Work

Inscriptions

Signed and dated, on reverse: Atsuko Tanaka / 1966

Label

After her experimental work with light and sound in the 1950s, Japanese artist Atsuko Tanaka devoted herself mainly to producing abstract paintings and drawings. Tanaka’s best-known piece, Electric Dress (1956), was a wearable sculpture in the form of scores of colored lights that almost completely obscured the artist when she wore it for public performances. The neon lights of Tanaka’s dress were said to symbolize postwar Japan’s rapid transformation and urbanization. Painted ten years later, Work clearly demonstrates the lasting influence that Electric Dress had on her later images. The lively, colorful composition of circles and lines was inspired by, and directly mirrors, the cords and colored bulbs that composed the sculpture.

Tanaka was a member of the Gutai artist group. Founded in 1954 at a time when many Japanese people were exploring new freedoms, Gutai reacted to American Abstract Expressionism and its European variant Art Informel by advocating radically experimental play with non-traditional materials. Tanaka joined the group in 1955 and became widely known for works that combined sculpture, electric sound and light, and performance.

From the 2019 exhibition The Expanding Universe of Postwar Art, curated by John R. Stomberg Ph.D, Virginia Rice Kelsey 1961s Director

Course History

SART 76, Senior Seminar, Jennifer Caine, Winter 2020

Exhibition History

Japanese Art of the Sixties, Saint Anselms' College, Nasua, New Hampshire, Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, New Hampshire; Colby Junior College, New London, New Hampshire; Keene State College, New Hampshire; Bowdoin College, Maine, 1969-March 1970.

Modern and Contemporary Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 26,2009-March 15, 2010.

The Expanding Universe of Postwar Art, Northeast Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 26-August 15, 2019.

Publication History

John R. Stomberg, The Hood Now: Art and Inquiry at Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, 2019, p. 173, ill. plate no. 104.

Provenance

Collected by Roland A. Gibson (1902-1986, Class of 1924), in Japan, 1963-1968; Roland A. Gibson Art Foundation, Inc.; sold to present collection, April 1970.

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Subjects