Ascending Chaos: The Art of Masami Teraoka 1966-2006

Ascending Chaos

The Art of Masami Teraoka

Introduction by Catharine Clark

Essays by Alison Bing, Eleanor Heartney, and Kathryn A. Hoffmann

Contents

Introduction

Acknowledgments

Masami-za: The Narrative Art Theater of Masami Teraoka

Masami Teraoka’s Inferno: Tales for an Era of Moral Chaos

The West Looked Up the Skirts of Venus: Myth and Social Commentary in Masami Teraoka’s Art

Masami Teraoka: Catalog of Graphic Work, 1972-2006

Masami Teraoka: Résumé

Endnotes

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Copyright

Introduction

CATHARINE CLARK

SOON AFTER I OPENED AN ALTERNATIVE EXHIBITION SPACE called Morphos in San Francisco in the 1990s, I began corresponding with Masami Teraoka by fax machine. When I think about how our relationship began, I am reminded of Masami’s East/West Trade Winds (1989), a watercolor now in the collection of the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for the Visual Arts at Stanford University. In the watercolor, Masami depicts two characters flanking a fax machine. One is a Caucasian man clad in a kimono, and the other is a Japanese man wearing a traditional Western business suit. Each tries to understand the culture of the other, but their individual identities, although connected by technology, are already mixed up. The subject of technology arises consistently throughout the history of Masami’s work. Samurai sport Timex watches, geisha use cell phones, and in more recent work, such as Adam and Eve/Web Site 2000 (1997-2004), the primordial couple swings from computer mice that resemble maypole ribbons over a twenty-first-century tar pit brimming with abandoned computers.

One of the many qualities I admire about Masami is his willingness to engage people who want to know more about the ideas expressed in his works. When he is not in the throes of painting, he is a prolific correspondent who makes use of the most recent technological vehicles for communication. In the 1980s and 1990s, that meant the fax machine. Intrigued by an image he had seen on a gallery announcement, Masami began sending faxed queries about the availability of catalogs on the artist’s work. After several months of corresponding, I began to wonder whether the signature on the faxes was that of the same Masami Teraoka whose lithograph Hanauma Bay Series/Namiyo at Hanauma Bay (1985) I had purchased years earlier. After confirming his identity and learning of his impending trip to San Francisco, I became eager to meet him in person.

When Masami and Lynda Hess (whom he married in 2005) lectured at the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) on September 27, 1995, the young audience posed some challenging questions regarding the relationship of Masami’s work to female sexuality and the male gaze. As a feminist who embraces female sexuality, I could not identify with these censure-laden questions. It was liberating to view images of Japanese and Caucasian women pleasuring themselves, independent of male partners. I also understood the precedent for these images in Japanese Edo-period (1603-1868) color woodblock prints or ukiyo-e (pictures of the floating world). The unadulterated joy of the women in Masami’s work was cleverly pictured through the lens of prints such as Katsushika Hokusai’s Pearl Diver and Two Octopi, published in the book Pining for Love (1814). Masami’s contemporary females, like their nineteenth-century pearl-diving counterparts, were self-sufficient.

East/West Trade Winds, 1989

Watercolor and Sumi ink on paper

41¹/2 x 29¹/2 inches

Collection of the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, Stanford, California

Masami’s view of free, self-indulgent sexuality has been counterbalanced by alternate views that first appeared in his AIDS Series, which commenced with the four-panel screen American Kabuki/Oishiiwa (1986). The AIDS Series expresses his sense of personal betrayal—betrayal by a virus that transformed life-affirming touch into potentially life-threatening contact. Long gone was the sexual freedom of the 1960s, when Masami came of age in Los Angeles. The fear engendered by HIV/AIDS politicized the Christian right and its already conservative views on human sexuality. The AIDS Series anticipates later paintings that comment on society’s contradictory attitudes toward human sexuality.

American Kabuki/Oishiiwa (DETAIL), 1986

The often humorous meeting of East and West that was so emblematic of Masami’s pre-1986 work now was tempered by a serious examination of Western politics and its hegemonic power. He explored hypocritical attitudes toward sexuality in general and sexually independent women in particular, as expressed in religion, government, and other powerful institutions. The scale and palette of Masami’s work shifted toward larger canvases, darker tones, and ominous subject matter, representing the more deleterious consequences of consummated desire. By the early 1990s, the ukiyo-e style and the watercolor medium no longer seemed to provide the best vocabulary for these Western-based conflicts regarding sexuality and politics.

Inspired by medieval and Renaissance painting that he viewed during trips to European museums, Masami began to view contemporary Western society through the filter of Western European art history. He commenced painting in oil, studying the works of Northern European Renaissance artists such as Bosch, Brueghel, Lucas Cranach, and Hugo van der Goes, and Italian medieval and Renaissance artists such as Bernini, Botticelli, Correggio, Duccio, Ghirlandaio, Giorgione, Giotto, Filippino Lippi, Lorenzetti, Mantegna, Simone Martini, Masaccio, Michelangelo, and Perugino. Masami adopted the structure of the Renaissance triptych, complete with the predella, to introduce multiple narratives within the same painting. These predellas—smaller, secondary painted panels that expand upon the work’s central subject—function like the pictorial cartouches in his early, ukiyo-e-style works. Occasionally, Masami embeds the idea and function of a predella in the painting itself, without creating a separate architectural frame for it. He thus allows for simultaneous yet overlapping time spheres, as well as multiple readings of the primary narrative. For the contemporary viewer, this approach recalls the experience of simultaneously watching all the news outlets reporting on a given story—along with any related subjects triggered within Masami’s stream of consciousness. Media reports on philandering in the White House, sexual abuse by priests, and illicit affairs in the military have all fueled Masami’s post-AIDS Series content.

Masami’s Renaissance predecessors depicted numerous subjects drawn from Greek and Roman mythology and from Judeo-Christian traditions that contemporary viewers might view as controversial: the origin of original sin; the virgin birth; the repentant and masochistic Mary Magdalene; the many faces of Zeus/Jupiter as he ravishes unsuspecting maidens; Pero offering her breast milk to her imprisoned father so that he might live. Masami runs with the contradictions, painting complex narratives that draw explicit connections between the exploitation and hypocrisy of the past and of the present.

Paintings such as Virtual Inquisition/Tower of Babel (2000-03) demand a high ethical standard, not in the sense of traditional Judeo-Christian moral doctrine, but in a more inclusive sense that allows individuals to pursue physical and political freedoms unhindered by persecution or prosecution. Since Masami’s narratives are woven together to reflect both the complexity of specific subjects and the deep roots of their underlying themes (e.g., Monica Lewinsky, Bill Clinton, Lieutenant Kelly Flynn, Bob Dole, Mother Teresa, Adam and Eve, cloned mice, and two large Towers of Babel are all present in the same painting), they avoid didacticism and resist simplistic interpretations. Sometimes Masami’s portrayals of issues or ideas are full of seeming contradictions, as if the paintings are mirrors held up to society—and to ourselves.

Virtual Inquisition/Tower of Babel (DETAIL), 2000-03

In some of Masami’s recent paintings, such as US Inquisition/The Pope of Thong (2003), the Bush administration’s revenge through the war on terror is likened to that of an enraged father whose virginal daughter has been molested, and is juxtaposed with images of Catholic priests abusing their victims within the shielding confines of the confessional booth or the Church itself. Before a backdrop of planes approaching the Twin Towers on 9-11, a cross-dressing Pope gallivants through the painting while his priests probe the unborn fetuses of pregnant women. In Burqa Inquisition/Chicken Torture (2003), the Church’s numerous abuses are juxtaposed with news images of Afghani women murdered by their husbands, brothers, or fathers for liaisons with the opposite sex. Masami’s work is a mouthpiece for admitting the moral bankruptcy of our times and poses the question: How can we as human beings say one thing, support another, and do something entirely different?

At the conclusion of Masami’s and Lynda’s talk at SFAI, I introduced myself and invited them to visit my gallery the following day. Nervous in the presence of this prominent artist, I nonetheless conveyed the many reasons why his work resonated with the gallery’s mission. I expressed my personal commitment to exhibiting art that embraces significant social, environmental, and political topics, and that also seeks to expand visual arguments via new form and content. I explained that I was interested in work that is narrative, that explores both the body and the politics of the body, and that incorporates innovative approaches to these subjects. I showed examples of gallery artists whose work resonates with these ideas, including Sandow Birk, Lisa Kokin, Al Farrow, Timothy Cummings, and Travis Somerville. At the end of the meeting, I asked Masami if he’d consider joining these artists, and in 1997, Catharine Clark Gallery hosted the first of four solo exhibitions of Masami’s work.¹ Three of these exhibitions showcased his newest work in depth: Ascending Chaos (1997), Cloning Eve (1999), and US Inquisition (2003). Masami Teraoka: Works on Paper, 1975 to 2002 (2002) eloquently demonstrated that Masami’s work has been characterized by an organic evolution, rather than by abrupt stylistic changes. It also pointed to the need for a comprehensive publication on what was then a more than thirty-five-year career of artmaking.

Installation view, Catharine Clark Gallery, 2003

left: Semana Santa/Cloning Eve and Geisha, 2003 (PAGE 118-119)

right: Burqa Inquisition/Chicken Torture, 2003 (PAGE 13)

Sandow Birk (b. 1962)

Dante’s Inferno, Canto XIX: Dante and the Pope, 2003

Lithograph

10 x 8 inches

© Sandow Birk

Courtesy of Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco, California

Because Masami and I have been working together for nearly a decade, we both felt strongly that it was time to publish a book that not only addressed the scope of his career, but that also documented his shift from watercolors to oils since the early 1990s. There have been many wonderful catalogs of Masami’s work published over the years, but they have all focused on his ukiyo-e-inspired work. A retrospective book, as this is, gives his art of the past fifteen years a chance to be published in greater depth and allows the reader to trace the development of Masami’s work from the past to the present. Since this project was our goal, we wanted to have, in addition to a general overview of Masami’s career, essays that specifically examined Masami’s contribution to painting in the past decade. Alison Bing, Eleanor Heartney, and Kathryn A. Hoffmann were invited to contribute essays that address the sources of Masami’s inspiration and the political landscape in which the work has developed.

Travis Somerville (b. 1963)

Raft of the Grand Wizard, 2003

Oil, oil stick, and collage on found paper, mounted on canvas

106 x 147¹/2 inches

© Travis Somerville

Collection of the San Jose Museum of Art

Gift of Jeffrey N. Dauber

It was Alison’s challenge to reflect on forty years of Masami’s artistic oeuvre. Alison brings to her discussion an understanding of Masami’s interest in what he terms cultural homogenization² and American hegemony abroad. She boasts a background in political science, a master’s degree in international public policy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and an undergraduate degree in the history of art from Bryn Mawr College. While her writing experience is wide-ranging and includes travel guides and pop culture pieces, she is also an active art critic and contributing editor.³ She has a personal passion for the Japanese tradition of woodblock printing, and her longtime partner is an artist working in that medium. Alison’s background is a politically savvy filter through which she interprets the content of Masami’s artwork and places it in the cultural and social framework in which it was created.

Eleanor Heartney is an art writer and cultural critic who has a history of writing about Masami’s work. Her essay titled Pictures from an Inquisition, published in Art in America (April 2001), intelligently contextualized Masami’s recent work. In this article, Eleanor writes about how Masami’s paintings since 1992offer a twentieth-century equivalent for "the sexual ambiguity of the Catholic tradition—as manifested in the overtly erotic ecstasy of Bernini’s Saint Teresa or in the undercurrent of homoeroticism in Mantegna’s Saint Sebastian."⁴ Her interests in politics and Catholicism in contemporary art, as evidenced in Postmodernism: Movements in Modern Art (2001) and Postmodern Heretics: Catholic Imagination in Contemporary Art (2004), were also among the reasons she was selected to contribute to this retrospective book on Masami’s life and work. As one of the first authors to write expansively about Masami’s post-1992work, Eleanor was asked to further develop her thoughts on this period of his painting for this publication.⁵

Burqa Inquisition/Chicken Torture, 2003

Oil on canvas

100¹/2 x 77¹/2 inches

Courtesy of Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco, California

Virtual Inferno/Madam Ballotfly, 2001

Oil on panel in gold-leaf frame

7 x 11⁵/8 inches

Courtesy of Robert Smith and Gary Noguera, San Francisco, California

Dr. Kathryn A. Hoffmann is a specialist in interdisciplinary studies. Her insight into the cultural milieu that grows artistic endeavors prompted us to have her reflect on Masami’s work from an intellectual perspective. Although Kathryn usually lives in Hawaii and has had the opportunity on two occasions to spend time with Masami’s paintings while they were in progress, at the time of this writing she is living in Florence, Italy. Since medieval and Renaissance Italian paintings have a particularly seductive grip on Masami’s recent stylistic approach, Kathryn’s Italian address allowed her to live among some of Masami’s art historic references. Kathryn has written extensively about myth and eroticism in art and culture, and her book Society of Pleasures: Interdisciplinary Readings in Pleasure and Power During the Reign of Louis XIV (1997) inspired Masami to invite her commentary about his work for this publication.⁶

In many respects I envision this retrospective book as a precursor for the inevitable catalogue raisonné. It thus made sense to represent Masami’s work immediately following his graduate school experience at Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles (1964-68), just before he developed his first signature style. I also selected older and newer images that were known to his audience, as well as others that have never been published. Drawings, a significant part of Masami’s technical process in developing major compositions, also are included. Since prints have comprised an important part of his oeuvre from the early 1970s until the present, a section of this book includes a catalog of published prints since 1972and, as such, serves as a complete reference on that medium.

My hope for this book, beyond its role as a reference for the first forty years of Masami Teraoka’s career, is that it allows insight into the scope, richness, and occasional optimism of Masami’s artistic vision. When speaking of his ukiyo-e-inspired work he often refers to Utagawa Kunisada (1786-1865) as a mentor, even though he was long dead at the time Masami began working. For Masami’s more recent work, the Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450-1516) usually is cited as the teacher. Bosch’s improbable tableaux are visual plays full of riddles that were apparently understood by his contemporaries as challenges to the corrupt pre-Reformation church. His fairy-tale vision was not intended to destroy the established church, but to offer up the possibility of its own salvation.⁷ Masami’s vast canvases, like a Kabuki stage, are full of characters, subplots, and puzzles that require deciphering by the audience. Masami has referred to his work as Masami-za or Masami theater. While appearing to offer a visionary or even apocalyptic image that lies beyond human experience, Masami’s paintings actually show us a very real view of the Inferno that is twenty-first-century Western society, along with the hope that it is