MOT Collection:
Walking,Traveling, Moving—From the Great Kanto Earthquake to the Present
Special feature | YOKOO Tadanori-Ever-Changing,
Like Water
100th Anniversary of Birth | Sam FRANCIS

inspired Yokoo will be presented.
Also featured is a series of large-scale paintings by Sam
FRANCIS, of which this year marks his centennial.
We hope visitors will take the opportunity to freely enjoy
the diverse variety of works.
In closing, we would like to express our heartfelt gratitude
to all of those who have honored us with their unstinting
cooperation in realizing this exhibition.

Sat. 2 December 2023 – Sun. 10 March 2024
Collection Gallery, Museum of Contemporary Art
Tokyo

1.Tokyo Observed Through Walking
Walking through the city and depicting the sceneryencountered—the first room presents various scenes ofTokyo spanning from the Great Kanto Earthquake, of which
this year marks the centennial, to the period following WWII.
The Great Kanto Earthquake that occurred on September
1, 1923, also caused a devastating fire that killed over 90,000
people. After receiving news of the incident, KANOKOGI

Foreword
The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo houses
approximately 5,700 artworks in its extensive collection, whichspans the modern and contemporary periods with a focus onart of the postwar years. Each installment of the “MOT
Collection” exhibition introduces artworks in the collection
from various themes and angles in its effort to convey thediverse appeal of contemporary art.

Takeshiro (1874 -1941) traveled from Kyoto to Tokyo that very
month, accompanied by the Japanese-style painter IKEDA Yoson.
While at times incurring much criticism from disaster victims,
the two walked around sketching the scenery of the downtown
area across the Sumida River which had been reduced to ashes.
Kanokogi, who had studied academic techniques in realism andcomposition under the tutelage of French historical painter
Jean-Paul LAURENS, later painted the work September 1, 1923,
based on photographs and sketches. This dramaticallycomposed historical painting depicts people fleeing amidst thesmoldering rubble and smoke from a close-up perspective. On
the other hand, in the numerous sketches he drew on site, hecalmly observes the collapsed buildings and people digging up
the rubble from a more distant viewpoint, and captures theircontours through clear unhesitant pencil lines.
Artist and newspaper cartoonist YANASE Masamu (19001945) suffered the devastations of the earthquake in Tokyo
shortly after the first exhibition of Mavo, a Japanese avant-garde
art group founded by Yanase during the late Taisho period
together with the likes of MURAYAMA Tomoyoshi who had
returned from Germany. Yanase was arrested by the military
police, who took advantage of the chaos and confusion causedby the earthquake to crack down on socialists. After his release,he temporarily fled to the city of Moji in the Fukuoka Prefecture,
where his father lived, yet the following month he returned toTokyo where martial law had not yet been lifted, bringing withhim many relief supplies. Yanase documented this journey in ajournal and three sketch books. Such sketches illustrate how theartist, from the very midst of the city he had returned to for the
first time in a month, attempts to capture people’s lives and thestreets where the traces of damage were still fresh. In this way,
many painters walked through Tokyo, observed the city fromdifferent perspectives, and produced paintings that documented
their experiences and the scenes they encountered.
About 10 years later, printmaker FUJIMAKI Yoshio (19111935), who went missing at the age of 24, produced plain
sketches of the landscapes along the banks of the Sumida River.
The riverside was a place where the typical Edo townscapecoexisted with the modern cityscape such as the Shirahige
Bridge, which was rebuilt as part of the urban planning carriedout following the city’s reconstruction efforts. The vast

