Masami Teraoka: Waves and Plagues Redux
A survey of works from 1969 – 2008.
JUNE 17 – AUGUST 19, 2023.
Reception with Masami Teraoka
Saturday, July 22: 1 – 3pm
Catharine Clark Gallery, 248 Utah St, San Francisco CA 94103
MasamiTeraoka:WavesandPlaguesRedux . A survey of works from 1969 – 2008.
Catharine Clark Gallery opens its summer program with Masami Teraoka: Waves and Plagues Redux, on view from June 17 to August 19, 2023, in the North Gallery. The exhibition takes its title from an important monograph on Teraoka titled Waves and Plagues published by Chronicle Books in 1988 and offers a rare opportunity to see watercolors, drawings, and multiples from two iconic bodies of work: the AIDS Series and Waves Series, as well as a selection of important studies and watercolors from projects created prior to 1995.
From 1960 to 1984, Teraoka lived and worked in Los Angeles, during which time he produced his signature ukiyo-e (or “pictures of the floating world” generally rendered as woodcuts in the Edo era of Japan) compositions that reflected on cultural hybridity, represented in series such as McDonald's Hamburgers Invading Japan, 31 Flavors Invading Japan, and New Views of Mt. Fuji. The onset of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the early 1980s brought a new urgency to Teraoka's work and inaugurated a five-year span in which he created monumental watercolors on paper, screens, and canvas, such as American Kabuki/Oishiiwa (1986), a multipanel watercolor mounted to a folding screen in the collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. These compositions depicted figures with visible symptoms of infection, such as lesions caused by Kaposi sarcoma, dressed in Kabuki-style makeup and costumes, and set in tumultuous and often menacing landscapes.
Teraoka was one of the few major American artists creating work about HIV/AIDS in the 1980s and early 1990s. His paintings were particularly radical at a time when the American government willingly ignored public health data on infection and transmission rates, and all but refused to address a public health crisis that disproportionately impacted queer people and communities of color (a scenario re-visited during COVID). Work from this era of his practice was included in the recent exhibition and attendant catalogue Art, AIDS, America. The exhibition (and catalogue) was the first comprehensive overview and reconsideration of 30 years of art made in response to the AIDS epidemic in the United States. It foregrounded the role of HIV/AIDS in shifting the development of American art away from the conceptual foundations of postmodernism and abstraction toward a new, more political, and autobiographical voice. Art AIDS America surveyed more than 100 works of American art from the early 1980s to 2015, reintroducing and exploring the spectrum of responses to HIV/AIDS, from activism to elegy. It also introduced and explored the spectrum of artistic responses to AIDS, from the outspoken to the mournful. Art AIDS America was organized by Tacoma Art Museum in partnership with The Bronx Museum of the Arts, and co-curated by Jonathan David Katz, Director, Visual Studies Doctoral Program at the University at Buffalo (The State University of New York), and Rock Hushka, Chief Curator at Tacoma Art Museum who contributed to the catalogue.
For Teraoka’s part, in 1984, seeking respite and solace from the devastating impact of HIV/AIDS on his artist community in Los Angeles, he began traveling between LA and Hawaii, and eventually moved to the island of Oahu, where he continues to live and work today. Finding escape and comfort in the natural beauty of Hawai'i, Teraoka began painting evocative waterscapes, some of which are mounted on traditional Japanese scrolls in between making works that addressed the insidiousness of HIV/AIDS and its devastating effects. Drawing inspiration from Edo-era, historic landscape prints by artists such as Hokusai and Kunisada, Teraoka created this new series of meditative works as a counterpoint to the intensity of his AIDS Series watercolors. In the process, Teraoka continued to experiment with scale and materials, resulting in larger and even more expressive works that eventually evolved into the large-scale triptychs that emerged in the later 1990s.
