It is hard to think of a more tragic story than the one surrounding this exhibition.
A visit to "Keiichi Tanaami: Adventures in Memory" will instantly assure you that Tanaami was one of Japan's greatest artists, but his reputation has only just been secured by this major retrospective of his work, an exhibition that he just managed to live to see, dying the day after it opened.
Tanaami's climb to "serious art respectability" was a long one, starting out in graphic design and trashy advertising, before becoming the art director of the Japanese version of "Playboy," essentially a porn mag, despite occasional pseudo-intellectual posturing.
Despite being based in relatively "drug free" Tokyo, he successfully imbibed that whole psychedelic "Andy Warhol/ Roy Lichtenstein/ Yellow Submarine / Monty Python" 1960s aesthetic, giving it a distinctly Japanese spin.
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