Ay-O (Takao Iijima), Japanese born 1931

From an exhibition in 2023 at the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, DC

 

Takao Iijima began making art in his native Japan.  

 

In 1954, he moved to New York.  After meeting George Maciunas (1931-1978), he joined  the group of artists called Fluxus in 1961.  With them he created immersive environments and objects with which people were invited to interact.

 

He also developed his interest in the colour gradation of the rainbow.

 

 

 

Trouble in Paradise, 1971, screen print on paper.

Ay-O, Japanese born 1931.  

This image undermines one of the most famous paintings in the American cannon (below). 

A-Oy’s Indians have become wraiths; animals are attacking each other and the children are prey.

 

 

 

The Peaceable Kingdom, 1826, oil on canvas. 

Edward Hickey, 1780-1849, American.  National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

 

In this painting, a government has been established in Pennsylvania under the guidance of William Penn’s ‘Holy Experiment’.  Treaties were established with the American Indian population.  There was to be peace and religious tolerance.

 

 

In works which Ay-O painted and also had silkscreen printed, he combined bands of colour with figurative motifs drawn from a large variety of sources. 

 

Since 1964, he has used specialist silkscreen printers in the very laborious process of producing his images using the colour gradations of the rainbow.

 

 

 

Yawn, 1978, screen print on paper.

Ay-O, Japanese born 1931

 

 

He wanted, he said to ‘democratize’ the use of colour. 

 

He wanted to circumvent traditional methods of image-making in making his images.

 

He wanted to represent the sense we (can) make of the world, the pleasure we take in our world, and its humour, by using the orderliness of the graded colours of the rainbow.

 

 

 

 

Rainbow hair, screen print on paper.

Ay-O, Japanese born 1931.  Photo from the website of Ocula

 

 

His colours are saturated and they can also produce a contradictory effect:  one of a sense of  barely contained chaos; barely contained madness. 

 

 

 

 

Magritte, 1977; screen print on paper.

Ay-O, Japanese born 1931

Magritte, with whom this artist feels a kinship.

 

 

The artist’s aim has been to use every colour in the visible light spectrum in an effort to encompass the entire universe. 

 

He has also called his rainbow compulsion ‘rainbow hell’.

 

His use of rainbow colours predates and has no connection with the adoption of these colours in the Rainbow Flag (1978) and the  association of the rainbow with the worldwide LBGTQ community in 1994. 

 

 

 

The Butterfly Effect, 1987; screen print on paper

Ay-O, Japanese born 1931

One of 13 designs commissioned for the Seoul Olympic Games in 1988.

 

 

 

 

Rainbow Night 1, screen print on paper

Ay-O, Japanese born 1931

 

 

 

Rainbow Night 3, screen print on paper, 1971

Ay-O, Japanese born 1931

 

 

Rainbow Night 4, screen print on paper

Ay-O, Japanese born 1931

 

 

 

Rainbow Night 8, screen print on paper, 1971

Ay-O, Japanese born 1931

 

 

 

 

One of the series ‘Rainbow Passes’; screen print on paper, 1986.

Ay-O, Japanese born 1931

 

 

 

Léger‘s Cat, 2001; screen print on paper.

Ay-O, Japanese born 1931. There are reflections of the gallery in this image.

 

At 70, Ay-O paid homage to an artist he considered his master.  Ay-O wrote his PhD. on the art of Fernand Léger.

 

Woman with a Cat, 1921, oil on canvas.

Fernand Léger, 1881-1955, French.  Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY