contemporary monkey

Atsuko Tanaka: Electric Dress

You say you’re Japanese, and you want to be an artist? Well then, I predict there are bright colours and bountiful circles in your future.

It’s probably not relevant, but still, I’ve noticed lately that Japanese art, regardless of art movement, direction or starting point, embraces saturated, primary colours that are spun in geometric forms. After viewing an opening at Birmingham’s IKON Gallery for Atsuko Tanaka “The Art of Connecting”, I could only think of other, unrelated Japanese contemporary artists. It might also be that western curators for Japanese art are attracted to the same aesthetic. Either way, I like it. There’s a sort of Team Japan Way of Art.

Tanaka: Japanese Modernism, about 50 years after it started elsewhere.

Tanaka was in her twenties in post-war,1950′s when she created (as the PR goes) one of the 20th century’s most influential art piece: Electric Dress. Now supported by a metal armature – but worn originally by Tanaka – the dress is a drapery of electrical cables feeding energy to hand-painted light bulbs (in primary and secondary colours) which ignite in electrical impulses every few minutes. Probably an avant garde piece of its day, the  sculpture is still a show-stopper. If you were walking down Las Vegas Boulevard in this dress, you’d blend in with the other, shouty signs. While there are plenty of colours to the piece, there’s not so much geometry.

Tanaka: I'll just keep doing this, shall I?

The dress, however, seemed to influence her paintings, drawings, even land art, throughout the rest of her career, as suddenly paintings became flush with rounded, geometric patterns from acrylic and other man-made oils. If laid out horizontally, which is how Tanaka worked, the finished canvases resemble a schematic pattern for Electric Dress in un-animated phase, grounded; waiting patiently for its human mannequin.

IKON is also showing a short visual documentary on Tanaka, with an over the shoulder point of view while she repeatedly sketches circles in the sand. Nothing but that for 15 minutes. In fact, most of her career suggests she’s on a dedicated, mathematical undertaking. The girl found round and couldn’t leave it.

Yayoi Kusama: A garden of polka dots

Of course, round is usually associated with another of Japan’s post-war artists, Yayoi Kusama. At Victoria Miro’s gallery in East London, Kusama is exhibiting more of her polka-dot pride, in both painting and sculpture. Her pre-occupation with the idea of infinity has led Kusama to yards upon yards of brightly hued, vibrating polka dots. Nobody can claim a polka dot like Yayoi Kusama. Unlike Tanaka, Kusama doesn’t appear to be influenced by any one art group or -ism, and instead has roots in hallucinatory visions as well as her own mental struggle. Like Tanaka, however, Kusama was thrust upon the western stage during the 1950s, and to suggest the war might have had something to do with the aesthetic combination of bright colours and geometric forms would seem to make sense.

Takashi Murakami: Superflat...and super happy.

Which finally led me to think about the most famous living Japanese artist, Takashi Murakami, the Japanese prince of bright lights, syrupy colours, and happy faces, mixed up in a Warholian-sized art factory. One never knows if Murakami is really that joyful, or, as I suspect, just exhibiting the image of ourselves, back on ourselves. While researching Murakami, I came across a book called, “Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture” published in 2005.  According to Wikipedia, the book “interprets the complex intuitive twist of postwar Japanese art, while defining its high-spirited and naturally buoyant escape from human tragedy and the events of World War 2″.

So that’s what war does to us: initiates a search for happiness which then manifests in art. The usual claim is the other way around, art makes peace. Given this formula, and given the overabundance of today’s political and religious strife, I reckon by mid-century the Earth will be the merriest planet in the solar system. Can’t we just skip to that bit?