Masaru Shichinohe

Private Asian Collection

Black Angel –Masaru Shichinohe, Ping Art Space, Taipei, Taiwan, 2010, pp. 164-165

This set of works is generally in good condition. There are general soiling on the surface. Please note that they were not examined under ultraviolet light and out of their frames.
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Curious Kingdom
Masaru Shichinohe

When one looks at a painting by Japanese artist Masaru Shichinohe, they are at once brought to the fantastical world of alchemy, physics, and cosmology that stands far apart from the kawaii aesthetics of mainstream contemporary artists such as Yoshitomo Nara, Takashi Murakami, and Aya Takano. Dominated by warped perspective, obscure proportions, and appearances of young boys and girls in peculiar uniforms, though often small in scale, the painterly works by Shichinohe have attracted tremendous followings both within Japan and abroad since late 2000s. Indeed, unlike many other local Japanese artists who are in one way or another influenced by the trend of the Superflat movement or Japanese anime, the artist has throughout his two-decade career steadily carved out one of the most impressive and enigmatic visual languages in Japanese contemporary art that sits between surrealism and literary narrative. Sotheby’s is pleased to present two important works by Shichinohe, namely Psychology, and Rainbow Cocktail, The Post Box, The Flying Ship, that exceptionally showcase the distinctive periods, motifs, and transitions highlighted within his revered oeuvre from early 1990s to 2000.

Born in 1959 and graduated from the Musahino Art University College of Art and Design with a major in Architecture, Masaru Shichinohe initially worked in an architectural firm for three years before pursuing the field of illustration at the age of 25. “I was disturbed by the concept of ‘architecture as massive destruction’ and gradually lost my passion.”¹ Inspired by the vivid imageries evoked in the writings of renowned Japanese fantasy novelist Inagaki Taruho, Shichinohe instead began to experiment with different artistic medium in bringing to life the breathtaking dimension seen within Taruho’s and other fantasy litterateurs’ strange tales. The “Campanella: The Mechanical Boy and the Magic Bugle”, the artist’s first illustrated book to a story written by renowned novelist Amanuma Haruki, can be considered to be the beginning where signatory motifs of rabbits, young girls, stars, and moons first emerged, establishing Shichinohe’s initial rise in the publishing field. Major visual cues inspired by magical realism and scientific diagrams during the Enlightenment era in Europe have further contributed significantly to the signatory non-linear framework in the artist’s later wooden panel works, making him one of the few artists from his generation to fully bridge the aesthetic depth and vision of Japanese contemporary art with illusory masterpieces from Western surrealist artists and inventors such as Salvador Dali, M.C. Escher, and E.G. Robertson.

Psychology (Lot 902) from 1994 precisely represents one of the earliest artistic styles to dominate the artist’s works in the early 1990s. Instead of employing twisted perspectives as developed in his later pieces, the painting retains a traditional two-dimensional approach, reminiscent of the artist’s initial role as an illustrator. On view a penguin and a male model are seen facing each other above a beige and black background. While the alphabetical labeling directly points towards illustrations from 18^th century scientific journals, the red curtains remain to be one of the artist’s most important reoccurring visual devices in expressing the notion of theatricality. This not only reflects the European view of the world as a theater during the Enlightenment period, but most certainly exemplifies art critic Huang Yaji’s statement: “the world Masaru Shichinohe portrays is obviously a theater; a theater within a theater.”²

As such, only within theater can one experience seemingly supernatural phenomena, as brilliantly showcased in the triptych “Rainbow Cocktail, The Post Box, The Flying Ship” (Lot 901). The rare triptych, featuring the iconic image of the little boys and their evasive gazes, has truly emblematised Masaru Shichinohe’s decade long artistic journey in the 1990s. Painted in 2000, the work portrays three young boys with identical facial features engaging in series of inexplicable, science-defying acts. While the boy in the first panel transforms his rainbow cocktail into seven floating spheres, the next figure rips open his shirt only to reveal a formless body and a cryptic post box behind, last but not least, the boy on the right effortlessly controls a miniscule flying spacecraft in front. It is in this work where Shichinohe’s mastery in the distortion of reality and proportion are rendered to perfection, undoubtedly highlighting the heavy influence from the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism in 1946, where magical elements and realistic settings seamlessly blend into one complete spectacle. The artist has especially described in detail the powerful revelation after encountering this particular Western style, “It was so delicate and of such artistic merit that everyone wanted to hold it in their hands and observe it up close. In a flash of understanding I knew this is what I was destined to pursue. I was finished with all those trendy expressions, and art styles that would decay and be forgotten over time.”³

Surrealism, science, and supernatural endeavors have each found their way into the veins of Masaru Shichinohe’s practice. The two lots on offer not only allow one to understand the full breadth of the artist’s works during one of the most important creative periods in his career, marked by illustration-based style, but more importantly demonstrate Shichinohe’s exceptional vision among his contemporaries, making him along with the late Tetsuya Ishida one of the foremost Japanese painters to break away from the limit of the Superflat framework, creating an ever mesmerising and whimsical body of work that test the perception of time, space, and ultimately, reality.

1 Masaru Shichinohe, “The Moon in the Pocket”, Black Angel, 2010

2 Huang Yaji, “Loneliness of the Treasure Cabinet”, Black Angel, 2010

3 Refer to 1