慶應義塾大学アート・センター　Keio University Art Center

The mechanism of the image penetrates matter, peers into life, and explores the universe.
— Shuzo Takiguchi, “Words of the Shadow-Image Man [Eizo-Ningen no Kotoba],” Bijutsu Techo, April 1962 special issue (Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppan-sha, 1962), pp. 2–4.

The poet and art critic Shuzo Takiguchi began, around 1959, to “experience difficulties in writing journalistic criticism.” In 1960, seeking “to discover, however faintly, a point of contact between the impulse to draw and the impulse to write,” he began making books commonly referred to as “handmade brochures,” while also producing drawings. These brochures were created entirely by Takiguchi's own hand, without going through the processes of a publishing house or printing press. Composed of assemblages of fragments—including drawings, magazine clippings, copies of printed materials, silver foil, labels, stickers, and handwritten notes—they appear at once finished and unfinished.
Blotting paper and decalcomania (transfer techniques), both employed in Takiguchi's drawings and handmade books, share the characteristic of taking an impression of something and leaving its trace. In this sense, they may be understood as “shadows” derived from a material entity.
Takiguchi, meanwhile, employed the term eizō (影像, image) in “Words of the Shadow-Image Man” (1962), and referred to his own study as “the room inhabited by shadows” in “Around the Blank Page” (1963). The “image” (eizō) and the “shadows” inhabiting his study: what place did these two forms of “shadow” occupy in Takiguchi's artistic practice and thought? Through his drawings, handmade books, and writings, this symposium seeks to reconsider the meaning of eizō (image) in Takiguchi's work, while also examining the relationships between artistic production and process, and between the space of the study and the fragments accumulated within it.

About Papier Plié
Papier plié was a term Takiguchi used to designate works akin to his handmade books. Literally meaning “folded paper,” the term can also refer to paper folding. The entry for “Exquisite Corpse” in the Dictionnaire abrégé du surréalisme (1938) describes it as follows:
“A game of folded paper in which several people compose a sentence or make a drawing.”
André Breton and Paul Éluard, eds., Dictionnaire abrégé du surréalisme (1938); Japanese translation by Jun Ebara, Shururearisumu Kan'yaku Jiten (Tokyo: Gendai Shichōsha, 1976), p. 6 (first Japanese edition, 1971; translation slightly modified with reference to the original).
During the game, what the preceding participant has written or drawn is folded away and concealed, so that the next participant cannot see it.

Please note that the symposium program is subject to change at short notice. 

Shuzo Takiguchi Collection
Held by Keio University Art Center

The Shuzo Takiguchi Collection comprises archival materials dating from 1936 to 1979 relating to the poet and art critic Shuzo Takiguchi (1903–1979). Takiguchi began writing experimental poetry in the 1920s. During the 1950s, he engaged in art criticism and organized exhibitions, while in the 1960s he gradually withdrew from critical writing and turned increasingly toward artistic production. He played a central role in shaping the history of postwar art in Japan.
The collection was established in 2001 following the donation of materials by Yo Suzuki, a member of Takiguchi's family. Its principal holdings include correspondence, photographs, printed ephemera relating to events, manuscripts and drafts, handmade books and their constituent materials, and publications.

The collection comprises 6,609 items in total, including:
・Correspondence: 3,538 items
・Manuscripts and drafts: 13 boxes
・Notebooks: 87 items
・Miscellaneous materials: 279 items
・Photographs: 623 items
・Handmade books and their materials: 11 boxes
・Books: 773 items
・Printed ephemera relating to events: 1,323 items

As the units of description differ among archival series, each item or box has been counted as a single unit in the overall total. The extent of archival arrangement and description varies from series to series, and further work is planned for materials whose quantities are currently recorded only at the box level.
Among the surviving materials are objects that would ordinarily have been discarded as waste. Photographs of Takiguchi's study reveal how he repeatedly experimented with rearranging these diverse objects with extraordinary delicacy and care. The collection constitutes an important resource for reconsidering the history of postwar art.
In 2021, the Shuzo Takiguchi Research Group was established to reconstruct an understanding of Takiguchi through the surviving archival materials themselves, while also bringing the continuing relevance of his work into dialogue with the present. Papier Plié serves as the group's public symposium series.