structure: privileging perception over period.
• From Craft to Energy: valuing conceptual saturation over technical habit.
• From Sequence to Interval: recognizing the Delay as the true locus of artistic power.
It seems to me the curator got the pulse right in the collection exhibition. So view it through your own pulse.
Further context on Iwata’s Informel-era praxis can be found in
View Fukada Chokujo’s work via the