Waves and Plagues Redux features several important unmounted watercolors on canvas, including AIDS Series/Father and Son (1990). These canvases, nearly nine feet tall, portray figures in the end stages of infection. Two of the paintings depict a mother and father tenderly holding infants who have died, with their eyes cast downward and away, capturing a moment of overwhelming and indescribable loss. These canvases are among the last of his ukiyo-e style works and represent the culmination of his AIDS Series Waves and Plagues Redux offers an important survey of this period of Teraoka's work, which continues to have a lasting impact on art historical conversations surrounding HIV/AIDS.
In conversation with Teraoka’s exhibition, the gallery continues to feature three videos by Deborah Oropallo: White As Snow, Wolf, and Dirty. As their point of departure, the videos use fairy tales such as Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, and Fantasia, the related costumes from cosplay, and Disney films to weave together cautionary tales of a more dystopic nature (they complement the collaborative work created by her and her husband Michael Goldin in exhibit in the South Gallery titled American Gothic).
On July 22, in concert with the opening of Yes, it is an original, the gallery presents a Media Room screening of Trina Michelle Robinson’s video work in a show titled Revival. A follow-up to Robinson’s acclaimed Emerging Artist Program presentation at the Museum of the African Diaspora, Revival features a suite of three video works that reflect on histories of slavery and emancipation, as well as celebration and joy through acts of rediscovering family genealogies. Robinson writes that “the suite of videos was inspired by a years-long effort to connect to my ancestors after discovering my maternal family roots in Kentucky. The earliest film in this series, Berea (2021), was inspired by an urgent need to excavate the lost memories of my family’s history, including this history of David French, my great-great grandfather who studies at Berea College shortly after the Civil War. The piece contains archival audio and film footage, including Oscar Micheaux’s 1920 silent film Within Our Gates, Learning to Live, a promotional film from Berea in 1937, at a time when the school was segregated due to a 1904 law in Kentucky that forced the segregation of schools, as well as audio excerpts of an interview with anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston.”
“Elegy for Nancy” (2022), by comparison, pays homage to my oldest known ancestor, a woman named Nancy who was born in the 1770’s or 80s, likely in Virginia, before migrating to Kentucky where she was enslaved. I first discovered her identity in 2021 in a series of 19th century manuscripts, and after largely following the stories of the men in this family line, I knew I had to turn my attention to her story. I have incorporated the texture of Super 8 film footage and archival film footage to do this and incorporate multiple rivers, including the Sacramento, Ohio, and Ogun Rivers, as guides to evoke themes of healing, creation, and ancestral legacy.”
Join us for an opening reception on Saturday, June 17, 2023, from 2 – 4pm.
MASAMI TERAOKA: Biography
MASAMI TERAOKA was born in 1936 in Onomichi, Hiroshima, Japan. He graduated in 1959 with a Bachelor of Arts in Aesthetics from Kwansei Gakuin University, Hyogo, Japan. Teraoka continued his education in the United States, earning a Bachelor of Arts (1964) and a Master of Arts (1968) from Otis College of Art and Design, California.
Teraoka’s works integrate reality with fantasy, humor with social commentary, and the historical with the contemporary. Teraoka’s early paintings often focused on the meeting of East and West, and series that began in the 1970s such as “McDonald's Hamburgers Invading Japan,” “New Views of Mt Fuji,” and “31 Flavors Invading Japan” address the impacts of economic and cultural globalization. While sexuality is a recurring theme in his work, his representation of sex shifted from positive depictions of free-love in the 1970s and early 1980s, to a deeper concern with unprotected sex as a vector for mortality and the spread of HIV in the mid-1980s.
In response to the AIDS crisis and its cultural impact, Teraoka began producing large scale works as a means of addressing major social crises. In the 1990s, Teraoka’s narrative paintings addressed social and political issues such as sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, hypocrisy in American politics, and social repression in Russia under Vladimir Putin’s leadership.
Teraoka’s paintings on panel are inspired by gilded Renaissance triptychs, continuing the narrative approach of his earlier, ukiyo-e inspired work, but rendered with baroque oil paints that reference Western ecclesiastical art. In 2017, Teraoka produced an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest in collaboration Viktoria Naraxsa of Russian activist collective Pussy Riot, which premiered at the Honolulu Museum of Art, Hawaii. Since their collaboration, Viktoria has been featured as a protagonist in Teraoka’s paintings, interacting with Pope Francis, Vladimir Putin, and Teraoka’s former collaborator, the geisha Momotaro.
Catharine Clark Gallery, California, presented Masami Teraoka: The Last Swan Lake, the artist’s monographic exhibit in 2022 Teraoka’s work has been the subject of more than 70 solo exhibitions, including the 2017 solo survey Floating Realities: The Art of Dr. Masami Teraoka at California State University, Fullerton. Teraoka’s work has also been featured in solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1979), New York; Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution (1996), Washington, DC; Asian Art Museum (1997), California; Yale University Art Gallery (1998), Connecticut; New Albion Gallery (2012), New South Wales, Australia; and Honolulu Museum of Art (2015), Hawaii, amongst other venues. Teraoka’s work was also exhibited at the RISD Museum, Rhode Island, along with a catalogue; Cedar Street Galleries, Hawaii; Art Gallery at New South Wales, Australia; and Katonah Museum of Art, New York in 2022, as well as the Albuquerque Museum, New Mexico in 2019, many of which continue into 2023.
His work is represented in more than 50 public collections worldwide, including the Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, California; Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; Crocker Art Museum, California; Honolulu Museum of Art, Hawaii; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire; the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon; Gallery of Modern Art, Scotland, United Kingdom; Center for Contemporary Graphic Art and Tyler Graphics Archive
Collection, Fukushima, Japan; National Gallery of Victoria, Australia; and Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin, among others. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, California, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, California, and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, acquired woodblock prints of McDonald’s Hamburgers Invading Japan/Tattooed Woman and Geisha III (2018). The latter institution also added 31 Flavors Invades Japan/Today’s Special (1982) to its collection. In 2015, the artist was awarded the Lee Krasner Award by the PollockKrasner Foundation in recognition of outstanding lifetime artistic achievement. In 2019, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, acquired a major work by Teraoka, Los Angeles Sushi Ghost Tales/Fish Woman and the Artist I (1979) in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the artist’s solo museum exhibition. In 2016, Teraoka was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from Otis College of Art and Design, California.
Teraoka’s work has been featured in multiple publications, including Ascending Chaos: The Art of Masami Teraoka 1966 –2006, published by Chronicle Books in 2006 and Floating Realities: The Art of Masami Teraoka, published by California State University, Fullerton in 2018.
The artist lives and works in O‘ahu, Hawaii, and has been represented by Catharine Clark Gallery since 1998.
Masami Teraoka
Waves: Waimanalo Beach, 1986 – 88
Watercolor on paper, mounted as a scroll 42 x 94 inches
$150,000
Masami Teraoka
Waves and Rocks, 1986
Watercolor on paper
Sheet: 12 x 60 inches
Frame: 18 3/4 x 66 3/4 inches
$48,000
Masami Teraoka
Study for Wave Series/Molokai Lookout Point, 1984
Watercolor on paper
Sheet: 24 7/8 x 98 inches
Frame: 32 x 105 1/2 inches
$68,000
Masami Teraoka
Namiyo at Hanauma Bay, 1985
Lithograph drawn on two stones and thirteen aluminum plates with Charbonnel paste tusche and Korn’s crayons, except for the calligraphy and the woodgrain, which were transferred photographically in eighteen colors on Buff Arches Cover paper. Numbered edition of 150, plus 36 proofs. Additionally, there are 34 T.P.s, each unique, annotated T.P. 1–T.P. 34, 2 printing guides, 2 R.T.P.s, and 3 unsigned sales proofs bearing the notation “Unsigned Sales Proof.” Signed and numbered in pencil on the verso. Printed by Evelyn Lincoln and Brian Shure with assistance from Gret Snider, Matthew Chapman, Laurie Palmer, and Mary Fitzgerald. The printers’ chops are in the lower center of the paper. Published by Editions Press, San Francisco, California, with its chop in the paper, lower right.
