The Exquisite Corpses of Takayanagi Yutaka

Takayanagi Yutaka (b. 1941) is one of a wave of artists who brought fresh, intriguing approaches to figurative printmaking in postwar Japan. His works recall the Dadaist movement in Europe during the 1910s and 1920s, when artists embraced nonsensical humor in reaction to the exploitation of rationalism for military purposes during World War I (1914–1918).

Takayanagi’s prints are particularly reminiscent of the “exquisite corpse,” a language game invented in 1925 by Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) and others, in which words cut from a newspaper are randomly arranged to create unpredictable poems. (The name originates from their first poem: “the exquisite corpse shall drink the new wine.”) Inspired by Duchamp, Max Ernst (1891–1976) and his Surrealist comrades popularized a graphic version of the game. As a way of exploring the subconscious alongside depictions of dreams and automatic writing, they produced collaborative drawings, not allowing participants to view one another’s contributions as they sketched. These prints by Takayanagi have close connections with both versions of the exquisite corpse. Discrete elements, including a portrait, a body part, an animal, and an abstract shape, populate each composition, and we are challenged to determine the internal logic that links them together.

Takayanagi’s creative journey is distinctly private, weaving together references to his favorite artists and personal memories. Having grown up during the Pacific War (1941–1945) and the subsequent Occupation of Japan by Allied Powers (1945–1952), Takayanagi’s own experiences mirror the turbulent, seemingly irrational chapters of world history found in Dadaist and Surrealist artworks. We viewers can do little more than speculate about the personal, philosophical, and political meanings the artist’s creations may possess and consider how they resonate with our own experiences.

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Takayanagi Yutaka (b. 1941), Color Contrast, Japan, 1976. Relief print; ink and color on paper. Gift of Yutaka Takayanagi, 2013 (2013-33-11).

Seven Decades of Printmaking: The Journey of Takayanagi Yutaka