Heart of Hearts
Miyoko Ito at Artists Space
For decades Chicago has been an oasis between the two coasts for American artists. Jim Nutt, Christina Ramberg, Kerry James Marshall, and Michelle Grabner are just a few artists who have called Chicago their home. Another is the painter Miyoko Ito, who died prematurely in 1983. Although Ito has not received the same level of fame as some of her peers, she has recently been brought to light in a new show at Artists Space in New York called Heart of Hearts.
This show concentrates primarily on her later work from the 1970s and onward. All of the paintings in the show are soft and warm, with colors that evoke the golden hour or subdued rainbows. Overlapping forms that shift with those marvelous, undulating colors are abstract, but you can’t help but ponder their figurative possibilities. Sometimes you think you may see clouds, the ocean, or a window. These paintings are like harmless versions of Rorschach tests, so one can conclude that Ito picked up on the surrealist strain that was permeating Chicago’s art scene in the ‘70s.
Surrealism aside, Ito’s work seems completely unique in its radiant positivity. These are not images that disturb or attack you. Ito’s paintings are extremely calm, meditative, and beautiful. This is all the more poignant when you consider Ito’s tumultuous past. After being raised and educated in California to immigrant parents, she was then interned and separated from her husband during World War II. However, the fear and anguish she must have experienced is not present in her work, especially these late abstractions. Art did not seem to function as visceral catharsis for Ito. Instead, it echoed the famous quote by Henri Matisse, Ito’s practice was “an art of balance, of purity and serenity…something like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.”
This “good armchair” approach was successful for Ito, and she had shows at galleries, the Renaissance Society, and was featured in the 1975 Whitney Biennial. However, she became somewhat forgotten after her death. Luckily, this artist is finally receiving the attention she deserves. Ito dedicated herself happily to her art, and as a result, she created a legacy that is finally being unpacked and admired.