Sheet and image: 24 7/8 x 35 7/8 inches
Edition of 150 + Proofs
Sheet: 25 x 36 inches
Frame: 35 1/2 x 45 3/4 inches
$6,500 unframed
*Framed edition available for $7,500
$3,800
Masami Teraoka
Untitled (Waves), 1984
Woodcut in black ink on rice paper. Only artist's proofs AP 1-7 were printed and designated as such. The print was never editioned. Signed on the recto. Carved and printed by Masami Teraoka. Never published. Paper: 6 1/2 x 9 1/2 inches; Image: 4 x 6 1/4 inches
$1,500
Masami Teraoka
Wave Series/Tattooed Woman at Waimanalo Bay, 1984
Watercolor on paper; unique
Sheet: 28 3/4 x 40 5/8 inches
Frame: 31 3/4 x 43 5/8 inches
$125,000
Masami Teraoka
New Views of Mt Fuji/ Waterfall Contemplation II, 1979
Watercolor on two sheets of paper; unique
Sheet: 11 x 55 inches
Frame: 14 x 58 inches
$125,000
Masami Teraoka
31 Flavors Invading Japan/French Vanilla IV, 1979
Watercolor on two sheets of paper; unique Sheet: 11 x 55 inches
Frame: 14 x 58 inches
$125,000
Masami Teraoka
AIDS Series/Mother and Child, 1990
Watercolor on paper; unique
Sheet: 22 1/8 x 15 inches
Frame: 28 3/4 x 21 1/2 inches
$25,000
Masami Teraoka
AIDS Series/Mother and Child and Snake, 1990
Watercolor on paper; unique
Sheet: 22 x 15 inches
$15,000
Masami Teraoka
Tale of a Thousand Condoms/Cafe au Lait, 1992
Watercolor on paper; unique Sheet: 22 1/4 x 29 7/8 inches
Frame: 29 1/2 x 37 inches
$55,000
Masami Teraoka
Australian Series/Ayer's Rock Fantasy, 1989 Watercolor on paper; unique Sheet: 22 1/4 x 30 inches
Frame: 24 3/4 x 32 1/2 inches
$40,000
Masami Teraoka
Venice Snow Scene/Sushi Turn, 1979
Watercolor on paper, mounted as a scroll; unique
Sheet: 50 x 14 inches
Scroll: 90 x 17 1/2 inches
$125,000
Watercolor, gesso, and toner on paper 6 3/4 x 10 3/4 inches
$2,800
Watercolor on paper
Image: 7 3/16 x 10 3/16 inches; Sheet: 10 1/8 x 13 1/2 inches
$3,500
Masami Teraoka Study for Molokai Lookout Point, 1986 Watercolor on BFK Rives
7 1/2 x 14 7/8 inches
$7,500
Masami Teraoka Preparatory Drawing for New Views of Mt. Fuji/Dolphins and Samurai, 1979 Ink and pencil on vellum
11 x 55 inches
$8,500
Masami Teraoka
Untitled (Study of Tale of One Thousand Condoms), c. 1992
Pencil on paper
6 x 9 inches
$950
Masami Teraoka
Study for Tale of a Thousand Condoms/Cafe au Lait, c. 1992
Pencil on paper
6 x 9 inches
$950
Masami Teraoka Emergency Landing Gear, 1983 Pencil and ink on vellum 9 3/4 x 7 inches
$1,000
Masami Teraoka Study For Storm Series, 1983 Ink and Pencil on Paper 6 x 8 inches
$1,500
Study for AIDS Series/Kyoto Inn, 1981 Ink and pencil on vellum 11 x 6 inches
Study for New Views of Mt. Fuji / La Brea Tar Pits Installation, 1979 Ink on paper 11 x 30 inches $8,500
Masami Teraoka
Untitled, 1978
Pencil and ink on vellum 4 1/8 X 12 3/4 inches
$1,500
Masami Teraoka
Study for Sushi Ghost Tales, 1977 Ink and graphite on tracing paper 8 x 6 1/4 inches
$1,400
Masami Teraoka
Study for Time magazine cover/Golf-club, 1976
Ink on paper
