TERAOKA AND THE ART OF CULTURE SHOCK

There’s no other artist quite like Masami Teraoka. No one has so deliciously adapted the fragile art of watercolor to the Japanese tradition of ukiyo-e (floating world) woodblock prints.

No one has so relentlessly skewered the clash of modern American and traditional Japanese cultures in artworks of such wicked wit and startling beauty. Cultural amalgamations have needled many an artist into a state of inspiration, but none has so meticulously honed a distinctive sensibility on Japanese-American culture shock.

Having lived in the United States since 1961, the 48-year-old artist has become a keen observer of America’s commercial gusto and its collision with his native Japanese culture. In a decade or so of showing his art in Los Angeles, Teraoka has delivered such hilarious scenarios as 31 Flavors ice cream and McDonald’s hamburgers “invading Japan,” “Los Angeles Sushi Ghost Tales” and “Sinking Pleasure Boats”--all depicting social turbulence in the style of artists who recorded the fleeting pleasures of Japan’s Edo period. While real life has brought London Bridge to Lake Havasu in the Arizona desert, Teraoka’s art has had the Japanese buying the La Brea Tar Pits and shipping them home to Asia.

Such imaginative madness-- joined with technical expertise and trenchant social commentary--has turned Teraoka into a rare combination: an artist who is both critically acclaimed and popular. Those qualities have also made his art a tough act to follow. When a show of his latest work opens today, at Space Gallery in Hollywood, his audience will turn out with high expectations.

What viewers will see in his “Wave Series” of watercolors is a newly introspective Teraoka-- mellower and more mystically steeped in nature--as well as the old, familiar wit who delights in erotic fantasies and boldly sets them out in artworks as rich in pattern as Oriental embroidery. He will show panoramic views of stylized waves--up to 13 feet wide-- and a group of paintings in which a tattooed Japanese woman is in various states of suggestive entanglement with a giant pink squid or an octopus. All the watercolors were inspired by Hawaii, where he took up half-time residence more than three years ago.

Leading a visitor through the gallery before the pieces were framed and hung, the lithe, long-haired artist talked at length about the forces that have shaped his art and the development of his new work. “This whole show is about waves and how people relate to them, but it’s also a celebration for myself because I finally learned to swim,” Teraoka said.

“It celebrates a private accomplishment of conquering my own fear. I grew up near the ocean in Japan, but I almost drowned when I was 13. In Hawaii, three years ago, I almost broke my neck in the ocean by trying to bodysurf before I knew how to swim.

“The water is so rough, so untouchable, so unreachable, but I always wanted to be friends with it. Hawaiian waves don’t look scary because the color is so soft and brilliant. You think, ‘What can go wrong with that?’ It’s fascinating to me because the scary part is not on the surface.”

The power, calm, rhythm and beauty of the ocean finally seduced this maker of seductive artworks into immersing himself in it, both physically and artistically. The sea also gave him an unexpected “break from social statements and political issues.” Though one wave painting incorporates a fan-shaped inset of a snow scene in Manhattan, others simply explore “the spirit of the wave” and the dramatic movement of great bodies of water as they meet the shore.

“What I studied is how waves move,” Teraoka explained. “If you try depicting what we actually see, it wouldn’t be exciting visually. I wanted to see the way ukiyo-e artists saw. They abstracted so much, and it gave them liberty to create their own vocabulary. When you see Hokusai’s paintings and prints, he has a particular way of depicting waves. I studied his work so carefully, but eventually I was no longer comfortable with what he saw because we have different personalities. His waves are angular; mine are softer, rounder.”

In watercolors of waves crashing against boulders, Teraoka wants to “contrast the hard surface of the rocky, sculptural form with the totally opposite liquidity of water and foam.”

Lovely as they are, these paintings of curling, colliding waves may disappoint viewers who revel in Teraoka’s humor and social commentary. Not to worry. “I’m still concerned with American cultural implications, with being surrounded by commercial merchandise,” he said, walking into a room of watercolors portraying women completely tattooed with blue wave patterns and entwined with multilegged sea life. These “fantasies” came to him while snorkeling.

“Any kind of device for entertainment (like the tattooed women’s’ snorkeling gear) is totally American. They are so good at it; they are amazingly ingenious. That’s what I like to indicate--and then contrast that with the Japanese tradition of tattooing whole figures. They go all out with that.” To complete the dream-like scenes, Teraoka has added conversations between the women and their voracious lovers in Japanese characters along the tops of some of the paintings. Between outbursts of laughter, he translated narratives that have women struggling against their bestial admirers or directing their “massages.” Teraoka’s models for these figurative works are not live people but the protagonists in ukiyo-e prints and Japan’s well-known tradition of erotica. Like his waves that grew into a personal style, his figures are curly-toed, convoluted females that have developed through the study of artists such as Hokusai, Kunisada and Kuniyoshi.

His art as a whole has evolved from his being thrust into an unfamiliar country and merging that experience with his native traditions. After earning a degree in aesthetics from a Japanese university and taking a job in advertising, his sister and brother-in-law (who worked in the American Embassy) encouraged him to “go back to painting” and to try his luck in America before settling into a career.

Teraoka took his family’s suggestion to move to Los Angeles and, at 25, he landed in San Pedro, enrolled in English classes at Los Angeles Harbor College and spent a “terrible” five years learning to communicate. “I was like a baby being born all over again. My university degree meant nothing,” he said. “My mission was to communicate first, then I could start to understand what people think and feel.”

Ironically, it was through Americans that he learned to appreciate Japanese culture: “I grew up with ukiyo-e prints and was fascinated with them, but I didn’t know they were a unique cultural development until I came here and later traveled in Europe. When I learned that, it convinced me to work with that vocabulary. Now my style is set, but I’m still refining and working larger. Concept-wise, I can expand more, and that’s my future.”

Smog drove Teraoka out of Los Angeles a few years ago, but he maintains a studio here, still spends half his time here and credits the city with his success. “L.A. is responsible for the way I paint. This is the right soil for it.”

Teraoka’s exhibition at Space (6015 Santa Monica Blvd.) continues through Feb. 16. Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum will show his erotic works, 1968-1984, from Jan. 27 to March 3. The survey of 30 drawings, watercolors, prints, paintings and sculptures will be accompanied by a catalogue with an essay by Gerard Haggerty.