Styles that influence contemporary Japanese graphic arts

WAVE features veteran artists and newcomers working in several styles. The following are some of the most influential among them:

Manga/Anime

The illustration of Japanese comic books, known as manga, has deep roots in 12th-century painted scrolls, pre-modern woodcut books, and prints, as well as in early 20th-century magazines. After the Second World War, under the influence of American comics and cartoons, a modern style of manga was developed with visual conventions that are still present in Japanese comics and cartoons, the anime. The popular manga/anime style features strong lines, expressive speech balloons, unique framings, and abstract background effects that convey the atmosphere of the moment. Characters get large eyes, small mouths, and emotive details such as beads of sweat to show anxiety, bulging veins representing anger, and strong parallel lines to portray horror or disgust. In this exhibition, some of the artists working with this style are Kenichiro Mizuno, Katsuya Terada, and Motohiro Hayakawa.

Heta-uma

In the 1970s, a manga movement began underground with the magazine Garo, in which artists created illustrations that looked poorly drawn on purpose, as compared to the elegant aesthetics of popular manga. Known as heta-uma (“poorly drawn, but well-conceived”), the style was led and promoted by Teruhiko Yumura, Yoshikazu Ebisu, and Takashi Nemoto. This style has validated the work of many of the young contemporary graphic and manga artists, whose works seem rough around the edges but are very expressive from an emotional point of view. Although her style is highly refined, artist Suzy Amakane adheres to the spirit of heta-uma in this exhibition.

Pop Art

The pop art movement, which emerged in the 1950s in the US and UK, arrived in Japan shortly thereafter. Andy Warhol’s ability to unite the world of commercial art with fine art inspired Keiichi Tanaami, whose bold and dynamic drawings are filled with dreamlike figures, popular themes, and powerful characters. Along these same lines, Motohiro Hayakawa’s fantastical battle scenes evoke the pop art psychedelics of the 1960s and 1970s. Harumi Yamaguchi’s brilliant images of strong, free women graced Japanese advertising campaigns in the 1970s and 1980s, while Hiroshi Nagai’s vivid poolside scenes became iconic images, featured on 1980s album covers.

Photorealism

The photorealism movement was developed in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s from pop art, especially in response to abstract expressionism and the profusion of photography. It also inspired Japanese artists, including Hajime Sorayama, who portrayed female robots and mechanical dinosaurs in luminous detail, and Yoko Kawamoto, who transforms heaps of scrap and quarries into hyper-realistic landscapes. Mayu Yukishita has recently been recreating a darker reality with her “super-realistic” paintings.