Customer Reviews

Paintings By Masami Teraoka

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For those who have been observing the manner in which artist Masami Teraoka has been addressing political and sociological issues for the past years this big book that reproduces much of his art is a must. Teraoka, born in 1936 in the town of Onomichi in Hiroshima prefecture, studied from 1954-59 at the Kwansei Gakuin University in Kobe, Japan where he received his B.A. in Aesthetics. He moved to the United States in 1961 and from 1964-68 attended the Otis Art Institute now the Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, where he received a B.F.A. and M.F.A.

Teraoka gained national attention with his fearless ability to address the AIDS plague in the 1980s with his signature ukiyo-e influenced woodcuts of geishas at sea with condoms and other pointedly sophisticated yet humorous images of characters dealing with physical protection. But his ability to create parodies on the American way of life include his Japanese characters snorkeling, consuming MacDonald's hamburgers, Baskin-Robbins 31 flavors ice cream cones, computers, obsession with television, and social and sexual mores, all created with such skill that they appear to be ancient Japanese Edo period ukiyo-e woodcuts.

Teraoka's talent does no stop with his comical works. His paintings of religious altars have an enormous impact on the viewer, so skilled are they in approaching yet another period of art. His ability to make starkly confrontational comments with his art is what sets him aside from other painters. This book is well representative of much of his output - despite the fact that it is now 15 years old! Grady Harp, September 11