The first foor section, “Walking, Traveling, Moving: From
the Great Kanto Earthquake to the Present,” comprises of adiverse array of works, from sketches drawn by
KANOKOGI Takeshiro who visited Tokyo after the 1923
Great Kanto Earthquake to document the devastated areas,
to works by Olafur ELIASSON that were produced for his
solo exhibition at MOT in 2020, when restrictions on
freedom of movement were in place as a result of the
COVID-19 pandemic. FUJIMAKI Yoshio’s masterpiece
Scenes from the Sumidagawa River (1934) will also be
exhibited, along with newly acquired works by KUSANAGI
Shinpei, MITSUSHIMA Takayuki, and Wataridori Keikaku(ASO Tomoko, TAKEUCHI Akiko) that were created incorrespondence to the “MOT Satellite” exhibitions (20172020), as well as single channel videos by KUBOTA Shigeko
that were added to the collection in correspondence to hersolo exhibition at MOT (2021-2022). We hope that thisexhibit, by following the footsteps of artists spanning aperiod of approximately 100 years, will provide an
opportunity to enhance our perspective on the world andsociety in which we live.
The 3rd floor section titled, “Special feature: YOKOO
Tadanori—Ever-Changing, Like Water” introduces works
spanning from the 1960s to recent, centering on those newly
added to the museum’s collection. Yokoo Tadanori has worked
as a graphic designer and illustrator since the 1960s, continuing
to develop his oeuvre across a wide range of fields after shifting
his focus to painting in the 1980s. In 2021, the Museum ofContemporary Art Tokyo held a large-scale exhibition focusing
on Yokoo’s paintings titled, "GENKYO YOKOO TADANORI.”
On this occasion, we present a combination of works that werecollected in correspondence to his solo exhibition as well as aselection of his graphic works that were not showcased at thetime. Yokoo's work has undergone a myriad of transformations"like water" throughout his extensive career of over 60 years.
The exhibit explores new appeals of his artistic practice throughfocusing on expressions related to “water” that appear in manyof his rich variety of works. In addition, works by artists that1

Owner of the Fishing Fleet depicts an owner holding out his
boat (=fishing grounds) while a thick rope is wound manytimes around his neck, presenting a caricature of this figure
who finds himself torn between reality and public stance.
Since 1956, after producing the work 5th Sunagawa based on
his research regarding the campaign against the expansion of
the Tachikawa Air Base, Nakamura cast a sharp eye onsociety in a manner different from reportage, using
newspapers, magazines, and literature as sources for his later
works, including Metropolis in Revolution which takes as its
subject “Bloody May Day” (1951), a violent protest that took
place between demonstrators and police forces in the squarein front of the Imperial Palace. ASAKURA Setsu (1922-2014)
also made numerous sketching trips to coal mines, kiln sites,
and fishing villages throughout Japan in the 1950s with fellow
artists, and produced many works featuring laborers as theirmotif. In this way, young artists directly confronted the
difficult reality of postwar Japan, and tackled its various issues
within the field of painting.
Furthermore in 1957, following discussions at Seinen
Bijutsuka Rengo, Bito, in times when overseas travel had not
yet been realized, was sent to the World Festival of Youthand Students held in Moscow (NAKANO Jun, who isintroduced in the next section, also participated in thefestival that year). In Trans-Siberian Travel, a work inspired by
the view from the train window at the time, he achieves a
new mode of expression wherein the shapes of the buildings
seen in profile are abstracted and unfold one after anotheras if rotating within the picture plane.

panorama is created through a remarkable ‘editing’ process thatcombines various perspectives, whereby the view observed
from this bank is at times connected to what extends further
beyond the opposite bank, presenting viewers with a riverside
landscape that harbors a unique air of repose.*

Also featured, are drawings by MATSUMOTO Shunsuke(1912-1948) made during the war, as well as postwar
sketches by KATSURA Yuki (1913-1991) and ASAKURA
Setsu (1922-2014), which have been added to the museum’s
collection in the past 10 years. Through the works presented
in this room, the observant eye and path trodden by artists
as they walked through the city of Tokyo that had twice been
devastated and burnt to ashes, appear to intersect one
another repeatedly beyond time.
＊OHTANI Yoshihisa, Fujimaki Yoshio: Shingi (Fujimaki Yoshio:Truth or Falsehood),
Gakugeishoin, 2010

