Perhaps the East has never met the West in more jarring juxtaposition than in the works of Masami Teraoka. Chopsticks and hamburgers. Kimonos and ice-cream. Samurais and snorkels. Kabuki and Kleenex. Mt. Fuji and the La Brea Tar Pits.
Literally drawing upon the traditional style of the 19th Century Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock printmakers (ukiyo-e means ”pictures of the floating world”)-who dealt with a variety of popular subjects as well as kabuki plays, landscape views and erotica-the 53-year-old, Japanese-born artist, who has lived in the United States for 28 years, pounces on a collision of the two cultures.
In 1974, he began a series of paintings in the ukiyo-e style called
”McDonald`s Hamburgers Invading Japan,” which gently satirized that country`s propensity for adopting western ways. In one piece, ”Flying Fries,” a woman is dressed in a kimono, with a bag of greasy french fries slipping out of her hand. Several years later, there would be another series: ”31 Flavors Invading Japan.”
Since 1982, Teraoka-whose drawing style emulates Japanese master artists Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) and Utagawa Kunisada (1786-1864)-has focused on other topics that he has brought together in three series: ”Hanauma Bay,”
which pokes fun at video-equipped Japanese tourists in Hawaii (where the artist has lived since 1980); ”Waves,” which blends pounding surf with erotic motifs; and the cautionary ”AIDS,” which tosses together geishas and ghosts.
Culled from the three series, 33 large watercolors-with titles like
”Samurai Camera Crew and Blowhole II,” ”Catfish Zen Monk” and ”Condom Trade Wars”-have been wrapped into ”Waves and Plagues: The Art of Masami Teraoka,” a national traveling exhibition that is on display through Jan. 27 at the Chicago Public Library Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St.
”Up to now, Teraoka hasn`t been very well known in Chicago,” says Gregory Knight, director of visual arts and chief curator for Cultural Center exhibitions. ”There was one gallery exhibition here in 1981, but mostly they`ve been on the West Coast, as well as the big one at the Whitney Museum in New York 10 years ago. I think his appeal is the seductiveness of the traditional, mixed with the pop art imagery that`s a commentary on
contemporary social issues. There aren`t a lot of people doing that.”
Teraoka started to use ukiyo-e in the early `70s. ”It was a sort of a personal, emotional evolution I went through,” he is saying in a telephone interview from his home on Waimanalo Beach on Oahu`s east shore. ”Up until then, I never thought I wanted to express myself in Japanese style. I tried to avoid anything Japanese. Then around `73, I realized I was no longer Japanese, nor American. So I decided to stick with some traditional form of Japanese art and incorporate it with American social issues. My choice was woodblock prints, which I always liked, combined with American pop art, which is very dynamic.
”McDonald`s first came to mind. Before that, I was working on an erotic theme series, and I wanted a conceptual change. Traveling around Europe and Canada, I realized that McDonald`s had invaded the whole globe, which was sort of a shock. To tell the truth, I`m not really crazy about McDonald`s quality; but everybody seems to love fast and cheap food.
”I also chose the woodprint in order to reflect American esthetic thinking. Americans like details and little bits of realism. In Japan, that`s not the case. They`d rather have abstract expression. In American conversation, you have to be very exact, whereas in Japanese conversation, you always have to leave some room. So the other person has to guess what you`re thinking. That`s where the whole communications breaks down between the two countries. One culture likes to value vagueness, while the other is direct.” Teraoka, whose work has been compared to everyone from William Hogarth to Nathanael West, became a U.S. citizen in 1986-on April 1, he points out with a laugh-and feels he`s caught between the two cultures. He even dreams in both languages-and also in color. ”Thats`s why I`m trying to find a balance in my work. That`s the bottom line I`m working on.”
As to each world, he reflects: ”The best in Japan is that they have a formalized esthetic from the Edo period (1615-1868) that has really evolved to a high level. On the other hand, they have a feudal society, male chauvinistic, with a rigid structure. Which certainly isn`t true in America.
