In 1975, Toshiko Takaezu was doing an artist residency in Hilo, Hawaiʻi, when a gaggle of journalists and VIPs got here to her studio. On the time, the artist was making her closed or moon kinds, massive orbs of clay lined in daring brushstrokes and washes of colour. When pressed to clarify her work to the group, Takaezu shocked them by replying, “Crucial factor about this piece is the darkish area that you would be able to’t see, the darkish air that’s in it that you would be able to’t see.”
It could appear unusual that Takaezu — an excellent colorist, creative sculptor, and intensely disciplined employee — would place the best emphasis in her work on one thing invisible and past her management. However the story reveals how a lot the artist cultivated a way of openness to her supplies, her course of, and the way others interpreted her work. All through her lengthy profession, Takaezu strove tirelessly to uncover the chic, even when she discovered it by chance. And actually, the interiors of her vessels contained extra than simply air, as I’ll clarify later.
Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within on the Museum of Superb Arts Houston is an expansive survey of the artist’s life and work and is her first nationally touring retrospective in 20 years. Organized by the Isamu Noguchi Basis and Backyard Museum (which hosted the present March 20–July 28, 2024), the exhibition options some 100 artworks from the Fifties till her demise in 2011, together with Takaezu’s large-scale ceramics and her little-seen weavings and work. Worlds Inside presents viewers with a uncommon alternative to immerse themselves on this pioneering artist’s distinctive imaginative and prescient and listen to her work, too.
Takaezu’s dad and mom immigrated from Okinawa, Japan, to Hawaiʻi, the place the artist was born in 1922. The sixth of 11 kids, she grew up on her uncle’s watercress plantation in rural Maui, the place she additionally did farm work between her research. Takaezu’s introduction to clay got here after she dropped out of highschool to work as a housekeeper for a pair in Honolulu who owned the Hawaiian Potters’ Guild, the state’s first ceramics manufacturing unit. Working there remodeled Takaezu’s life. “As soon as I began touching clay, I cherished it,” she later recalled. “I knew there was one thing far more than making industrial issues.”
Set up view of “Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Inside” on the Museum of Superb Arts, Houston
The artist spent the struggle years working with clay and honed her expertise on the College of Hawaiʻi. In 1951, she left dwelling to review on the revolutionary Cranbrook Academy of Artwork close to Detroit, Michigan. Regardless of the large change in tradition, geography, and local weather, Takaezu thrived there, studying a lot from the strict however succesful “Mom of American Ceramics,” Finnish artist Maija Grotell. “Hawaiʻi was the place I realized approach,” Takaezu said. “Cranbrook was the place I discovered myself.”
Toshiko Takaezu, “Zeus,” 1995
After graduating, the artist made a pivotal eight-month-long journey to Japan, the place she rediscovered her Okinawan roots and explored the state of the nation’s ceramic arts. Girls potters had been virtually unprecedented in Japan when Takaezu arrived, however she was capable of go to and even work below quite a lot of ceramicists, from generational practitioners to avant-garde artists. Takaezu additionally studied Zen Buddhism at a temple in Kyoto throughout this journey, although she would later reject the thought of her work being one way or the other consultant of the West’s idea of Zen or Asian spirituality, as she discovered these associations to be reductive and exoticizing. Nonetheless, her time in Japan formed her observe: Takaezu’s conferences with Kaneshige Tōyō, Kitaōji Rosanjin, Yagi Kazuo, and different Japanese creators taught her that artmaking was a holistic way of life that went far past approach alone.
These formative experiences and locations really feel current within the works on show. Takaezu’s gracefully layered glazes typically evoke the colours of a Hawaiian panorama, and her gestural marks recall Japanese calligraphy. Her experimental kinds emerged from the work she started at Cranbrook, however she was additionally in dialogue with currents within the New York artwork scene, particularly after she moved to New Jersey and commenced instructing at Princeton College beginning in 1967.
Toshiko Takaezu, “Closed Type,” 2004
The artist adamantly rejected labels, however actions like Summary Expressionism and Colour Discipline portray come to thoughts, particularly when viewing Takaezu’s canvases. Nevertheless, these works’ highly effective strokes and multidirectional drips are literally the results of Takaezu translating the processes that she used to glaze her vessels’ dynamic surfaces into acrylic on canvas fairly than a results of her mimicking her painter friends. Finally, portray on canvas constituted a a lot smaller a part of her observe than her work in ceramics. “I just like the clay higher as a result of it’s extra alive,” she stated.
Weavings had been additionally a secondary manner of working for Takaezu. She realized her most popular methodology, the Scandinavian rya hand knotting approach, from one other Finnish Cranbrook teacher named Marianne Strengell. Worlds Inside options archival images of exhibitions that had been staged throughout Takaezu’s lifetime that present that she most popular to current her textiles collectively together with her ceramics. Now as then, the artist’s weavings are displayed horizontally as substrates for her clay works and vertically as nonfunctional wall hangings. In each circumstances the textiles’ shaggy textures and wealthy colours praise Takaezu’s earthy, painted vessels.
Set up view of “Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Inside” on the Museum of Superb Arts, Houston
Though Takaezu largely stopped weaving within the mid-Nineteen Seventies, the observe related her to Alice Kagawa Parrot, and Leonore Tawney, two famend textile artists, lifelong mates, and collaborators. Takaezu and Tawney exhibited steadily and even lived collectively throughout their lifetimes, so it’s becoming {that a} choice of Takaezu’s large-scale closed-form works are displayed with certainly one of Tawney’s wall-sized weavings within the closing gallery of Worlds Inside.
Textiles and ceramics have interaction with our sense of contact, however Takaezu was additionally occupied with the chances of sound. The curiosity got here unexpectedly: Within the late Sixties, a small piece of clay fell inside certainly one of her closed kinds earlier than firing, in order that the piece grew to become a type of rattle as soon as it got here out of the kiln. Takaezu was so happy with this unexpected “message” — as she known as these sounds — that she continued to incorporate items of clay and even hidden carvings on the insides of her closed-form vessels.
Worlds Inside grants guests the uncommon alternative to come across this lesser-known aspect of Takaezu’s work because of movies by exhibition co-curator and sound artist Leilehua Lanzilotti, who gently prompts Takaezu’s vessels individually by hand. Lanzilotti’s auditory interventions fill the exhibition with ethereal clinking and clanking noises that animate Takaezu’s works with an otherworldly liveliness.
The exhibition is a surprising aesthetic expertise and really worthwhile, but it surely feels remiss to complete this evaluate with out mentioning the very good catalog as properly. The e-book options ten fascinating essays exploring completely different aspects of the artist’s life and work. These are considerate and vital contributions to Takaezu’s creative legacy, not least as a result of her work has lengthy been misinterpreted, underappreciated, or pushed between the worlds of nice artwork and craft.
Within the catalog, we additionally discover picks from Takaezu’s spirited interviews and writings, together with intimate recollections from her former college students and apprentices. These tales — the place we study Takaezu as an artist, gardener, cook dinner, instructor, and at the same time as an impromptu, late night time area hockey participant — actually assist us get to know her on a a lot deeper degree. It’s a privilege to study Takaezu and to get pleasure from her glorious artwork.
Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within is on view on the Museum of Superb Arts Houston by means of Might 18, 2025. The exhibition will journey to the Chazen Museum of Artwork on the College of Wisconsin-Madison September 8–December 23, 2025 and the Honolulu Museum of Artwork February 13–July 26, 2026.
