THE JAPAN FOUNDATION GALLERY
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INTRODUCTION イントロダクション
Hiroshi Nagai’s sun-drenched paintings are inextricably tied to a golden era of Japanese pop music culture. The illustrator’s affective visual style, evocative of balmy afternoons by the pool, pristine beaches and dazzling cityscapes, has made Nagai a veteran of album cover art in the city pop genre, which peaked in the 1980s. Despite his international cult status in design and music circles, Hiroshi Nagai: Paintings for Music is the artist’s first international solo exhibition. Hiroshi Nagai: Paintings for Music, presented by The Japan Foundation, Sydney on September 25, 2020 - January 23, 2021, offers a rare chance to view Nagai’s vivid works outside of Japan. The exhibition unveils original paintings that adorn iconic record covers, posters and other products spanning the illustrator’s expansive career. AMERIC A TH ROU GH H I RO S HI N A GA I ’S E Y E S As a young adult, Nagai spent the early 1970s travelling across the United States. This is where he landed on a goldmine of inspiration for his work. Nagai drew on the country’s rich urban and natural landscapes, the relentless optimism of the American psyche and everyday visual culture found in ubiquitous advertisements. The artist’s iconic swimming pool paintings took inspiration from advertisements for pool cleaner. With a distinct design aesthetic of flat lines, smooth forms and vibrant colour palettes, Nagai’s paintings depict an idealised lifestyle of effortless sophistication and indulgence. Motifs of airplanes, surfboards and glossy sportscars reflect the then-growing accessibility of luxuries such as travel and recreation to America’s middle classes. These figures amplify the fantasy and escapism native to Nagai’s splendid imagery. Nagai harmonised his Japanese sensibilities with Western forms of surrealism, hyperrealism and pop art, unknowingly sharing formal and thematic similarities with the paintings of British artist David Hockney. Though Nagai has always lived and worked in Japan, the clear blue skies, tranquil oceans and opulent summers depicted in his paintings are archetypal of an all-American idyll of the west coast and Hawaii, where beaches and resorts abound.
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JA PA N ’S E C O N O MI C BO O M AN IM AT ES M USIC C ULT UR E Nagai was developing his craft during Tokyo’s tech boom, which resulted from Japan’s postwar growth known as the ‘economic miracle’. From the end of the second world war until the late 1980s, the country enjoyed a state of economic prosperity. