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4. Artificial Paradise

During a 1980 trip to China, Tanaami was profoundly moved by the natural landscapes he encountered, and this stirred an interest in ancient Chinese folk beliefs in immortal wizards and other aspects of the folk cultures of Asia. The following year, a grueling work schedule and chronic sleep deprivation led to a severe bout of tuberculosis, hospitalizing him for nearly four months. Hovering between life and death, he experienced a long series of intense nightly hallucinations and dreams due to the strong side effects of his medication. This cavalcade of visions included recurring imagery such as the Salvador Dalí painting The Madonna of Port Lligat (1950, collection of the Fukuoka Art Museum), which appeared in an art book he looked at in the hospital, and the pine trees in the hospital garden, which appeared to him to be twisted and contorted. Determined not to let these visions slip away, Tanaami documented them in approximately ten notebooks, and after his release from the hospital he began to incorporate hallucinatory images into his art, marking a dramatic shift from his earlier Pop Art-influenced style. In the 1980s, he began weaving auspicious Asian symbols such as cranes, turtles, and tigers into bizarre, paradisiacal worlds bristling with towering structures, pursuing this imagery in diverse media including paintings, prints, and sculptures. A dramatically swirling pine tree in the center of the picture came to stand as a symbol of vitality for Tanaami, and the motif has frequently recurred in his works up to the present day. Other hallucinatory images merged with childhood memories of playing with building blocks, and took the form of kitschy, vividly colored sculptures such as The House in Ascension (cat. 4-54). Tanaami’s brush with death infused him with new creative energy, and after recovering from his illness, he scaled back his design work to focus even more intently on exploring personal expression through art.