Keiichi Tanaami: Post-War Psychedelic Pop Artist
Keiichi Tanaami, born in 1936 in Tokyo, is one of the leading pop artists of postwar Japan and has been active as a multi-genre artist since the 1960s.
Images of roaring American aeroplanes, searchlights, bombs and fleeing masses were deeply lodged in his memory, later becoming his core iconography – a blur of his nightmares and real memories.
Other notable childhood influences included Tanaami’s obsessive daily cinema visits, where he was particularly drawn to popular monster movies starring glamorous actresses, who also later became motifs in his work.
After graduating from the Musashino Art University in 1960, he quickly forged a successful career in design and advertising, illustrating the Japanese releases of record covers for Jefferson Airplane and The Monkees and others.
His colourful, overpopulated psychedelic collages, animations and drawings frequently combine war imagery with American and Japanese pop culture, communicating an underlying message of peace.
In 1967, Tanaami took his first trip to New York, where he was faced with the works of Andy Warhol and was struck by the new possibilities they created within the art world.
“Like Warhol, I decided not to limit myself to one medium, to fine art or design only, but instead to explore many different methods.”
These new-found possibilities led Keiichi to direct his first movie titled “Commercial War 1971” which took emblems associated with American consumer society – like Coca-Cola – and replaced them with Tanaami’s own visual vocabulary. The effect is a comic-strip-like critical take on the advent and impact of American consumer culture on foreign nations.
Furthermore, his series of erotic paintings featuring Hollywood actresses done in the early ‘70s became an important body of work that declared Tanaami as the Japanese artist with a witty eye on American culture.
With 84 years, Keiichi is still creating art and has recently collaborated with Medicom Toy to release a special edition of their iconic Bearbrick figure.
