Hara Takeshi

Artistic Career

In 1967 Hara took the artist name (gō) Ken Hara and had his first solo show. While initially exhibiting large irregular-shaped canvases, hand painted with lacquer, Hara moved on to applying paint “with a spray gun so as to achieve a perfect evenness unattainable by hand”1 and then almost exclusively to print making.  Petit states that Hara turned to prints to achieve “artistic objectivity” in which the artistic work is severed from its creator, “a state perfectly attainable in printmaking where even the worked plate exists independently of the artist.  Hara feels that this distance creates objectivity, whereas in oil painting there always remains a personal relationship, an interposing hand, a sensibility which is never dispassionate.”2

According to Petit, Hara chose lithography for its “smooth quality of the finish” that “evokes a sensuous coolness…”  Tolman adds that “The particular effects that he realized in his lithographs are more apt to be found in silkscreens.  The delicate shadings, subtle blending of colors and luminosity are difficult to achieve, but Hara has developed a special technique with a method of applying the ink with huge rollers to give his work an element of unbelievable smoothness, lushness, and control.”

Hara’s work is often described, using Minimalist language, as “pristine, dispassionate and self-contained” and “with no personal involvement.”  However, as Petit points out, “because of the difficulty of controlling his magnificent technique of color gradation, Hara must do this work himself; hence a certain personal involvement is an indispensable part of the fabric… “

While his work may appear to be only about “color or form”, his “subject matter is, in fact, deeply rooted in his own culture”3 and “deeply inspired by old Japanese motifs.”4

Hara’s print work is distinguished by his in depth exploration of single motifs, the most prominent of which is his long running series of prints titled Strokes, created between 1973 and the mid-1990s.  Other print series exploring single motifs are titled Gradation (1969 to 1973), No Focus (1970-1972) and more recently Asuka. 

In his series Strokes, represented in this collection by eight works, Hara has employed “an extraordinary range of subtle colors” in creating curved and straight oblong strokes to achieve a traditional, but most modern, form of Japanese calligraphy.  As Smith states “the gradations of the strokes and the finesse of their changes of direction directly recall the movements of brush and ink” in traditional Japanese calligraphy.  

Teaching

“Japan’s leading teacher of the lithographic technique,”6 started his long teaching career in 1973 as a lecturer in the Department of Painting, Tokyo Zokei University where he was to gain a full professorship and retire from in 2008 as Professor Emeritus.  Hara also lectured at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts from 1983 to 1987.   As a teacher he has guided many artists, "including Wako Shuji (b. 1953), whose own work reflects his mentor’s fastidious attention to color and flawless technique."7 In 2008, Hara was honored with an exhibition titled "Harvest –Works of Takeshi HARA and 161 artists", Towa Gallery, Tokyo, commemorating his lifetime of teaching and work.  Currently, Hara is a Visiting Scholar at Nagoya Zokei University of Art and Design. 

1 44 Modern Japanese Print Artists, Gaston Petit, Kodansha International Ltd., 1973, p. 121.

2 Ibid.

3 Collecting Modern Japanese Prints, Then and Now, Mary and Norman Tolman, Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1994, p. 126.

4 op. cit., Petit

5 Contemporary Japanese Prints: Symbols of a Society in Transition, Lawrence Smith, Harper & Row Publishers, 1985, p. 28.

6op. cit., Tolman

7 Ibid. 

Prints in Collection

click on thumbnail for print details