ART REVIEW
Sato retrospectives a display of Maui artist's visual fragrance

By Victoria Gail-White
Advertiser Art Critic

•	Tadashi Sato: A Retrospective Through Aug. 18 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays; 12-4 p.m. Sundays The Contemporary Museum, Makiki Heights 526-0232

"Tadashi Sato: A Retrospective" is running concurrently with "Tadashi Sato: A Retrospective — Four Themes" at the First Hawaiian Center. These two exhibits are not to be missed.

Contemporary Museum associate director and chief curator James Jensen's vigilant detective work garnered 100 of the Maui artist's paintings, drawings and watercolors from collections here and on the Mainland.

Sato, born in Lahaina 80 years ago, studied art with Wilson Stamper, Robert Bach, Alfred Preis, Joseph Feher, Ralston Crawford, John Ferren and Stuart Davis, as well as with the Yoshida family in Japan for wood block printing.

Following the direction of these precisionist, modern and neo-cubist teachers, he transformed and developed his own style, which is clearly defined in the chronology of works selected. Here also is an embodiment of patience and perseverance.

Tadashi Sato is a soft-spoken charmer who can talk story. During a recent docent walk-through at the museum, he entertained his audience with enthusiastic tales about his life as an artist.

He worked in a pineapple cannery, as a waiter, bartender, janitor and security guard, and also volunteered for service during World War II (with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team in 1943) before the day that changed his life forever.

He and his wife, Kiyoko, were living in New York City and were to play hosts to some important guests who had heard of Sato's work.

"We were poor, but Kiyoko went to the A&P especially to buy ground coffee" for them, he recalled.

"The actor Charles Laughton came to my small studio in a limo. He came in with Burgess Meredith and Cornelia Otis Skinner. I had the paintings all stacked up and arranged, and I was showing the first one. There was a long silence. He (Laughton) didn't say a word. Finally, he said, 'Mrs. Sato, this is excellent coffee.' So I thought he didn't like my work, and I began to move the first painting. Then he said, 'Don't move that painting,' and after a pause, 'This is pure poetry.' Laughton, Meredith and Skinner bought several paintings. Paid my rent for the next seven months. So, I quit my job" as a janitor.

"Untitled 1957" is the "pure poetry' painting that Laughton purchased that day.

Laughton also was instrumental in connecting Sato with the Willard Gallery in New York City, which launched Sato's career, showing his work from 1958 to 1969.

A form of organic abstract expressionism emerged from Sato's passionate love of the basic natural elements — air, earth, fire and water. These themes are repeated in his works but are somehow never redundant. With laser-sharp intuitive sensitivity, he distills the purest essences of these elements into a visual perfume. "NightSurf," "Profile, West Maui" (1974), the intensely hot palette in "Red Chair" and the recent smaller works "Skyscape," "Undersea" and "Mountain, Sky, Water" are just a few of the works to be inhaled.

Sato's work has a luminous, deceptive and elegant simplicity that can froth the air around and inside the painting composition into a decadent eye-fest. It is a visual dessert of the most delicious kind, with tones of color and texture so subtle and intricate that one is practically transported to another dimension.

In the oil-on-linen painting "Sea Foam," a tiny marine creature that stuck to his foot while he was walking on the beach grew to become the painting's large central focus.

His genius lies in his ability to expose the intrinsic beauty of familiar objects and render them foreign, almost alien to the viewer. We are transported, beamed up. What we know of the world, we discover, is limited. We are humbled yet comforted. I offer you a chance to behold the splendor of creation, Sato says; look a bit more closely.

Sato understands the Earth we live on, especially the ocean. As an inveterate fisherman (since age 7) he has absorbed the light, shapes, colors and textures of the ocean into his core and echoed them out through his paintings and drawings.

A very small ink and watercolor on paper, "Untitled" (1961), overwhelmed my attention. For the longest time, it appeared to be a photograph. Someone standing next to me commented that he was equally fooled. Up close, reflections of sunlight on the ocean's surface were revealed to be cross hatches of ink. Pure artistic magic.

Sato is known for his signature cross-hatched brush strokes, a technique he uses to squeeze out every last bit of paint from the brush. We can notice how they "catch the light as you approach the work and view it," said James Jensen during the walk-through. "The surface shimmers and is activated by the play of light and interactions of light and the brush stokes." Sato says this gives his work a definite structural feeling.

In looking at the work, also notice "the sensitivity of the line is not alone," said Sato. "Notice the relationship of the tone from the background. The tonal relationship (of color) enhances that line, it sharpens it much more than the visual. It becomes an illusion, sharper than what it was." Sato achieves a unity in his work from the subtleties of his color palette, as in the earthy-toned "Senko II" (1984) and "Resting Mynah" (2001).

A video in the viewing room, made in 1984 by Bob Barnett and Devon Gard, is worth watching. In it, a younger Sato paints and talks about his work.

When he is having difficulties with a painting, he moves on to another, but doesn't give up. Often, he finds that in having several works in progress, problems resolve themselves.

"The artist paints in a manner that he knows best," says Sato. "He thinks he is doing the best he can. Good or bad. There are times when the painter paints bad, but that bad is good for the painting. It's a happening. It changes tone. Very often, when I come back to the same place I started, I wonder how I got this far. It happens all the time."

Artist and writer Marcia Morse wrote in an essay that accompanies the catalog, "The work of painting was a cultivation of a state of self-awareness that made the artist a channel for creative energy."

When asked about this "channeling," Sato said, "For me, it has to be an afterthought because you are AT it. In retrospect, you can classify it as spiritual and emotional. But you see how unimportant that afterthought is — the painting has gone on, IT is living."

Sato is busy restoring a 63-foot public commission work he did for Maui County, titled, "Build Thee More Stately Mansions." Here on O'ahu, Sato's 35-foot diameter "Aquarius" — which contains hundreds of thousands of Italian tiles — can be viewed in the central courtyard of the Capitol building.

Jensen asked Sato how he felt about seeing all of his work together for the first time in 50 years. Would he have changed any of it? Did it give him any new ideas?

Sato replied, "No. I feel great. As a matter of fact, I am ready to go back home now and paint some more."

A full-color catalog for Sato's shows will be available in early August. The museum shop is taking orders at 523-3447.