Keiichi Tanaami’s Creative Odyssey: An In-Depth Look at Japan’s Legendary Modern Artist

Cross the Bridge into the Realm of Tanaami

Welcoming visitors at the entrance is a new installation titled “Hyakkyōzu” (“One Hundred Bridges”). The installation features layers of parabolic arches reminiscent of Gaudí, with peculiar creatures walking along and koi climbing a waterfall with splashing water, all depicted through projection mapping. A playful detail to note is a blonde, seductive beauty subtly riding one of the koi (see the bottom right of the photo).

Don’t miss the artist’s explanatory comments written on the nearby panels, in addition to the artwork itself. These comments, which are like essays, offer detailed insights into the motif of the “bridge” connecting this side and the other, the sacred and the profane, life and death. They provide important hints for interpreting the rest of the exhibition.

Design World’s Pop Icon

In the 1960s, amidst Japan’s rapid economic growth, Tanaami began his career as a designer. The early part of the exhibition features works from the 1960s and 1970s. His creations span multiple fields, including posters, screenprints, oil paintings with collage, and animation. The array of posters displayed across the walls is truly impressive.

Among the vibrant colors, the black-and-white “Portrait of Keiichi Tanaami” stands out. These are original illustrations from an early artist book that Tanaami self-published as a sort of calling card. The stylish composition, reminiscent of Félix Vallotton’s prints, highlights the painter’s mastery of structure and line work.

Editor’s Note: Félix Vallotton was an artist active in Paris from the late 19th to early 20th century, known for his monochrome prints. The Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum in Marunouchi, Tokyo, holds a substantial collection of his works.

The technique of using ties as a “second canvas,” which appears throughout Tanaami’s early works, is particularly intriguing. The ties, stretched out like an image within an image, serve as “windows” bringing in other visuals. It’s fascinating to think that, at the time, a man’s tie might indeed have been a place for self-expression.

The exhibition also features actual copies of popular magazines that Tanaami art-directed, such as PLAYBOY and Young Music. On closer inspection, these too incorporate tie designs.

Innovation in Animation Art

Whether it’s in posters or collage works, Tanaami’s art always feels in motion. It’s not about dynamic poses, but rather the repetitive motifs in a Pop Art style that evoke a sense of continuous movement. Personally, my favorite piece in this exhibition is the oil painting Gentle Friday. The repetition and variation of motifs, along with the swirling, distorted patterns in the background, encapsulate the artist’s profound fascination with ever-moving imagery.

The third chapter, focusing on animation works, features not only short animations on 16mm film but also showcases Tanaami’s original cels and storyboards.

Although there were also video displays in Chapter 6 and Chapter 10, I regrettably only had time to view nearly one piece from each. I’ve heard that Chapter 6 includes animations themed around De Chirico’s works, so I plan to focus on the video displays during a future visit to the exhibition.

Venturing into a Richer, More Robust Mental Universe

In the middle of the exhibition, works from the 1980s onwards are displayed. After a serious illness that brought him to the brink of death, Tanaami’s style evolved to delve deeper into his inner world. According to Tanaami himself, during his long hospitalization, he was surrounded by spiritual books about life and death, which might have influenced this shift. The memories of his childhood wartime experiences, which had not been strongly acknowledged before, began to emerge, making his works significantly heavier and more enigmatic.

Tanaami frequently employs motifs inspired by his travels in China, such as continental-style auspicious symbols, and images from his dreams and hallucinations during treatment. For example, there’s a wavy pine tree seen from a hospital window, a rainbow-colored turtle, and towers resembling wrestling rings from which viscous liquids often overflow. While the ‘Tokiwa Pine’ series in silk screen still emphasizes design, the pencil-drawn towers reveal a more intense, subconscious world of the artist that feels somewhat unsettling. Notably, this series has been omitted from the exhibition catalog, so if you wish to see it, visiting the exhibition in person is the only option.

At the center of the gallery, there’s a three-dimensional piece combining dream motifs and block imagery. Its overtly sexual form, reminiscent of an adult toy, elicits a wry smile despite its provocative nature.

The large work titled “The Hundred Cranes Flying Over Mount Penglai”, composed of four canvases, was truly shocking. It features countless pines with branches resembling nerves, a structure that could be a skyscraper, a wrestling ring, or a stupa, and a multitude of cranes. I searched the canvas for the titular Mount Penglai (the sacred mountain believed to be the home of immortals), but could not find any hint of such a mountain.

Could it be that the lettering “Mt. HORAI” is intended to represent Mount Penglai? How bold! The artist was known to be interested in the “letter trees” found in Eastern Li Dynasty paintings during this period, and he created numerous works with a somewhat mystical mood, featuring calligraphy placed centrally on the canvas. So perhaps this is the intended interpretation. It was a refreshing surprise to see something so significant represented not as a mere likeness but as a form with the depth of “words.” It inadvertently also resembles the design of an Islamic mosque.

The “Elephant Man” series was intriguingly captivating. These are small-scale drawings made with acrylic paint on paper, created during a busy period when the artist held a teaching position. The elephant man appears in nearly the same pose each time, but the extreme distortion of the ears and nose sometimes adds a humorous touch, only to shift to something startlingly vivid in the next moment.

So far, we’ve only covered about half of the exhibition. From Chapter 7 through to the final chapter, a relentless “collage festival” begins, almost without pause.

A Burst of New Methods and Collage Spirit

Keiichi Tanaami’s collage technique, which has become a crucial part of his artistic practice, originally began as a personal hobby in his youth. While early collage works can be seen in Chapter 2 of the exhibition, particular attention should be given to the works from the 2000s onwards, displayed from Chapter 7.

