We’ve heard it said countless times that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”—but Japanese artist Sawako Goda (1940–2016) interpreted the phrase literally, depicting the act of beholding itself as supremely beautiful. In the posthumous retrospective of her work at Nonaka-Hill, ethereal women gazed at even more ethereal objects: floating ovoid shapes and crystals that seemed to be dangling by invisible threads. Other motifs appeared here and there: the allure of ancient civilizations, the exquisiteness of nature, even the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Yet the eye, foregrounded and even isolated in many of her paintings and pencil drawings, looked on from all corners of the gallery, reminding the viewer that the sense of sight itself is the ultimate spectacle.
Given the otherworldly quality of these renditions, it may be surprising to learn that the women depicted in Goda’s oil paintings were not mythical figures, but twentieth-century film legends such as Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, and Lillian Gish. Goda was fascinated by famous women, taking inspiration from magazines she collected while living in New York. Later, the artist looked toward the stars in a different way: After a pivotal trip to Egypt, she became preoccupied with the paranormal, routinely spotting aliens in the sky and even hearing ghosts. Her two fascinations make a strange sort of sense together; after all, doesn’t the verbiage we use to describe celebrities (icon, idol, etc.) point toward the divine?
Although many of Goda’s works featured A-list actresses, branded symbols of luxury and modernity were absent from these portraits; in most cases, so were their garments. With their bare breasts and behinds, Goda’s women invoked the classical anatomies of Hellenistic sculptures. Even the lone clothed starlet (Untitled, 1995) sported a diaphanous blouse that might as well not have been there at all; it was depicted in the same mottled beige as the subject’s skin. The paintings’ backdrops were similarly nondescript—more often than not the women exist in colorful voids. Some full-body portraits depicted their sitters as seen through surreal veils, daring the viewer to gaze longer and harder. Consider Violet Nude, 1996, for example, in which a woman is adorned with intricate markings that resemble shadows of foliage cast onto her curves. Divorced from any context, works such as this take their place in an aesthetic canon that has nothing to do with the fad economy of the entertainment industry and everything to do with the power and grace of the female form. One is tempted to liken their subjects to the spirits Goda allegedly communed with—but they’re more like goddesses, meant to be meditated upon rather than glimpsed fleetingly and gaped at.
As Goda’s deities transcend time, the fetishes they fixate on transcend the laws of gravity. The artist’s obsession with UFOs feels relevant—but these objects are, of course, identifiable. Not only do the crystals signal glamour, rarity, and all that is precious, but their multifaceted surfaces serve as both reflectors and prisms, calling attention to the relationship between beholder and beheld. The eggs found throughout are harder to crack. The immediate association is with the female reproductive system and therefore the life-giving power of the feminine collective—but the egg also implies hidden wonders. One need not know what’s within the shell to marvel at the way it glistens beneath Goda’s brush.
Goda’s portraits were here paired with paintings of the natural world: Permanent and Promise, both 1997, depicted roses in dreamy hues, while A Walk of the Sea Shell, 1999, centered a tower shell. It would be too easy, and perhaps hasty, to describe the flowers with their beautifully layered petals as evocative of female anatomy. It’s more interesting to relate Goda’s focus on replicating the detail and texture of natural elements and their relationship to still lifes. In Mother Ship, 1996, a nude figure arched backward in what appeared to be an underwater setting, the patterns of the brushstrokes evoking waves dappled by sunlight. This optical effect was mirrored in A Walk of the Sea Shell, where mounds of sand appear soft enough to sculpt, wet enough to leave your finger dripping. The same gentle textures recurred again and again—suggesting something supernatural about all life, if we dare to look closely enough.