2. Visiting the Site
This section focuses on artists who engaged in a means ofexpression known as “reportage painting.” These artists
visited actual sites of political and social events in postwar
Japan to collect information and paint their paintings.
Immediately after Japan's defeat in World War II, many
people were impoverished and suffered from starvation andother dire conditions, resulting in the fervorous spur of laborand grassroots movements. In 1950, the Korean War beganwith Japan serving as a rear base, yet with more than 600 US
military bases remaining even after sovereignty was restored
following the end of the occupation period, anti-baseprotests and peace movements became more active on anationwide scale. In 1952, BITO Yutaka (1926-1998) andother artists of the Zen’ei Bijutsukai (Avant-Garde Art
Society) joined the Ogouchi Village Cultural Operation Unit
to support opposition to the construction of a dam that was
intended to serve as a power supply for a U.S. military base.
The following year, the Seinen Bijutsuka Rengo (Young Artists’Alliance) was formed in solidarity with young people who
were confronting such issues and wished to seek peace. Bito
Yutaka, IKEDA Tatsuo (1928-2020), and NAKAMURA
Hiroshi (1932- ), who were in their 20s at the time, also
participated in this group.
Homeward Journey is a work that was presented at the“Nippon Exhibition,” the first installment of the unjuried
Independent Exhibition that was organized by the Seinen
Bijutsuka Rengo. In Bito’s hometown of Akabane, many
repatriates from the continent and war victims lived inbuildings that were formerly used to store ammunition, andit was also the place where a weapons factory (PD factory)
under the direct control of the US military was located. The
painting depicts workers walking home from the factory,
their mouths tightly closed, against the backdrop of alandscape with a disturbingly vivid contrast between the dark
sky that hangs over the factory and the orange color of the
red clay plateau. Meanwhile, in 1953, Ikeda went to Uchinada
Village in the Ishikawa Prefecture, where an upheaval
concerning a construction plan of a shell testing site wastaking place. Based on the sketches he made at the time, The

3. Walking in Kiyosumi-Shirakawa

Fukagawa, Kiba, Kiyosumi-Shirakawa — This chapter sheds
light on the artists who walked around the area where themuseum is located.
NAKANO Jun (1925-2017) had deepened his friendshipwith MATSUMOTO Shunsuke after being greatly impressedby his work Canal View, which he saw at the Shinjin Gakai(Association of New Painters) exhibition that was held in
Ginza during the war. In 1948, Nakano became the youngest
member of the Jiyu Bijutsu Kyokai (Association of Free Artists)and soon relocated from Tokyo’s downtown area where he
was born and raised, to the Suginami district. Painted morethan 10 years after the war by the artist who had once
witnessed many deaths caused by air raids while walking
along the Sumida River, the ‘downtown’ series attempts to
depict the “miserable postwar period” through images of the“polluted river,” while overlaying such landscapes with his“pure childhood memories*.” In the 1970s, he completed aseries of landscape paintings of the Fukagawa-Kiba area as
the culmination of this endeavor. In “Downtown Sketches,” hewalked along the canal regardless of the weather or season,and used tools such as pen and brush to preserve thememories of landscapes that were disappearing as a result ofurban planning and the relocation of the canal to Shin-Kiba.
The center of the hand-drawn map that he produced at thetime was Kiba, which exactly coincides with the location of
the park where the museum now stands.
“MOT Satellite (2017-2020),” planned in line with MOT’s
2large-scale renovation, is a serial project that was inspired by
the idea to connect with the area immediately surrounding
the museum, which continues to bustle with liveliness andnew energy while preserving the downtown atmosphere andwaterfront landscape. Works that were acquired incorrespondence to this project are presented for the firsttime in the MOT collection exhibition. Wataridori Keikaku(formed in 2008) is a project by Tomoko Aso (1982-) andAkiko Takeuchi (1983-), who travel around Japan likemigratory birds (wataridori) in pursuit of warmth and food.
Preparations for “MOT Satellite 2020” (postponed to thefollowing year), which marked the final installment of the
project, were precisely underway amid the COVID-19
pandemic, and thus the two artists can be seen wearing
masks in their work, Hand-colored Journey Postcards. It was due
to such circumstances that the artists, upon visiting the
Fukagawa area, had as usual captured the most impressive
sceneries and experiences made while traveling around, informats as varied as paintings, pottery, video works, andkaruta (Japanese playing cards). MITSUSHIMA Takayuki(1954-) who completely lost his sight at the age of 10, depicts
landscapes perceived through sensory measures such as
touch, sound, smell, and object perception in threedimensional form. From the very trajectory of his walk
expressed though lines of thin nails hammered onto wooden
panels, to the gravel in Kiyosumi Garden that he felt beneathhis feet, the voices of children, the bicycles passing by, and thetime he spent in stores—we, through our fingertips, are able
to tactilely trace, like a picture scroll, the route from theKiyosumi-Shirakawa station to the museum that Mitsushima
had experienced. KUSANAGI Shimpei (1973-), whenproviding the serial illustrations for MIYAMOTO Teru’s novel(2007-2012) set in the Kiyosumi-Shirakawa area, learned that
“Kiyosumi-Shirakawa” was a new station name created in2000 and does not exist as the name of an actual town orstreet. As a result of this discovery, Kusanagi came to regard
painting, like the name of this station, to be as a “translucent
intermediary realm that straddles between reality andunreality, both in name and in substance**.” The large
paintings, with their many layers of pale colors, are likescreens onto which the scenes that exist in people's
memories and fantasies are delicately projected.

producing autobiographical videos that would later becompiled into her Broken Diary works. In the production ofher early works, she carried the heavy video equipment on
own her shoulders and traveled to various European
countries and Arizona, where she immersed herself in
different cultures. Video Girls and Video Songs for Navajo Sky,
documents Kubota’s visit to the Navajo Native American
reservation in Arizona, which was the family home of Cecilia
Sandoval, a member of the women's group “Red, White,
Yellow & Black” with whom she performed live events.
Kubota stayed with matriarchal Navajos, witnessing scenes
such as the slaughter of goats for the first time in her life,
engaged in conversation, and continued to roll the video. At
the beginning and end of the video, large colored silhouettesof Kubota's face are seen overlapping one after another onto
black-and-white footage of the Navajo people, enabling thepresence of the artist herself, who does not make an
appearance despite having lived and experienced the lives ofthese people, to emerge like a vivid afterimage.
In contrast to the large-scale land art of his
contemporaries in the United States and elsewhere, Richard
LONG (1945- ) focused on the humble act of ‘walking’ as themain core of his work. The artist walked alone through vast
expanses of nature, including mountains, deserts, grasslands,
and shorelines not only in his native England but also aroundthe world. In England, the artist moved forward while
plucking the daisies that bloomed across the field, thereby
creating a set of straight intersecting lines. As well as
documenting these kinds of actions through photographs, inworks such as STICKS, he brings found branches and stones
into the room and uses them to create extremely simple
basic shapes—circles, rectangles, lines, etc.—that seem todate back to prehistoric times, on the very floor on which
we walk.
In addition, the exhibition features photographs by
ISHIKAWA Naoki (1977-), who continues his journey tocommune with nature and encounter various humanactivities that have persisted since prehistoric times, such as
the sacred virgin forests of the indigenous Maori people(THE VOID), prehistoric murals around the world (NEWDIMENSION), and the Arctic Circle. Also presented is thework POYA DAY by KURITA Koichi (1962-), who gatheredstones in various places on the night of a full moon, as if toconfirm within himself his rhythm as a living being on thisearth.
Viewers are invited to look at the diverse works of artists
who have walked and moved through various places, while
overlapping their own footsteps, gaze, and thoughts.

