KOLLEEN KU | DATE 8/6/2015

International Pop

Okamoto Shinjiro's "One Little Indian…" (from the 1964 Ten Little Indian series), is reproduced from the Walker Art Center's essential new survey of International Pop art. In her essay on Tokyo Pop, art historian Hiroko Ikegami writes, "Because Okamoto began making his comic-book-style paintings in 1962, before the advent of American Pop art in Japan, he refused to be classified as a Pop artist, as doing so would have misleadingly indicated that his art was a byproduct of American Pop. Nevertheless, the series shares what he called a 'cheerful nihilism' with American Pop: his ten Indians, though painted colorfully, wear no expressions—a comment on human alienation in postwar Japan. Okamoto, a printing-company art director, executed the watercolor paintings based on preconceived designs, emulating a process common in printmaking."