10 1/2 x 7 1/2 inches
$1,200
Masami Teraoka
Study for Venice Beach Series/Self-Portrait, 1975
Pencil and rapidograph on tracing paper 9 x 12 inches
$1,500
Masami Teraoka
Untitled (Study for New Views of Mt Fuji), 1975 Ink on paper 9 x 8 inches
$1,500
Masami Teraoka Study for New Views of Mt Fuji/La Brea Tar Pits and Pleasure Boats, 1975 Ink and pencil on BFK Rives 6 3/4 x 13 1/4 inches
$1,500
Masami Teraoka
Untitled (Study for LA Sushi Ghost Tales), c. 1978
Ink and pencil on paper
9 x 5 inches
$950
Masami Teraoka
Drawing for Pleasure Machine Sculpture, 1970
Ink on paper
5 x 4 inches
$950
Masami Teraoka
Study for Sinking Pleasure Boat and Dinosaurs, 1977 Ink and pencil on vellum
11 x 55 inches
$8,500
Masami Teraoka
Study for McDonald's Hamburgers Invading Japan, 1974
Pencil and radiograph on tracing paper
8 5/8 x 12 inches
$1,500
Masami Teraoka
Drawing for Sculpture #10, Los Angeles County Museum monumental Sculpture Plan (Lipstick Site Specific Installation for LACMA), 1968 Ink and colored pencil on paper 11 1/2 x 12 1/4 inches
$4,500
Masami Teraoka
Drawing for Sushi Series, 1980
watercolor on paper
Sheet: 15 3/4 x 11 1/4 inches; Frame: 24 1/8 x 18 3/4 inches
$6,500 framed
Sheet and image: 12 1/18 x 18 1/2 inches
$8,500 unframed
Masami Teraoka
31 Flavors Invading Japan/Today's Special, 1980-82
Thirty-five-color woodcut printed from hand-carved blocks of cherry wood with natural dyes and with additional hand-coloring on handmade Hosho paper. Numbered edition of 500, plus 33 proofs. Signed and numbered in pencil on the verso. Carved and printed under the direction of Tadakatsu Takamizawa by Hanpei Okura and Kanjiro Sato respectively at the Ukiyo-e Research Center in Tokyo, Japan. Published by Space Gallery, Los Angeles, California. Sheet and image: 11 1/16 x 16 9/16 inches
Proofs available: $3,500 - $4,200 unframed
Masami Teraoka AIDS Series/Geisha in Bath, 2008
A woodblock print in 46 colors from 34 blocks of carved, laminated Cherry wood. Printed by Satoshi Hishimura on Echizen Kizuki Hosho, 100% Kozo paper made by Ichibe Iwano who bears the title National Living Treasure. The blocks were carved by Motoharu Asaka and published in a numbered edition of 75 (originally proposed as an edition of 200, but in 2010, Teraoka changed the numbered edition size to 75), plus proofs. Signed and numbered on the verso.
Sheet: 20 3/8 x 13 13/16 inches; Image: 18 3/8 x 12 3/4 inches
$8,500 unframed
Masami Teraoka
Sarah and Octopus/Seventh Heaven, 2001
Twenty-nine-color woodcut made from hand-carved blocks of cherry wood printed on Hosho paper. Numbered edition of 200 plus proofs. (Editioning is not completed as of winter 2006, but will not exceed 200 in the numbered edition.) Signed and numbered in pencil on the verso. Carved and printed by Tadakatsu Takamizawa, Ukiyo-e Research Center, Tokyo, Japan. Published by Masami Teraoka.
Sheet and image: 10 3/8 x 15 5/8 inches
Edition of 200 + proofs
$3,500 unframed