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Mediatheque
Tanaami Keiichi 田名網敬一
Crayon Angel 蠟筆天使
1975
Keiichi Tanaami’s 1975 animation Crayon Angel layers a discordant soundtrack of heartbeats, sirens, a rooster’s shrieking, and popular music over a collage of cartoons, family photographs, and war footage. Clips of war planes and bombings are tinted a blistering orange, ominous reminders of the artist’s childhood experiences living through the Tokyo air raids at the end of the Second World War. Black-and-white photographs from the artist’s childhood appear in quick succession, usually behind a lattice-like black grid that keeps many of the work’s visuals at a distance. The work’s title refers to drawings of an angel published in wartime Japanese newspapers, following an open invitation to children to redesign the logo of a popular confectionery company. Tanaami’s animation style is similarly innocent, but its jarring and mysterious juxtapositions create an impression of deep loss underneath the work’s colourful, psychedelic surface. At once aggressive and playful, Crayon Angel encapsulates many of the tensions embedded in pop art in post-war Japan.
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