Tokyo, Nanzuka Underground, Keiichi Tanaami [Kochuten], November-December 2009, illustrated in colour, p. 22
Notes
A magician who shuttles uninhibited between the realms of artistic categories as if there were no boundaries dividing them at all, Keiichi Tanaami is truly an avant-garde purveyor of the visual arts. Initially trained in design and having subsequently flourished with flying colours in the said industry, Tanaami's creative impulse has always lay in the simple act of drawing. Though he did not come to pursue his first true love of making paintings until later in his career, the artist capitalized on his many years of experience in the design world—he poured all his technical expertise and professional knowledge into his endeavours in fine art and effectively, brought together the two worlds. His overwhelming success as a designer delivered to him a plethora of opportunities that eventually set the stage for his rise as an artist who championed the avant-garde and continues to do so. Thoroughly unprecedented and squarely capturing what it means to be contemporary—his compositions shatter the human-constructed partitions that claim to classify high and low art and traverse across all possible dimensions of time and space.
Not a soul would object if one were to describe Keiichi Tanaami's works as visually striking. The impact of the myriad colours slapped together culminates in an explosion of retinal stimulation, yet being confined within a rectangular frame generates the sort of tension that awaits perhaps a nanosecond before the actual supernova. It is this very energy that builds up and is directed toward a grand finale of which Tanaami takes a cross-section and then presents to us on his canvas. The richness of composition is evidenced in details found in any given section of the painting—figures, pine tree branches, flowers, leaves, even more figures! The line, the bold and black line that delineates all his motifs lends a definition and a sureness that only enhance the power of the image. Manifested through such a confident depiction is a scene of utter imagination and undeniable fantasy.
Yet beneath this vivid, plentiful composition lies a more sobering and regrettable explanation, as the artist proffers a glimpse into his phantasmal world, one that is charged with inspiration collected from his own indelible visual memory and elements drawn from his life's volatile past. Out of a childhood spent in a Japan rife with war, Keiichi Tanaami has had to retreat to an air-raid shelter where visions of the city perpetually engulfed in flames would plague him for years to come. Then a struggle with pleuritis later in his life mandated the intake of medication that eventually brought him lasting hallucinations. Extracted from his intensely personal experiences are frequently recurring motifs such as the gnarled pine tree springing out of thin air, beams of neon colours radiating from anything and everything, allusions to goldfish conveyed through the whimsical appearance of fins and scales, and the Hokusai waves or even whirlpools that always underline the frenzied panorama. Juxtaposed against all these elements is the governing theme of this piece in particular, Red Kannon. This an homage to the Bodhisattva of Compassion, the artist often incorporates details of Chinese cultural significance into his works, a feature mostly attributed to his memorable travels there and also a penchant for quoting art history. Tanaami's works of art are truly a sanctuary of his delirium and a blueprint of his biography.
While the artist is unabashedly displaying his subconscious for all to share, his fiercely inimitable style also makes an active commentary on a contemporary art that singularly belongs to post-war Japan, to a society intent in its modernizing ambitions. As the capitalist juggernaut takes it form and the economic machine revs up its engine, Japan enters a period of remarkable growth. Life in a Japanese metropolis becomes bombarded with sensory overload and visual excess. Everyone takes on the role of editor as they take in and absorb all the imagery that surrounds them and naturally proceeds to cut, paste, crop, expand, filter or revise— whatever it takes to generate one's own perception of incoming media. Tanaami's paintings are the masterful editing efforts of his own memories. The absolute flatness and the deliberate lack of depth in his imagery contribute to a parody of relentless, ubiquitous marketing and advertising campaigns, once again destabilizing the hierarchy of art. One flips back to the beginning of his career as an artist and discovers that the Keiichi Tanaami brand of painting has stayed alarmingly consistent. While his evolution lies in the continuous refinement of drawing and execution, he has abided by his own mode of expression up until this day. An artist who truly relishes in the act of creation, Keiichi Tanaami will continue to transform himself in his work while staying true to his identity.
A product of the 1930's, Keiichi Tanaami forged ahead into the contemporary while all his peers were still investigating the modern. Calling oneself an artist was a luxury not enjoyed by his generation and having been born into a well-off family, Tanaami was actively discouraged by his family to pursue a career in art. The discipline of design dominated the earlier half of his life, yet without such training he could not have conceived of his singular vision of art. Breaking the modes of abstraction and expressionism that defined modern Japanese art, Keiichi Tanaami reintroduced the figurative valiantly. The true genius of the artist lies in this—while preserving selected motifs and principles of classical Japanese art, he manages to present to his audience a completely unseen artistic style that resonates so directly with contemporary visual media. The ebullient colours, the bold outlines and the insufferable lack of depth in his compositions are elements that continue to influence those who came after him. The unsung hero who braved what it means to be contemporary and international, Keiichi Tanaami continues to make magic with his paintbrush.
