Celebrating the Life of Chie Takahata転変無常ー母に捧げる展覧会
Tokyo Biennale 2020/2021
MARGINAL: Hear Our Voices
Tucked away on a quiet street in Nihonbashi-Kodenmacho, Tokyo, Jisshi Square & Park is located where once stood (during different eras) a prison, execution ground, elementary school, Buddhist temple and now stands a nursing home and kindergarten. From July 10th to August 7th, Jisshi Square was the home for Sanae Takahata's Tokyo Biennale Exhibition "MARGINAL: Hear Our Voices." This exhibition featured 21 oil paintings created after in-depth interviews with her subjects (1991-1995 and 2012-2021) and posters featuring answers received from global participants in a 42-part questionnaire. Also on display were the interview records and photos that accompany the oil paintings. Symbolic of the artist's "outsider" sentiments, the artwork was exhibited inside (one room) and outside (in the hallways). Inside the room represented "acceptance & conformity." The hallways represented our "Marginal Identity." The hallways belong to everyone and at the same time no one. VOICES past and present emanated from Jisshi Square.
The Journey of “Night of Danger and Pleasure.”
A Traveling Tea Cup Haruko Greenberg
Sanae is a constant traveler like me. We’ve known each other for a long time and our paths crossed in many places along the way over the years.
An amazing thing about her is that every time I see her, be it in Tokyo, Seattle, Havana, Krakow, or Washington, D.C., I find the same sincere and loving person with the total dedication to the pursuit of art. Her creative mind and imagination are restlessly exploring the world of no borders in space and time. That’s why it’s always exciting to catch up with her and listen to the stories of her new adventures in life and her endeavors in art.
At our latest meeting in Washington she shared a magical story of Anne Cohen and a traveling tea cup. This story spans from the very beginning of her artistic life to where she is today.
So let me tell you that story:
In 1977 at the age of 18, right out of high school, she left her hometown of Maebashi and moved to Paris without knowing anybody. She studied hard at a century-old art school in Montparnasse, Académie de la Grande Chaumière, among ambitious young students from all over the world. She got to know many people living there - Parisians, exiles, old and young. Everything was eye-opening and she was absorbing it all. Her art and life became one, inseparable.
Three and a half years later, instead of returning to Japan as her parents hoped, Sanae moved to New York, the center of modern art. The energy of her pursuit accelerated. It was the world of competitiveness. Sanae, now 21, could no longer expect any financial help from her family. She was determined to survive and make a living by selling her art and become professional, and that became her new focus. As she was a friendly, outgoing girl by nature, brought up in a busy shopping street of downtown Maebashi, she formed a natural bond with many New Yorkers who were also tough and tender, each pursuing one’s own dream in this cosmopolitan metropolis.
Figures were always her favorite subjects. She painted portraits of friends in both real and fantastic settings. She walked all over New York City knocking on the doors of art galleries and showing her portfolio. Soon her work caught the attention of gallery owners who found them original.
Sanae’s first solo exhibition was held at Zoma Gallery in 1982. It was a real feat in this art capital for an unknown girl from Asia.
A collector spotted her work in the advertising poster in Art in America magazine, called the gallery ahead of the show, and bought it on the spot. Anne Cohen from Kansas City was the first person who recognized Sanae as a budding professional artist. Neither Sanae nor the gallery owner have met Ms. Cohen before or even after. The oil painting in question, titled Night of Danger and Pleasure (1982), depicts two women on a tea cup ride with the background of the nights scape of Manhattan. They were Sanae and her best friend Marlena, who had emigrated from Cuba after the revolution. The painting was shipped to Kansas immediately after the successful exhibition closed. And that was the last time Sanae saw that painting.
Then suddenly in 2017, some three and a half decades since that show, Sanae received an email from a Kansas art appraiser, informing her of the passing of Ms. Cohen, and her family’s wish of donating the painting to an appropriate public institution. Sanae immediately thought of Arts Maebashi, a contemporary art museum in the city where she grew up, as the best place for her work to be settled for good. It felt like fate. She had painted this work in Maebashi especially for her New York exhibition, in a room above a flower shop that her father’s florist friend had allowed her to use as a studio during her brief visit to her family. The tea cup ride was her favorite in the Maebashi Central Park of her childhood. This painting had two elements of her youthful life combined - Maebashi and New York.
Thus Sanae was reunited with the painting 36 years later in Maebashi. She was moved by the long passage of time and the distance the work had traveled. She felt the deep gratitude for the love and care the Cohen family had given to her work over all these years.
Anne was born in Boston and loved fashion, design, and music. Her curiosity, sweet nature, and infectious laughter made people around her happy. She enjoyed her career in retail as a buyer and was active in volunteer work at a book fair and opera guild. For the last 13 years of her life she volunteered as an art assistant at a local elementary school and was loved by the children who called her Miss Anne. She left two children and four grandchildren. Her faithful poodle also is still missing her....
Such a profile of Anne was totally unknown to Sanae until she found her obituary in The Kansas City Star on the Internet. According to the article, Anne was an avid reader of Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and The New Yorker. She must have found a kindred spirit in Sanae’s work.
Night of Danger and Pleasure is very special for Sanae in two ways. First, it opened the door for her debut in America, that gave her confidence in what she chose to pursue in her life. Second, this is the first work of hers to become part of a collection of a museum in Japan. She felt it’s not just a pure coincidence that the work returned to where it was created. It must have been following her journey all along like a guardian angel.
She now frequently visits her parents in Maebashi from Tokyo to care for them. Looking back she is convinced that she made the right decision. There was no other way for a teenager, who aspired to live the life of an artist, but leave Japan, where she was told that you could call yourself an artist only after age forty. She couldn’t wait that long. She remembers the day she flew away against her father’s stern opposition. Since then she’s been in many places. But one thing is for sure - she has been living a life of her own choice.
It’s been a long journey. But she never lost sight of where she’s from, her starting point. And that is why, she is sure, she has been able to live her life pursuing her art no matter where in the world she was. She is proud to be her own person, walking her own path, the path she herself fearlessly created.
This painting opened yet another door for her, leading to another exciting challenge, the beginning of another journey.
Haruko Greenberg, originally from Kumamoto, Japan, is a former Asahi Newspaper reporter, reporting from Hiroshima, Kobe, Osaka, and Tokyo before moving to the United States in 1985. With her American diplomat husband, she has lived in Warsaw, Casablanca, Havana, Moscow, Tokyo, St. Petersburg, Krakow, Houston, Osaka, and Washington, D.C. She currently resides in Falls Church, Virginia, where she is pursuing pottery.