Campus Technology Sourcebook


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Campus Technology Sourcebook

Campus Technology Sourcebook

However progressive her artistic ambitions were, Japanese artist Atsuko Tanaka’s roots remain within Japanese culture. Her work indirectly relates back to early ideals within Buddhist traditions and shows an exciting development of those ideals in relation to modern social and political happenings during Tanaka’s life in the twentieth century.

Early Work

Tanaka’s work is based on the idea that ordinary things can be art, in line with the DADA movement going on in the west around the same time. Her early work was based on calendars, blueprints, and printed documents that surrounded her during a long hospital stay. Though based on these types of systematic formats, the rhythm that Tanaka’s work employed was compared to the raw flow of music. Her expressive use of color and the repetition of circles, squares, and x shapes create an aesthetic quality that appealed to postwar Japan. Tanaka’s work “brought action into the static gallery milieu” (Cotter).

Impermanence

In Buddhism, the idea of impermanence is particularly important when related to wealth and belongings in a society obsessed with individual power and financial gain. Tanaka addresses her work to consumer culture to make a statement about excessive society.