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Mie Iwatsuki INTERVIEW WITH A MUSE BY ADAM KLUGER PHOTOGRAPHED BY ROBERT MAXWELL
Model/Muse/writer/world traveler. All seem apt descriptions - how would you describe yourself and your many passions including art and literature. My interests are diverse, but I love to study everything the world has to offer. I have been an art curator and have worked in an auction house and a gallery. I’ve had some amazing opportunities to have worked with many influential artists in the art world, and I am privileged to have been asked to sit for some important masters. I also studied Art History, Chinese, French, and Painting in College. I feel this experience opened up the chance for me to work closely with many important artists. Many such artists, who are well-known abroad but emerging in the West, often could not speak English very well. I helped them to communicate better with art critics. I think certain artists resonate with me more, when I understand their work, and also 36 | MetMagNY.com | 25AMagazine.com
speak their language and understand them and their cultural backgrounds. I like artists not only as just artists but also as human beings. I often end up getting to know their personalities and become friends with them very quickly. Since I had some amazing sitting opportunities with some masters, I’d like to share my story behind the artist’s creation with others. I believe the subject model’s perspective can add another dimension to the appreciation of the work. I only collaborate with artists I respect and believe in, so my idea of writing an art book, “Model’s Voice” is a love letter to all the artists, I hope our collaboration/ piece of art will be remembered and talked about for many centuries to come even after we are all gone. This romantic idea perhaps came from when I visited museums in Europe in my youth, when I encountered such Masters paintings as Ingres, Sargent, Vermeer, and Rembrandt. I thought I wanted to hear the voice from the subject model, asking about the experience of
sitting for such masters, and I wanted to know the inside story behind the artist’s personalities. People call me a Muse for the artists, but I think there is something more important a model can offer than to just sit pretty. I believe artists and models together can leave something meaningful in art history. It seemed that photographer Robert Frank had a profound impact on your life as a mentor/ friend and artist Yes, he has been my mentor, and one of my best friends in life. I met him in Spring 2010, I feel he was part of my life like family. He died last year, and it brought me tremendous grief and I miss him so much, but I believe that he is always watching over me. I learned a lot and also had many blessings from the artist. He photographed me the first day he met me, then he complimented how I photograph so well and suggested that I come back to his studio the following week to take some more photographs. He photographed my portrait in a manner he has never done before, as he is a street photographer and not a portrait photographer, but I can still feel that in this portrait, I am a subject in motion. If Walker Evans’ work was “life in still lives”, his photographs are “life in motion.” and there is a “soul” in every single photograph of his, it’s really amazing to see his actual print from “The Americans” in my hand, I felt that just one photograph of his contained 100 other photographs in them. He usually carried a 35mm Leica in both the studio and outside when we walked around the city, as he snapped many photographs of me and his wife June from daily life. Some of those ended up in his publications and exhibitions from time to time. It was amazing to be around him really. I had a chance to talk with him not only about his photographs but also his films and about his collaborators as I studied all his films closely. He inspired me and I will never forget the encouragement I got from him. He taught me “if you have feelings and a brain, you will be a good photographer.” I think I now apply that for what I do, as an artist model and a writer/ artist. He was influential to many and has inspired me. He will live profoundly in my heart forever. Painter Alex Katz also saw you as a muse Alex Katz’s main muse is his wife Ada, but I was one of the privileged models he has used repeatedly. He said he uses models he encounters in real life, that way he can feel more connected to the subject. When I met him I was working in a gallery, where we held his artist talk. I was so very excited that day as he was my idol in my school days studying painting in college. It was really a true story that
