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拍品专文
TARO OKAMOTO
ANIMISTIC SURREALISM
Taro Okamoto (1911-1996) is revolutionary in post-war Japanese art. His role in the development of the Japanese avant-garde art to that of post-war Japan but also managed to establish a sense of the persona of the artist as it is understood in the Western avant-garde; the notion of the artist as both seer and leader of revolutionary consciousness grew apace under his influence. One of his most famous work, Tower of the Sun (fig. 1), became the symbol of Osaka Expo in 1970, which still stands in the center of the Expo Memorial Park. His early work titled Boutique Foraine (1938, fig. 2) is housed under The Guggenheim Museum collection.
Okamoto first went to Paris in 1929 where he was associated with both the Surrealists and abstract painters during the 1930s. He was one of the few Japanese artists who had visited the west and who had managed to become a fully participating member of a major European art movement. He was the youngest member of the Abstraction-Creation group which he joined in 1931 and he subsequently exhibited in the International Surrealist Exhibition of 1936. His career in Europe was interrupted by the necessity return to Japan when the War started.
Okamoto's post-war influence in the avant-garde was based on his belief in the destruction of the old values and on his political stance. In respect of the first point it is beyond dispute that Okamoto had the loudest and most determined voice in denouncing established 'comfotable' art. Yoshikuni Iida recalled, when he was a student in 1948, Okamoto came to give a lecture on Picasso's Guernica at his art school, he declared, "we need to destroy everything with monstrous energy like Picasso's in order to reconstruct the Japanese art World."Okamoto frequently stated that art must not be beautiful, technically skillful or 'comfortable'. Art must be 'disagreeable'. This aspect of his influence extended through to the art of the 1960s, and inspired young artists including Ushio Shinohara.
His famous painting, The Law of the Jungle (fig. 3), criticizes Fascism with its cartoon-like creatures and child-like visual jokes. The humorous monster with a large zip is a symbol of Fascism. What looks vicious may, once the zip is opened, be empty inside, yet. His adaptation of cartoon-like creatures is inspired by his father who is a cartoonist and writer. The exaggerated character in Okamoto's oil painting, on one hand, partially derived from the Japanese rich panoply of spirits and demons in Japan's animistic religion (fig. 4), on the other hand, bridges such imaginative visual tradition (fig. 5) with Surrealism and distortion in Cubism (fig. 6) from the West. Here in the painting, Work (1963, Lot 489), the vigor creatures are dissolved into pure form, colour and brushstroke, but the expressiveness remains. The red flame-like motif in the center is surrounded by a whirlpool of white and navy blue colour, transmitting a sense of swirling movement as powerful as gravity attracting a bold and powerful black line inside. The strength expressed through the painting is the embodiment of Okamoto's attentiveness to human condition in the post-war period. The home and studio in Tokyo where the artist lived since 1954 is turned into Taro Okamoto Museum after his death in 1996.
ANIMISTIC SURREALISM
Taro Okamoto (1911-1996) is revolutionary in post-war Japanese art. His role in the development of the Japanese avant-garde art to that of post-war Japan but also managed to establish a sense of the persona of the artist as it is understood in the Western avant-garde; the notion of the artist as both seer and leader of revolutionary consciousness grew apace under his influence. One of his most famous work, Tower of the Sun (fig. 1), became the symbol of Osaka Expo in 1970, which still stands in the center of the Expo Memorial Park. His early work titled Boutique Foraine (1938, fig. 2) is housed under The Guggenheim Museum collection.
Okamoto first went to Paris in 1929 where he was associated with both the Surrealists and abstract painters during the 1930s. He was one of the few Japanese artists who had visited the west and who had managed to become a fully participating member of a major European art movement. He was the youngest member of the Abstraction-Creation group which he joined in 1931 and he subsequently exhibited in the International Surrealist Exhibition of 1936. His career in Europe was interrupted by the necessity return to Japan when the War started.
Okamoto's post-war influence in the avant-garde was based on his belief in the destruction of the old values and on his political stance. In respect of the first point it is beyond dispute that Okamoto had the loudest and most determined voice in denouncing established 'comfotable' art. Yoshikuni Iida recalled, when he was a student in 1948, Okamoto came to give a lecture on Picasso's Guernica at his art school, he declared, "we need to destroy everything with monstrous energy like Picasso's in order to reconstruct the Japanese art World."Okamoto frequently stated that art must not be beautiful, technically skillful or 'comfortable'. Art must be 'disagreeable'. This aspect of his influence extended through to the art of the 1960s, and inspired young artists including Ushio Shinohara.
His famous painting, The Law of the Jungle (fig. 3), criticizes Fascism with its cartoon-like creatures and child-like visual jokes. The humorous monster with a large zip is a symbol of Fascism. What looks vicious may, once the zip is opened, be empty inside, yet. His adaptation of cartoon-like creatures is inspired by his father who is a cartoonist and writer. The exaggerated character in Okamoto's oil painting, on one hand, partially derived from the Japanese rich panoply of spirits and demons in Japan's animistic religion (fig. 4), on the other hand, bridges such imaginative visual tradition (fig. 5) with Surrealism and distortion in Cubism (fig. 6) from the West. Here in the painting, Work (1963, Lot 489), the vigor creatures are dissolved into pure form, colour and brushstroke, but the expressiveness remains. The red flame-like motif in the center is surrounded by a whirlpool of white and navy blue colour, transmitting a sense of swirling movement as powerful as gravity attracting a bold and powerful black line inside. The strength expressed through the painting is the embodiment of Okamoto's attentiveness to human condition in the post-war period. The home and studio in Tokyo where the artist lived since 1954 is turned into Taro Okamoto Museum after his death in 1996.