Takao Tanabe 100: Inside Passage
Audain Art Museum, Whistler, BC - To Oct 19
Those unfamiliar with Vancouver Island artist Takao Tanabe could be excused for wondering what “100” has to do with the title of his exhibition. Does it refer to the number of works on display? An introductory-level university course on the artist and his practice? Though Tanabe is prolific, there are not quite 100 works in Inside Passage; but of the more than 50 paintings, you could say that they constitute a career survey. The definitive answer, however, lies in the artist’s age: he turns 100 on September 16.
Tanabe was born in Prince Rupert’s Seal Cove, the son of a commercial fisher. At 16, he and his family were interned in the Kootenays following Canada’s declaration of war on Imperial Japan. After the war, he attended the Winnipeg School of Art with the hope of becoming a sign painter, only to fall under the spell of Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Tanabe continued his studies at the Brooklyn Museum Art School before returning to Vancouver in 1952, where UBC commissioned his mural The World We Live In (1953) for its campus grounds.
Like fellow BC legends Emily Carr, Jack Shadbolt and Gordon Smith, Tanabe is a progressive modern painter who worked in and through a variety of styles, from realism to abstraction, before arriving at a merger of the two. Whereas Carr is known for her late-career churning forests, Shadbolt his clearcuts and Smith his expressive winter brambles, it is Tanabe’s subdued, minimalist unpopulated landscapes that we know him for today. Concurrent with this exhibition is Vistas: From Takao Tanabe’s Travels (to Sep 21), which features scenes from North America, the Arctic and Europe.