＊NAKANO Jun, Gaka tachi no Showa:Watashi no Gadan Koryu-Ki (Showa
Through the Eyes of Painters: Chronicles of My Interactions in the Art World),
Chuokoron-Shinsha, 2018＊＊KUSANAGI Shinpei, Kiyosumi kaiwai [Kiyosumi and its Environs],
Kyuryudo Art Publishing, 2013

4. Walking and Moving Around the World
5This section introduces the works of artists from the 1960s
and 1970s, as well as contemporary artists who traveled andworked around the world.
KUBOTA Shigeko (1937-2015), who moved to the UnitedStates in 1964 and joined the Fluxus movement, started
working with video around 1970 when she began living with
Nam June Paik. In 1972, she acquired the Portapak, ashoulder-mounted portable video camera, and began

Artworks Born From Movement

Presented thus far are artworks created by artists as theywalked through cities and nature, and moved around theworld. This section introduces works by Olafur ELIASSON(1967-) in which movement/transportation itself isdocumented without involving the artist's hands or body.
Since the 1990s, the Icelandic-Danish artist has produced
numerous sculptures that question mechanisms of3

perception through color and light, as well as experiential
installations that reconstruct natural phenomena, instilling uswith new sensations and encouraging awareness for theenvironment and world around us. Founded in 1995, Studio
Olafur Eliason consists of diverse staff of craftsmen,architects, art historians, designers, cooks, technicians, andvarious other professionals, who collaborate on a daily basis
to experiment, research, and produce artwork. In recent
years the studio has increasingly turned its attention toenvironmental issues, and are engaging in efforts to replace
its activities with more sustainable options and approaches.
Also envisioning a sustainable life for the future, the solo
exhibition, “Olafur Eliasson: Sometimes the river is thebridge,” held at MOT in 2020, was conceived with the intent
to present a “potential shift in perspective” that could help
us “reconsider the traditional idea of progress”. * The artist
and the studio turned a critical eye to the very structure ofcreating an exhibition, and instead of transporting theartworks by air as per convention, decided to use surface
transport via land and sea: by truck from Berlin to Hamburg,by rail through Poland to Russia and China, and then by boat
to Japan. In Memories from the critical zone (Germany—
Poland—Russia—China—Japan), this “move,” which serves toreduce the carbon footprint of transportation andsymbolizes the effort to address climate change, itself
become works of art*. A drawing machine was installed ineach shipping crate, in which a ballpoint pen held by amechanical arm moved over the surface of the paper in
response to the vibrations and tilting of the crate duringtransport. As a result, the trajectory of this two-monthjourney is replaced by visual records that take shape as aseries of abstract line drawings. What is more, this solo
exhibition, which by curious coincidence was realized
through remote communication due to the artist being
unable to visit Japan during the COVID-19 pandemic, could
in itself be regarded as having renewed our understanding
and thinking regarding ‘movement.’a neutral country to which he was trying to escape. Although
he was later able to relocate to a hotel, he spent a year anda half under house arrest. During this time, Suematsu usedpencil on paper to repeatedly depict images of people
dancing in groups. In these hundreds of drawings, numerous
lines, likely drawn while imagining the free movements of thebody, appear to dance across the picture plane. Despite
restrictions on movement, Suematsu's life in Perpignan,
where he continued to dance and venture forward throughdrawing, became a solid foundation for him to develop his
activities as an abstract painter upon his return to Japan.
FUKUDA Naoyo (1967-) is an artist who has beencreating works related to words and text, using books andmail as materials. Fukuda, was familiar with books from ayoung age, and mentions that until becoming an adult she
was “unable to sleep without opening the pages of Jules
Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas every night.”
In producing her work, she cuts out the pages of thesetreasured books that she had read over and over again,
passing a needle through the paper to string together a seriesof small knots with embroidery thread. One could say thatcreating such work is equivalent to the loss of the book as areading material. However, letting the soft thread pass backand forth through the book/text, enables her to come into
direct contact with the world of the book that she had
fantasized about when reading. By “following the meanderingbrushstrokes deeper and deeper, while interrupted by thescenes that the words contain, * Fukuda orchestrates aunique moment of creation in which she becomes one withthe books—the innumerable succession of which appear
before our eyes like small “green moss growing within ahollow*.”
In this way, just as we actually go on journeys to walk, move,and encounter unknown things in the world, it is possible toopen new horizons at any time by walking and taking flightthrough our own imagination.
＊FUKUDA Naoyo, Hikari Hokori no Kimi: Bijutsu to Kaibun: Selection fromthe Essential Works of Naoyo Fukuda, Heibonsha, 2018