”But here, since we are into self-expression, we sometimes become very egocentric, and are too quick to express a complaint. Another negative is that consumerism is the most obvious part of this country`s culture. We produce more than we can use. You can have necessary things, but if it`s more than you can handle, that`s greed.
”I think Japan is becoming too westernized. When I visited a long time ago, I didn`t see valuable things being thrown out. Recently, I saw TVs and refrigerators in the street. It used to be they always recycled tin cans. Now, the younger Japanese have grown up in a western throw-away culture, and have taken it to the extreme.”
Masami Teraoka grew up in the little town of Onomichi, where his parents owned a kimono shop, during World War II. ”I really didn`t have harsh experiences. Unlike other towns, ours never got air-raided. I do remember seeing American prisoners in the streets. I thought, `These people are so tall, and their eyes are blue. They look like dead sardines.` I also remember that our own soldiers at the end of the war didn`t have any bullets for their guns, and had bayonets made out of bamboo. That`s how the army was struggling. Food was in short supply for everyone. Our family had to eat roasted grasshoppers, which were actually good-they tasted like shrimps.”
Years later, after graduating from Kwansei Gakuin University in Kobe with a degree in esthetics, he moved to Los Angeles with $600 in his pocket and little command of English, but eventually received a B.A. and M.F.A. from the Otis Art Institute. In 1980, he moved to Hawaii, basically to get away from the smog.
Even though the sea is prominent in his work, at that point he didn`t know how to swim. ”I almost drowned when I was 13, and it was real hard to overcome that fear. Every time I saw the ocean, I got an oozy kind of feeling, and even if I walked in two feet, I got nervous. When I moved here, I decided I should learn. It was so stupid to see this beautiful ocean and not be able to swim. So I finally taught myself-at age 47.”
When he draws waves, he says, he is very aware of the sculptural dimensions. ”There are so many ways to see waves and nature. I`m very interested in three-dimensional work. I realized the wave is amazing, because it always takes different forms and is moving all the time. And looking at the waves battering against the hard rock-what a combination of material: Soft liquid against a solid wall.”
Besides the esthetic, there also is a good deal of the erotic in his
”Wave” series: female divers being ravaged by octopi and giant squid.
After working on a tampon toxic-shock syndrome series in the early `80s, Teraoka was looking for challenging subject matter, and found it in 1986 when he happened to meet an old friend who had a newborn baby who had become infected with AIDS as a result of a blood transfusion. ”That whole evening really shook me up,” he remembers. ”I felt the whole feeling of that woman`s isolation. Then the visual inspiration came into my mind, and `American Kabuki: Oishiiwa` was my first piece about AIDS.”
This and other works in the series contain ghostly visions, blood-sucking bats, toads, mushrooms, condom-clutching geishas, female impersonators, skeletons, businessmen, Roman Catholic priests, Commodore Matthew Perry and Surgeon General C. Everett Koop.
”I like to think that bringing out the subject matter in my work will draw attention to the subject of AIDS as a social and health issue,” the artist ,says. ”I`m not trying to say anything about ethical decisions at all. I use the approach I do because if I pounded on a theme like toxic-shock syndrome or AIDS, people would sort of go away because it`s hard to take. I have the facility to put social issues within an ethestic framework.”
The paintings contain the traditional Japanese cartouche inscriptions-which, unfortunately, are not translated in the Cultural Center exhibit.
(However, an enlightening illustrated catalog by scholar Howard A. Link is on sale at the library store.) ”It`s called kabuki style writing,” Teraoka says,” and people who aren`t familiar with it will miss some of the humor. It`s a style that was used up to 130 years ago, and even most contemporary Japanese people can`t read it. The reason I use it is simply that I love it.” Interestingly, Teraoka`s work has yet to be shown in his native land.
”The basic reason is that I know the Japanese people,” he says with another laugh. ”They have little curiosity. Also, my work is based on American experiences, and they would have a hard time understanding the social statements. And the humor.”
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”Waves and Plagues: The Art of Masami Teraoka” is being presented in Chicago by the city`s Department of Cultural Affairs. Admission is free.
