Japanese-born artist Masami Teraoka, age 78,
straightens his painting entitled ‘Namiyo at Hanauma Bay 1985’ at his
exhibition in Sydney on May 25, 2012. Now living in Hawaii, Teraoka’s
work has evolved from traditional woodblock Ukiyo-e prints to
large-scale paintings reminiscent of Hieronymus Bosch. (AFP
Photo/Torsten Blackwood)
Japanese-born artist Masami Teraoka remembers the bombing of Hiroshima
as the day when he saw two suns rising — one in the east as usual, the
other an orb burning eerily in the west.
“Two suns, that’s for
sure. That’s my memory,” he explained from a Sydney gallery where his
confrontational images of geishas ripping condom packets open with their
teeth and naked women frolicking with priests are being exhibited.
“I’m
not looking at the mushroom cloud at all, but from a distance it looked
like the sun. The diameter was the same size as the sun,” he said of
the massive atomic explosion he viewed some 45 miles (70 miles) from
Hiroshima.
Teraoka has thought a lot about the reliability of his
schoolboy recollection since that day in August 1945, but he believes
it is possible that his memory, even then highly attuned to the visual,
is genuine.
“So I may not be totally crazy, I think this is totally right,” the chatty, long-haired artist said with a laugh.
Teraoka
left Japan when he was 25, after studying at Kobe’s Kwansei Gakuin
University, and while he credits his move away as crucial to his
development, he now sees Asia at the forefront of the contemporary art
scene.
Back then, moving to the United States allowed him to
follow his passion rather than run the kimono shop owned by his father
and grandfather.
He believes his move to Los Angeles in the early 1960s, where he studied at the Otis Art Institute, allowed him to develop.
“Actually if I stayed in Japan, I would have become a businessman,” the artist, now in his mid-70s, said.
“Japanese
culture is very much a conformist culture and I kind of doubt I would
have blossomed the way I have blossomed and matured as an artist in the
States.”
More than 70 solo exhibitions later, including at the
Whitney Museum of American Art, Washington’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
at the Smithsonian Institution and San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum,
Teraoka said China is now tackling art on a scale unseen elsewhere.
“I think Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai are leading contemporary arts scenes from now on,” he said.
His
art has also reflected the changing times — beginning with traditional
Japanese ukiyo-e “floating world” drawings and prints, admittedly with a
modern take such as his 1974 “Burger and Chopsticks” about creeping
western influence.
Since his move to the US in 1961, he has
continued to marry East and West, with his paintings sometimes
reminiscent of Northern European work from the late 15th century.
His
latest pieces, which focus on sex abuse among the clergy, feature
full-figured nude women and bishops and priests in large-scale paintings
that subvert traditional religious iconography with modern symbols such
as traffic lights, gyms, and IVF equipment.
“The themes that I
am dealing with are pretty tough themes: religion and sexuality and
ethics and human rights and also power against powerless people,” he
explained.
“So all these issues are underneath my clergy sex abuse issue paintings.
“What
I am focusing on in my series is something that is not even recorded
and documented but the more I kind of look into my references and
historical books there are so many records ... that there are many women
who were abused.”
Based in Hawaii since 1990, Teraoka’s work is
in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington,
New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, London’s Tate Modern, and the
Singapore Art Museum.
His pieces on display in Sydney command prices of up to US$385,000.
But
he says Japanese geishas are now making a return to his work —
including in an AIDS series in which they can feature as ghosts.
“I haven’t really used the geisha image for a while,” he says.
“But
recently geisha is becoming part of the scenario or narrative, in a
sense I might be coming back to Asia, or Japan, if you would like to say
that. That might be part true.”
source : http://www.thejakartaglobe.com
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