*The critical zone refers to the surface of the earth which is shaped by
the complex interaction of atmosphere, water, soil, and living organisms.

7. 100th Anniversary of Birth | Sam FRANCIS

6. Walking and Flights of Imagination/Creation

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth ofCalifornian abstract expressionist painter Sam FRANCIS(1923-1994), we present a series of large-scale paintings(owned by Asahi Group Japan Ltd.) that are deposited in themuseum collection.
Sam Francis's career as a painter began in 1944, while
being hospitalized with spinal tuberculosis due to an accident
during his flight training for the US Army Air Corps. It while
bedridden in hospital that Francis started painting withwatercolors as a form of therapy, eventually leading him topursue his studies in art. After moving to Paris in 1950, hecame to attract attention as an up-and-coming painter inEurope, where art informel was flourishing at the time.
Furthermore, Francis was also a painter who developed his
artistic practice while maintaining a deep connection withJapan, ever since visiting for the first time in 1957 during his
travels around the world. The paintings in this room,

This final section focuses on the works of artists who wereinterned in Europe during World War II, as well as acontemporary artist who uses books as their source material,shedding light on their imaginative/creative journeys.
SUEMATSU Masaki (1908-97) was fascinated by Neue
Tanz, an avant-garde dance form born in Germany afterWorld War I, which he encountered in a film he saw at theage of 19. After moving to Tokyo in 1933, he studied at thefirst Neue Tanz studio in Japan and developed a passion fordance, although at one point briefly helping at a design
company in Ginza, where FUJIMAKI Yoshio also worked fora time. Suematsu hoped to remain in Europe after theoutbreak of World War II, and took a position at theconsulate in Marseille. However, the Allied Forces soon
attacked, and he was arrested and imprisoned as an enemy
combatant in the city of Perpignan on the border with Spain,4

produced in 1985, are large-scale works that boldly andgenerously incorporate various elements observed in his
past oeuvre, and were brought to Japan as a result of a solo
exhibition that traveled around the country.
In the mid-1960s, Francis, while keeping studios inEurope and Japan, relocated his life and practice to hishometown of California. It was soon after this move that hebegan to place his canvases on the floor and paint with fastdrying acrylic paint. As observed in Untitled (SFP85-95),
Untitled (SFP85-109), and Untitled (SFP85-110), the aqueous
blotches of color and the undulating streaks that harborwhite void-like spaces within, along with splashes of paint,
vivid cluster of hues, and fine lines that seem to dance in theair, create a unique floating sensation. The artist once stated,“I am fascinated by gravity...I like to fly, to soar, to float like a
cloud, but I am tied down to place. Painting is a way in andout.”* By committing ourselves to the spaces that unfold
within the paintings, we may find our senses to also be newly
expanded and reawakened.

contemporaneous consciousness. Yokoo had described Chia
as “playing with the painting itself as a material,” which is inpart true of Yokoo’s own work and practice as well.
Andy WARHOL (1928-1987), from the 1950s until the
final years of his life, had documented his surroundings witha camera. Perhaps links could be drawn between Warhol
documentary practice and Yokoo’s attitude of keeping a diaryfor over 50 years. In Warhol's work, four photographs ofnearly identical compositions are stitched together in sets offour. The crisscrossing joints created by combining thephotographs emphasize the misalignment and tilting of theimages, suggesting a kind of rift. As in the works featuring
portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Warhol himself, therepetition of these commonplace scenes and objects seems
to strip them of their uniqueness, transforming them into
tenuous and empty images, where the shadows of death anddecay appear to be portentous.

