高松次郎

Born in Shibuya-ku, Tokyo in 1936 (Shōwa 11) as the third child of career soldier Tanaka Wataru and his wife, Ei. Real name Shinpachirō. His father died when Shinpachirō was one year old, and the family moved to the western part of Tokyo in his childhood. During his senior high school years, he was adopted by his mother’s parents and assumed the surname Takamatsu. In 1954, he entered the Oil Painting Course at Tokyo University of the Arts. Nakanishi Natsuyuki, who was in the same year, was to become a lifelong friend. After graduating from university in 1958, besides working for a company for a while, he continued painting and took part in the Yomiuri Independent Exhibition (Japan Independent Art Exhibition sponsored by the Yomiuri Shimbun) almost every year. At that exhibition, mingling with artists wildly enthusiastic about Anti-Art, Takamatsu, too, began making objects employing waste materials. In October 1962, together with Nakanishi and a few others, he planned an event entitled “Yamanotesen Festival,” (note) at which he pulled strings entwined with waste materials along Yamanote Line platforms etc., thus making art intervene into public spaces. Strings were also employed in Takamatsu’s work at the 15th Yomiuri Independent Exhibition held in March 1963. Entangled with a suitcase and a table, the strings stretched out into the exhibition space and further to the exterior of the museum. In May that year, together with Nakanishi, Akasegawa Genpei, and others, Takamatsu founded Hi-Red Center, a group of anonymous artists. From 1963 to 1964, they held events such as “Dropping Event,” at which things were dropped from the roof of a building, and “Campaign to Promote Cleanliness and Order in the Metropolitan Area,” in which members cleaned the streets in Ginza without permission. The interventions carried out on the streets in Tokyo by Hi-Red Center in the name of “art” were acts of sharp criticism against the totalitarianism dashing boldly forward to the Summer Olympics as a state event. In parallel with his activities as a member of Hi-Red Center, Takamatsu also began writing texts, which would be compiled as “Sekai kakudai keikaku” (World Expansion Plan). The idea that fulfillment of a thing, that is to say, an urge to live, can be identified precisely in its absence, was given concrete form as works depicting the unreal situation in which a shadow alone is there without a source. One such work, “Shadow of Woman, Opening the Window” (1965, on long-term loan to the Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Art), attracted attention by winning the newly established 2nd Nagaoka Contemporary Award. The following year, in 1966, Tokyo Gallery, an art gallery specializing in contemporary art, held a solo exhibition of Takamatsu’s works entitled “Identification.” Shadows of people were painted directly on the wall, and those fake shadows mingled with the shadows of visitors, creating a space in which happenings occurred. Similar attempts were made at Supper Club Cazador (Shinjuku, Tokyo) designed by Kuramata Shirō and the parlor at Fukuoka City Bank (Hakata, Fukuoka) designed by Isozaki Arata. Making the feelings of exaltation and estrangement about the high economic growth stand out vividly amid a science-fiction-like bizarre situation, the “Shadow” series became synonymous with the artist Takamatsu Jirō. Artists of the same generation, Arakawa Shūsaku and Usami Keiji, also employed shadows in their works around the same time, which triggered debates on shadows as the image of the time among critics. After that, Takamatsu presented “Chairs and the Table in Perspective” (1966–1967, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo). The white table and chairs marked with grids were made following the perspective in a painting, with the front side large and the far side small. By making the distinctive character of perspective stand out by applying a method of drawing employed in Western painting from the Renaissance onward to a three-dimensional world, Takamatsu relativized the modern concept of space. Works treating the subject of perspective were also staged internationally at the 34th Venice Biennale and Expo ’70, Osaka. Invited to take part in the 10th Japan International Art Exhibition (Tokyo Biennale) in 1970, Takamatsu submitted “Jūroku no tantai [Sixteen Pieces of Oneness]” (first presented as “Namima [Between the Waves],” lost), composed of partly planed logs lined up at regular intervals. The way Takamatsu placed only slightly processed natural objects directly on the floor in an attempt to negate the generation of illusions was an awareness shared with West European and North American artists who were visiting Japan. Here, he connected to European and American art trends such as Arte Povera, Minimalism, and Conceptual Art. The series following “Oneness” was entitled “Compound,” in which industrial products such as furniture, blocks, and metal rods were combined and placed on the floor or propped up against a wall. By nullifying the function and name such objects possessed on a daily basis, Takamatsu attempted to reexamine the circumstances under which such objects existed. “Rusty Ground” (private collection), an iron sculpture similar in structure, was submitted to the 6th Documenta in 1977. Activities dating from the early 1970s worthy of special mention would be the “juku” (private school) and the self-organized exhibitions Takamatsu undertook. The “juku” was held as an independent seminar after the Japanese university protests of 1968–1969, and reading sessions, joint review meetings, and discussions took place at Takamatsu’s own studio. The critic Nakahara Yūsuke, the artist Saitō Yoshishige, and others were invited as lecturers. Together with members of the “juku,” Takamatsu held exhibitions in his studio and the neighborhood. Such attempts were made to consider the system of art from the point of view of education and display. The latter two decades of Takamatsu’s career were focused on the two-dimensional plane. In the latter half of the 1970s, he produced the “Space in Two Dimensions” series, in which painterly space was automatically generated by combining arcs and lines. In the 1980s and 1990s, as if freed from the restraints until then, Takamatsu’s canvas became more abundant with a larger number of colors and uninhibited brushwork. In due course, figures representing prototypes of the mind emerged from within the tangles of curves. In view of the artist’s return to the traditional format of painting and his revival of images, this group of paintings has been ranked in the context of the emergence of planarity and the reinstatement of Expressionism from the latter half of the 1970s to the 1980s. Nevertheless, the significance of Takamatsu’s inner evolution has not been verified in full and awaits further research. In 1996, a solo exhibition was held at two locations, Niigata City Art Museum and Mitaka City Gallery of Art, Tokyo in Takamatsu’s neighborhood, at which he presented a series of paintings entitled “Form/Origin” (The National Museum of Art, Osaka) as his latest work. Two years or so later, despite having fought against his illness, Takamatsu died in June 1998. Takamatsu Jirō was a leading figure of “contemporary art” symbolizing an era of development, which, in the 1960s, as Japan rose from its defeat in World War II and rode a wave of high economic growth, emerged having risen above conventional values based on the prewar system of the art world. The highly critical group of works dating from the latter half of the 1960s, in which he relativized the modern structure of cognition, had a huge influence on artists and critics of the time. Surveys undertaken after Takamatsu’s death and exhibitions have revealed that particularly artists such as Lee Ufan and Sekine Nobuo critically took over from Takamatsu and formulated the “Mono-ha” theory. From the 2010s onward, this trend has been introduced further in Europe and the US, and amid a tendency to reread the history of art, its synchronicity with international trends is being focused on. The works Takamatsu created as containers of thoughts possess a unique palpability and are not confined to mere explanatory diagrams. The creative urge overflowing with a lively spirit of inquiry emitted from his works appear fresh to our eyes even today. (Kamiyama Ryoko / Translated by Ogawa Kikuko) (Published online: 2025-01-20) Note This event is also known as “Event Yamanotesen Action.”