The Alamo Sphinx アラモのスフィンクス

In this painting, a Chinese propeller airplane, tigers, and the "Statue of Lack of Liberty" are assaulting people playing baseball at Fort Alamo that is topped with a Stars and Stripes. In 1966, the year it was produced, the Cultural Revolution was raging over China. The painting has been described to be depicting the climate of the time as many young Japanese people saw it, with the prosperity of Japan precariously maintained between the fanaticism of Mao Zedong and the optimism of the United States. But it would be rash to categorize this work, based on what are depicted, as a piece of social reportage or an example of the Japanese pop art which Tateishi started to produce in the preceding year with Japanese "manga" as the primary material. The technique he employs here of assembling fragments of memory, including scenes from movies he saw as a child, is essentially that of surrealism. The two elongated shadows traversing the desert transforms the kitsch picture composed of familiar things into an unreal space out of a daydream. The emblem of the rising sun on the fort's gate indicates that this work dates from the artist's "Sightseeing Art Institute" period after his involvement with the Yomiuri Independent Exhibition. In the following years, he would stay in Italy and the complexity and all-inclusiveness of his art would become even more notable. This work presents that complex world in a compressed seed.