9. Special feature | YOKOO Tadanori*Peter Selz, Sam Francis, New York, 1975, p. 14

Ever-Changing, Like Water

9-1．Introduction
YOKOO Tadanori (1936- ) worked as a graphic designer andillustrator in the 1960s, continuing to develop his oeuvre
across a wide range of fields after shifting his focus to painting
in the 1980s. This special exhibition introduces his works
spanning from the 1960s to recent, centering on those newly
added to the museum’s collection.
Yokoo’s first collection of works, Paintings, Prints andDrawings by TADANORI YOKOO (1981), published subsequent
to him expressing his decision to become a painter, featured
a conversation with art critic TONO Yoshiaki (1930-2005)
titled "Like Water: The Transformation of Tadanori Yokoo."Indeed, Yokoo’s works, “ever-changing, like water,” haveundergone a multitude of changes. The exhibit explores new
appeals of his artistic practice through focusing on
expressions related to “water” that appear in many of his
rich variety of works.

8. The Artists that Inspired YOKOO Tadanori

In conjunction with the special feature on YOKOO Tadanori(1936-), we introduce works by artists who have deep ties to
Yokoo.
Jennifer BARTLETT (1941-2022) visited Japan in 1980,
during which she produced work in collaboration with theprintmaking studio, Simca Print Artists. Yokoo had theopportunity to work at the studio at the same time as thisartist, whom he admired and respected. There, together with
Bartlett, he experimented with a new method of applying oilbased paint to the brush and painting directly on the plate,which led him to produce prints with a more painterly
expression. Bartlett's work is a series that combines painting
and sculpture. It depicts a bird as it hatches from an egg andeventually falls to its death under sparks of fire, evoking thelegend of the immortal phoenix or firebird that rises fromthe ashes over time. By using the same motifs to move backand forth between the world of images in the paintings andreal space, Bartlett perhaps attempts to bring into existence
the cosmic time of reincarnation that inhabits this story.
The large-scale work Melancholic Encampment by Sandro
CHIA (1946-) was painted in 1982. In the same year, Yokoo
held his first solo exhibition as a painter and produced thework Waterfall, which foreshadowed his subsequent artistic
practice. Around this time, the movement of “NeoExpressionism” had given rise to significant changes on aninternational level. In reaction to the minimalist andconceptual art of the past, there was a resurgence ofemotional and figurative expression that entailed artists tophysically wield their paintbrush against the large screen.
Characteristics of this style of work include mythological andhistorical subjects, citations from art history, collage-likecompositions, and the mixing of multiple ambiguous timespaces. The works of Chia and Yokoo can be positioned
within this trend, which had been brought about by a

9-2．Scenes with Water
The majority of Yokoo’s works are landscapes. In particular,
many of his works depict scenes with water, from oceans towaves, horizons, waterfalls, caves, rain, and flooded interiors*.
Such scenes with water may to some extent be connectedto the fact that Yokoo grew up near the Kako River in
Nishiwaki City, Hyogo Prefecture, and that he was bornunder the star sign of Cancer and the Flying Star Feng Shuistar of 1 white water, which are both recognized as having
deep connections to water.
Many of his works produced in the 1960s feature a large
motif in the center of the picture plane, or are rendered in asymmetrical composition. The water depicted in them isaccompanied by things that remind us of incidents andaccidents, such as charging airplanes and sinking ships, or attimes surround the characters as if it were a device toenhance the development of the narrative. These elementsof water enter the images and collide with other fragmentary5motifs, creating a sense of movement that disrupts the orderand harmony of the original composition. As implied by theidiom, to “pour [throw] cold water” on something, water isalso regarded as "that which stands between things andinterferes with their smooth interaction (progression).”
Perhaps the water in his work constantly fascinates andattracts people’s attention because of the way in which it
disrupts its surroundings while creating an unsettling
atmosphere.

