Modern Totemism

I’m finding myself smitten with the work of Japanese artist Kazumasa Nagai, collected in a post at Animalarium. These bold, graphic images put animal spirits at the heart of a floating world of technology and modern culture.

At another Animalarium post, Laura Ottina describes Kazumasa’s work:

For over forty years Kazumasa Nagai has communicated his poetic message of harmony between man and nature through artworks that are refreshingly diverse but remain consistently elegant, striking and essential. Nagai (b. 1929), always an experimenter, has periodically startled the artworld with the dramatic evolutions of his style, from rational abstractions to realistic illustration to computer art to patterns to stylized natural forms and more…. Nagai’s works have been featured in many environmental campaigns, received international awards and are found in collections including the MoMA and the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo.