Painting: Wild Man of Wisteria

He was called the Don Juan of the Slanted Eyes. He disrobed an era of Montparnasse models and claims to have painted 3,000 nudes. He once tattooed a watch on his wrist and a ring on his finger; when wealthier, he capped the radiator of his chauffeur-driven automobile with a Rodin bronze. He arrived in France from Japan in 1913 wearing a purple morning coat and a pith helmet; eleven years later he was the most fashionable painter in Paris. Tsugouharu Foujita, now 79, is a living souvenir of the days when the School of Paris was in kindergarten.

Foujita is still painting. Last week he joined that select group, with Matisse, Jean Cocteau and Le Corbusier, who have created their own chapels. He was baptized only seven years ago (he took the name Leonard in honor of Da Vinci), and with age he decided, “It is time to think about a spiritual legacy.” He convinced the director of the Mumm champagne firm to put up $300,000 to build and landscape the chapel above their wine caves near Reims. Foujita did 1,076 sq. ft. of frescoes inside the 47-ft.-long chapel, including a side chapel honoring the Madonna of the Vines, who sits on a wine cask and offers grapes to the infant Jesus.

“I built this chapel to atone for 80 years of sins,” says Foujita. He certainly gave himself opportunities to accumulate them. Descendant of a warlike samurai family, the Foujiwara (meaning “wild fields of wisteria”), the painter hobnobbed with Picasso, Apollinaire, Isadora Duncan and the catlike artists’ model Kiki. Alexander Calder once exhibited his miniature circus at Foujita’s soirees.

When World War II broke out in Europe, Foujita fled back to Japan only to find more of it. There he did military paintings from photographs. After Japan’s defeat, his samurai cousins, a marshal and a count, were held to be war criminals; but the artist was found blameless, and he rushed back to Paris. He is still exuberant, worked ten hours a day on his Reims chapel for the champagne growers. But he did not indulge in their product. Says he dryly: “I never touch a drop of alcohol.”