UAAAAA!!! MANGA
On the Aesthetics of a Trash Culture
31.08.2005 - 04.12.2005
MAK Works on Paper Room

With its graphic precision and rapid picture sequences, the Japanese comic form Manga has gained worldwide cult status. At first looked down upon as a subversive means of expression belonging to the lower class, today Manga is the epitome of everyday Japanese culture. The exhibition explores the phenomenon of Manga as a pictorial language within the tradition of Japanese communication and aesthetics. The focus here is not so much on content as on conventions of style and principles of graphic design. Unlike Western comics, the storytelling structures of Manga are not linear. Instead, Manga employs intuitive pictorial narrative structures with cinematic scene sequences, changing perspectives and diagonal elements. From the single-panel comics and selected strips exhibited here, the observer gains insight into these concepts and compositional techniques. The exhibition also presents recent Manga magazines and booklets as well as the newest online publications.

Curator Johannes Wieninger, MAK Far Eastern and Islamic Art Collection

© Images:
„Derby Jockey“ Tokihiko Ishiki, Yutaka Take, Shin Kudo / Shogakukan
"Mars" Fuyumi Soryo / Kodansha

Opening
Tuesday, 30. August, 8.00pm
Welcome:
Peter Noever, Director MAK
On the exhibition:
Johannes Wieninger,
MAK Far Eastern and Islamic Art Collection

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asahi shimbun, 08/19/2005
Feelings find expression the abstract way
By JEFF MICHAEL HAMMOND

One of the charges leveled against abstract art is that, as gorgeous as its colors and shapes may be, it's too conceptual and distant from people's feelings and experiences.

Not so the work of Tatsuoki Nambata. Not only was the Hokkaido-born artist one of Japan's first abstract painters, but his work drew from the unlimited stock of human emotion.

To mark the 100th anniversary of the artist's birth this year, the Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery is showing about 200 Nambata-related works, many of them from the gallery's collection.

Born in 1905, Nambata, who grew up in Tokyo, originally set his sights on becoming a writer. He showed some of his poems to the respected poet and sculptor Kotaro Takamura, who lived nearby. Takamura's art, especially the paintings he did in the style of Vincent van Gogh, soon enamored Nambata. He frequented Takamura's house, but instead of poems, he was now bringing paintings and drawings to show the master.

The exhibition opens with some of his early works, mainly Western-style portraits and landscapes in oils. There are also numerous homages to the aesthetics and religion of ancient Greece, a particular interest of Nambata's.

Several years after World War II, he turned to abstract art.

"Nambata wanted to create a new art that was Japanese," says the Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery's chief curator, Motoaki Hori. "The defeat in the war brought with it a kind of breakdown of Japanese people's sense of values. Because abstract art was brand-new, he saw it as something that could give them hope."

In 1954's "Improvised Poem: Autumn Poem," black lines are spread over a yellow background-a typical non-figurative abstract painting. However, a few pages from Nambata's sketchbook from the year before, featuring sketches of trees and leaves, indicate that perhaps he arrived at the abstraction in this painting by a reduction from figurative elements in nature. Over the course of a few pages, the rounded leaves become more angular and the branches sharper until it is but a short step to the harsh lines of "Improvised Poem: Autumn Poem."

Many of his works from this period share the fluid playfulness of Paul Klee, although there is also a single Mondrian-like grid composition here.

"Tatsuoki experimented with many styles and ideas," Hori explains. "Although he found similarities with the approach of Mondrian, he thought his work was purely formal, without feeling. Tatsuoki liked paintings in which the artist expresses his feelings in an aesthetic way."

Nambata seems to be putting this ethic into practice in the next room, which brings together his works from 1955 to 1973. Although some of these works superficially resemble the abstract expressionist works of Jackson Pollock, Nambata had largely finished dabbling with different styles by the start of this period and was close to finding his own visual language. Also apparent is a dramatic change in his overall color range, from the warm browns of the early '50s to a predominantly blue palette.

Another turning point in the course of Nambata's art was the death of two of his sons, both painters themselves-Fumio in 1974 and Norio the following year. The immediate effect of these losses on Nambata's art included the nearly complete absence of color, in a number of predominantly white canvases. Within a few years, blue had returned with a vengeance-deeper and richer than anything he'd undertaken before and covering canvases of monumental size.

"Nambata's paintings became introverted, spiritual and more fantastic," Hori says. "Some paintings have titles such as `Yu' (Spirit) and `The Western Paradise' (referring to the Buddhist paradise saiho-jodo). By this time, Nambata had truly found his own form of expression for his poetic lyricism."

His last major work was the four-part "Records of Life," which he began in 1993, when he was nearly 90. The third and fourth parts are shown here. The third one is in his trademark vivid blue and almost completely plain, except for some broad strokes in different tones of the color. The fourth in the series is similar but in a golden orange.

"Nambata was interested in how he could express his life in his work," Hori says. As the title suggests, the work "attempts to communicate his feelings on life."

Although several later Japanese artists expressed admiration for Nambata's works, his influence is difficult to assess. His work was intensely personal.

In the last room of the exhibition are Nambata's final works: 31 ink drawings made while he was hospitalized at age 92. Perhaps his passion for art, which led him to work even on his deathbed, was his most direct influence on later artists-an inspiration to keep on creating.

"The Life and Art of Tatsuoki Nambata, on the Centennial Anniversary of his Birth" runs through Sept. 25 at Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery.(IHT/Asahi: August 19,2005)

http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200508190069.html

 

 

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Matthias Arnold
(Art-Eastasia list)

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