‘Characters at Play’

April 5, 2000 - July 3, 2000

There is an art book entitled ‘Asobu Ji (Characters at Play). The contents consist entirely of pictographs that resemble paintings. The character for ‘raku’, meaning ‘happy’, seems to smile and really does look merry while the character for ‘e’ (painting) resembles a person holding a brush and painting a picture. They overflow with a mischievous playfulness typical of Taro Okamoto. Taro never differentiated between writing and painting as forms of expression. Japanese characters are based originally on pictures and he was capable of seeing the true shapes of the characters that existed before they became stylized to create writing. Moreover, the vivid colors seem to rise up on their own. They are simultaneously writing and painting. We hope that you will enjoy Taro Okamoto’s ‘playfulness’.