Upcomming / Current Exhibition
Upcomming / Current Exhibition
The Scars of Inspiration
‘When he decides he wants to paint, the picture is as good as finished.’ So said Toshiko Okamoto.
The usual process artists employ when creating a picture is to draw numerous esquisses as they gradually develop their concept,
tarobut Taro took the opposite approach. Once he felt the urge to paint,
an image of the finished work already existed in his head.
Past Exhibition
Kanji Yumisashi’s Banquet
The Taro Okamoto Memorial Museum was originally the home of Taro and Toshiko Okamoto, where they both lived and he carried out his creative activities. In 1998, following Taro’s death in 1996, Toshiko opened the space to the public. I want to return ‘everyday life’ to the building one more time, to see what Toshiko and Taro would have seen and prepare a space that will allow us to think back to the people who once lived there.
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One Century of Taro Okamoto
This exhibition will present an overview of the eighty-four years of Taro Okamoto’s life as an artist together with the projects that have taken place since his death and the activities carried out by the Memorial Museum over a period of more than twenty years.
We sincerely hope you will enjoy this short trip into ‘One Century of Taro Okamoto.’
Red and Black
“Red” and “Black.” These colors epitomize Okamoto’s paintings.
Taro Okamoto had liked the color “red” since childhood, saying, “It feels as if I was born from red and live my life in the midst of red,” and restarting his activities in Japan after the war, he made a sensational debut. He stirred up the Japanese art scene, daringly employing powerful primary colors to challenge the “grey world” of traditional aesthetic values.
Now is Everything! A Challenge from Calligrapher Koji Kakinuma part II
The special exhibition, “Garbled Characters ― A Challenge from Calligrapher Koji Kakinuma,” was held in 2010. In this exhibition, Koji Kakinuma presented an open studio featuring what he describes as the ‘trance work’ technique, repeatedly writing the two Japanese characters, “ま” and “え,” to fill a whole wall in a performance the like of which has never been seen before.
The following year, 2011, as part of the celebrations to mark the centenary of Taro Okamoto’s birth, Kakinuma carried out a project using calligraphy to turn Taro’s words into art. This resulted in the publication of the book, “Trance-mission.”
Ten years have passed since then but once again, the stage has been set at the Taro Okamoto Memorial Museum for Koji Kakinuma to create to a unique form of expression.
A Face is A Universe
A face is a universe.
A face is self, it is other, it is all.
The eyes are placed in the exact center. They are holes, one with the universe, allowing us to interact with it.
Every possible layer of beauty in the world possesses various faces and also eyes.
Round eyes, sharp eyes, sunken eyes…all types of eye glare, challenge, and confirm absolutes in each other.
The universe of a single face contains countless other faces, all with gleaming eyes.
They possess an indescribable feeling of reality .
Art in Daily Life
‘Carp streamers…they’re great. A giant fish swimming through the sky. What great imagination. They are not the creation of a single artist. They represent an image that emerged quite naturally and is shared by the ordinary people. I want to spread it around the world.’
With this thought in mind, Taro Okamoto set about making his own carp streamer. Large googly eyes, scales applied in primary colors and a lively, dynamic form. It is typical of Taro’s work—a carp streamer that looks as if it is alive.
Confronting Eyes
Taro Okamoto started his career as a ‘western-style’ painter, but the subjects of his paintingsdiffered greatly from those commonly used by other western-style artists. This is because he did not use any of the usual western-style genres, such as landscapes, portraits, still-lifes or nudes.
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Taro Okamoto’s Prints
This is how Taro Okamoto thought about art and he employed every possible channel to try and bring art into the lives of the people. His range of expression included a huge range of genres, from the Tower of the Sun to tiepins. One of the characteristics of his work was that he engaged positively with mass production to create large numbers of works, such as: tables, chairs, clocks, lighters, bags, carp streamers, skis, cups, ties, scarfs, playing cards, etc. His pièce de résistance was a ‘face glass’ that came free with a bottle of whiskey. Those around him were very against him producing this, saying it would harm his career, but he overrode their objections and was happy to create this kind of giveaway product.
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The Original Image of Japan
Taro Okamoto was a person who continually asked the question, ‘What is Japan?’ Having decided to leave Paris and return home to fight for Japan, Taro had a fateful encounter one day in November 1951.
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