Takamatsu Jiro (1936-1998) | Shadow of Key (Kagi no kage), No. 238 | Showa period, 20th century

Tokyo Gallery, Tokyo

In the mid-1960s, an almost simultaneous output of 'the shadow' as the subject for works by Takamatsu Jiro, Arakawa Shusaku (1936-2010) and Usami Keiji (1940-2012) caused several critics to share their thoughts on the theme in the newsletter Me (Eye). For some commentators, the shadow paintings were a critical response to the saturation of images in the contemporary world. Hayashi Michio writes:

'Although Takmatsu’s works incited the critics to discuss shadow and image in relation to the simulacra state of contemporary society, the artist himself in his own writings did not discuss them from that standpoint. For him, the most important aspect of the shadow was its ability to exist as an index of its absent origin; in this relational scheme, the absence becomes a sort of positive entity, more than mere nothingness. Furthermore, through a curious inversion, Takamatsu interpreted this indicial function as a way to escape “reality” to point to an outside whose other name is none other than the future. Art indexes the future – not by presenting the image of utopia but by tracing or retracing its shadow in the world of material visibility.'¹

^1. Michio Hayashi, “The Shadow Debate” in From Postwar to Postmodern: Art in Japan 1945-1989, (New York, 2012), p. 209.