This installation, titled The Labyrinth of Arcimboldo, reimagines the portraiture of Arcimboldo by assembling portraits from vegetables harvested from his “memory garden.” In the conceptual drawings, there was a plan for tunnels to run through the center of the figures and the shed, with circular tracks laid out. The artist envisioned a cargo train repeatedly transporting images in and out. However, it appears that this concept was altered during the realization phase, which is somewhat disappointing. Take a quiet look at the shed in the back, which replicates a portion of the artist’s studio.

Inside the shed, various parts painted by Tanaami are closely packed together, along with his distinctive “color specification drawings.” Elements like monstrous women and airplanes are stored in cut-out form, revealing how the artist experiments with endless combinations to construct his compositions.

The “color specification drawings” are hand-drawn sketches that are first black-and-white copied, then collaged and colored with colored pencils, and finally, color sample chips are attached. Since the 2000s, the process has evolved where Tanaami creates these “color specification drawings” and assistants use them to generate data on a computer. Instead of manipulating data to find the final form, this method efficiently outputs the image that Tanaami has already envisioned in his mind. This approach reflects Tanaami’s desire to blur the lines between design and art, representing what might be called “artistic blueprints.”

The Greenhouse of Memories

In the following Chapter 8, the exhibition features the strikingly kitsch and visually arresting piece, Reconstruction of Memories. Inside a glass-enclosed greenhouse, a jumble of fragments that shape the artist’s memories are packed together, with a central drum bridge serving as a motif that connects the realms of the living and the dead. Many might recall Shinnosuke Otake’s Mon Cheri: Self-Portrait as a Scrap Shed, which was also displayed at the National Art Center. This greenhouse, however, enhances the growth and fermentation of memories, leading to amusingly bizarre chemical reactions.

In the prominently visible parts of the bridge, there are conspicuous art books of masters like Vermeer. At the edges, you’ll find fetishistic imagery featuring close-ups of female body parts and pornography. Beneath the bridge, in the darker areas, a fighter jet lies quietly.

On the bridge, there’s a marionette draped with a sash reading “Kenichi Tanaami” (its arms and legs resembling those of a famous character). The marionette has a mischievous face and pose.

Although Tanaami has been working with collage since the early days of his career, by the time we reach Chapter 8, the density is extraordinary. Layers of motifs are stacked, adorned with glitter and rhinestones, and even when the surface becomes saturated, the frenzy persists… that’s the impression it leaves.

Pandemic-Prompted Picasso Challenge

In the following Chapter 9, the atmosphere shifts dramatically, showcasing Keiichi Tanaami’s routine work during the pandemic: bold recreations and variations of Picasso’s mother and child portraits. Around 200 pieces from this series are displayed. Notably, this series is still ongoing, with the total number of works already reaching 700—an astonishing display of creative drive.

Some of the pieces clearly reference the original Picasso works, while many have evolved into what could be considered entirely original creations. Just looking at the dozen or so pieces displayed on a kiosk-style stand (with Dora Maar from Weeping Woman as the store clerk!) reveals how Tanaami has transformed the child in the mother-and-child portraits into characters like Atom Boy or Mickey Mouse, showcasing his remarkable ability to vary and reinterpret the motif.

The Frenetic Climax of 2D and 3D Exploration

In what can be considered the climax of the exhibition, Chapter 10 unfolds with large canvases and three-dimensional works filling the expansive gallery space. It resembles a cheery form of hell. The chapter title, “Baku no Fuda” (translated as “Baku’s Talisman”), which is also the title of a recent artist book by Tanaami (2017), serves as a crucial key to understanding the artist’s world and summarizing the exhibition.

According to the explanatory panel, “Baku no Fuda” refers to a talisman placed under the pillow to wish for auspicious dreams or a protective charm (the idea of a Baku consuming nightmares is a somewhat familiar concept). For Keiichi Tanaami, his works are precisely these “Baku no Fuda”—charms meant to dispel fear and negative emotions.

Indeed, the motifs that burst forth from the artist—eyes, skeletons, genitalia, spiders, and flames—are all both obsessively grotesque and humorously absurd, pushing the boundaries of what is visually tolerable. While it might be excessive to attribute everything to childhood wartime experiences, the sheer magnitude of such vivid and monstrous imagery within his mind suggests a profound and deep-seated fear. This is why the artist unleashes these swollen, inflated memories from within himself, surrounding them with his creations like sentinels or watchdogs.

Finding Comfort in the Fear

One might find that confronting frightening things can be oddly reassuring. It may be that being surrounded by what scares us is a more optimal solution than facing it directly or holding it within ourselves. This insight is vividly illustrated by one of the collaboration pieces with the late Fujio Akatsuka, “Keiichi Tanaami x Fujio Akatsuka: TANAAMI!! AKATSUKA!! / Tanaami Tea Ceremony” Tent. Although it was exhibited outside the main venue and thus appears out of sequence, it feels very much connected to the themes of Chapter 10.

The moment I stepped into the tent, which was filled with unsettling imagery, I was enveloped in an astonishing sense of reassurance. Being inside the eerie objects made the distinction between inside and outside seem to reverse, causing the figures to appear as protective deities from within. Unfortunately, this tent was only displayed during the private preview, but it provided a clear understanding of why the artist persistently manifests grotesque imagery, aligning perfectly with the concept of the “Baku’s Amulet.”