Masamichi katayama biography of albert

CHAMP: More than just the interior designer most know you as, your skills are spread across various mediums and genres of creativity. Interior designer, educator, art collector. Can you tell us more about this?

KATAYAMA: I started my career as interior designer, but I guess I am lucky to have different opportunities, such as Professor at Musashino Art University. On the other hand, I don’t really see my self as a collector, as it’s nothing compared with the big collectors’ collections. It is just the same as clothes, or books, or magazines…

How does your collection, or the art that you’re drawn to, shape your everyday life or does it inspire your work (to have the art in your life)?

My passion for art gives me a different perspective especially. My passion for art gives me a different perspective to see. Conceptual art, which allows me to discover a new vision. I want to enjoy them and be inspired by them, that’s why I install them in the office. In a similar sense, it can be compared to the understanding of performance art, as it has always ‘been’ (in form), but now it is generating more understanding. It’s conceptual, so sometimes for others it is hard to understand, but it really speaks it’s own language. Challenging barriers and pushing boundaries in performance. There is now more of an understanding through an increase in popularity. That is the big difference in art and design. Design is one form of solution. However, art is a form of an artist’s expression. I find it fascinating to think what the concept is behind it. In the same way, I do create experience as interior designer. I always think what I would do if I have to create the same impact through design when I am inspire by art or performing art. Sometimes, I do not find an answer, but it is OK. Design needs execution, but this is my way of challenging barriers.

There is something else I am also very interested in recently. Have you heard of Rakugo? It is a traditional verbal entertainment. The Rakugo-ka, the lone story teller, uses only a paper fan and a small cloth as props. The performer tells a long and complicated story with more than two characters involved. Just by listening to him, you feel like you are watching the theatre or a drama, which is basically a comedy. The imagination is evoked and there is a scene or space created in your head without any visuals. I feel that this is a really beautiful form of art. I’m inspired by a lot of different things, but every time i see the performance of art, I try and translate the performance into design.

We love this quote: “Art should make us feel more clearly, and more intelligent, and it should give us coherent sensations which we otherwise would not have had before.” It is by Robert Hughes, an art critic for the NY times, explaining that your opinion is up to your own perspective of what is art. Through our feelings, it should give us coherent sensations which we otherwise wouldn’t have had, thus altering our mind.

I totally agree. Human development is inventing new forms, in languages, and a lot of different ways. But it is also humans that limit the vision of human possibility. If you don’t have the word (of a different language), you will start to imagine it, look at their face (conversationalist) and imagine how they feel. This is a new creativity.

Yes, Dai Fujiwara encourages new colour palettes from personal creation. We always categorise colours from what we have learnt traditionally, as Pantone and a title, but it encourages you to think outside.

One must try to think, the meaning behind the information. Maybe design is the language to fill the understanding, and probably art is completely different. More primitive.

Do you try to do the same when you create an interior space?

Yes I do. You can not think outside the box if you are in the box. So every time I design a project, I think about how the customer would feel entering the project, and the space I designed. I think my inspiration comes more from art. The design process can be logical because it needs execution, but I should not think about it from the beginning. Sometimes intuition comes first, and I think ‘how did I come up with this concept’, and follow the process with the sentence.