Takamatsu Jiro (1936-1998) Shadow (No. 1447) | 1997

The Estate of Jiro Takamatsu

Yumiko Chiba Associates, Tokyo

Takamatsu’s Shadow Paintings series convincingly captures the elusiveness of a cast shadow whilst raising questions on the fundamental nature of painting. Without a primary object or source of light, the intertwined shadows of a young child against a pure white ground at first work to deceive the eye: the multiple shadows appear diffuse, yet there is a solidification where they overlay, creating a distorted but more tangible shadow in the centre flanked by the larger two at left and right.

Painted a year before Takamatsu's death in 1997, this late example was executed after over thirty years of continually returning to the subject of the shadow, which spanned most of the artist’s output from 1964 to 1998. Earlier examples were first rendered in lacquer, until later experiments with acrylics and oils on canvas. A prime example of Takamatsu’s austere pictorial vocabulary, which seemingly draws from Dadaism, Surrealism and Minimalism, the shadows that his subject cast onto the canvas in trompe l’oeil fashion act as a provocation: we witness reality not as it presently exists, but as a projection from a source that remains invisible to the viewer. Both conceptually engaging and visually refined, these works act as illusionistic challenge for the viewer to explore the limits of our perceived reality and representation – as if to say painting, at its very core, is but a shadow.

Born in Tokyo on February 20, 1936, Takamatsu was also an influential theorist, teacher, as well as an artist active throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Takamatsu achieved notoriety as a member of the radical Hi Red Center (1963-64), along with artists Genpei Akasegawa (1937-2014) and Natsuyuki Nakanishi (1935-2016). Through art interventions carried out in Tokyo between 1962 and 1964, such as their famed 1,000-yen note incident, the collective sought to eliminate the often-authoritative boundaries separating art and life. Takamatsu was also a key member of the movement Mono-Ha [lit. School of Things, 1967-79]. Mono-Ha artists sought to engage the world through experimentation with gesture, materials, action and process – rather than formalised and conventional studio methods or finished artworks – in an effort to reveal the world as it is.