unexpected worlds glimpsed through these chasms andcrevices, Yokoo creates landscapes in which this world andotherworldly realms intermingle and coalesce.
9-5．Similar Shapes
The front cover of Yokoo’s 1994 essay Heaven and Earth Are
Similar (paperback edition titled, I and Intuition and Alien)features the ace of hearts superimposed onto an image of Mt.
Fuji, which is similar in shape due to being reflected in water.
This book, written with love to Mt. Fuji that he had gazedupon whilst writing, appears to play between heaven andearth. This is indicative of Yokoo's practice that attempts toconnect this world and otherworldly realms through art. His
attitude of not choosing one or the other, but rather both, isalso expressed in the two subjects that appear in his works,
such as a waterfall and cave, a man and a woman. The “Yjunction,” recognized as a representative series within
Yokoo’s oeuvre, are of two roads branching off into different
directions, while the “Hanshan and Shide” (known inJapanese as Kanzan and Jittoku) series feature two legendarymonks. Such works perhaps reflect his idea that the two
subjects both exist and continue to change forever while
influencing one another.
“I personally feel that it is necessary to be fluid in the actof living.” This way of life, “like water,” as mentioned in his
1981 portfolio of works, has served as an impetus for his
artistic practice that moves freely here and there.

* The depiction of horizons is discussed in detail in Dehara Hitoshi,"The Introduction of a Pictorial Perspective," Yokoo Tadanori: Beyond
Graphic Work, exhibition catalogue, Yokoo Tadanori Museum ofContemporary Art, 2014.

9-3．A Vessel for Landscapes
Water can take on any form depending on the vessel in which
it is contained. Yokoo employs several techniques to create
vessels for containing the landscape. (1) Bordering. As
already noted, many of his graphic design works are framedwith a border. Such brings to mind a black-edged obituary ora somewhat ominous looking tourist poster. (2) Repetition.
Repetitions of motifs and compositions is the mostcharacteristic technique observed in Yokoo’s work*. Works
utilizing the printmaking process can be considered as an
example of this technique. (3) Emphasis on central axis andsymmetrical composition. In particular, his 1970s series ofwork that depicts the ideal world of “Shambhala,” ischaracterized by their balanced composition based on
triangles (△). (4) “Yare”. A technique inspired by surprint.
Yokoo mentions that he found surprise and beauty in the“Yare” made by surprinting on discarded printed materials
until the printing ink would settle on the paper—a sight hewitnessed when working at a printing press after graduatingfrom high school. He described the images created as “likeexpressions of a four-dimensional world.” Many of his
collages combining various images can be seen as adevelopment of such “Yare”.

Texts by
MIZUTA Yuko (1-7),
FUJII Aki (8-9)
Translated by Benger Kei© Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo 2023

*Yokoo Tadanori: HAN-HAN-PUKU -PUKU-HAN-PUKU, exhibition
catalogue , Yokoo Tadanori Museum of Contemporar y Ar t,
2012.

9-4．Water / Mirrors
Water can also serve as a mirror that reflects a different
world from the one in which we are in now. Yokoo uses thepower of such mirrors to open up worlds that seem familiar
but have never been seen before. It is possible to identify
each and every element of what is depicted in his work. Many
include reproductions of or references to something.
However, mysterious worlds unfold before one’s eyes, as the
texts featured are reversed or combined with other things.
Yokoo's works are like mirrors, capturing everything within
the picture plane, repeating and multiplying images as if itwere a kaleidoscope. For Yokoo, “Yare” (also written in
Japanese as “Yabure,” meaning “rupture” or “crevice”) is
what informs the overlapping of miscellaneous images, yetconnections could also be drawn between “Yare” and his
works in which motifs are rendered transparent, withwaterfalls appearing to flow through them. Like the6