Yoshitaka Amano

There are few artists whose works have been enjoyed by more people around the world than the Japanese artist Yoshitaka Amano. More than eight hundred million people have been Amano’s white knights, exploring dungeons he has created and dying in battle with his dragons in the influential and innovative video-game series Final Fantasy, which was created in 1987 for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The series now stands at twelve games, but it is Amano’s paintings that are on display in this exhibition. They present a fabulous world: Elfin heroines, brutal fighters in full-body armor, and monstrous two-headed horses are depicted in colorful automotive paint on aluminum.

This makes it sound as if Amano’s art confirms a new avatar of artist Takashi Murakami’s “superflat” concept, in which graphic design, pop culture, and fine arts are fused together. In fact, the exhibition also includes a modified version of Amano’s first anime film, made forty years ago, whose characters resemble those saucer-eyed figures wearing space helmets that he paints now. But Amano himself believes in the autonomy of the fine artist and notes that he can do contract work easily; only the challenge presented by being free awakens his creativity. The strength of that imagination is evident in the images here. The grim and smiling black villain and the gray hero with their dynamically curved cloaks remind one of Umberto Boccioni’s futuristic ur-sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913. The seven-part panorama Deva-Loka, 2007, depicts a tangle of monsters reminiscent of those by Hieronymus Bosch, including apple-green devils, fiery dragons, and a delicate heroine. In this exhibition, Amano’s psychedelic mythology depicts the eternal fears and desires of humanity.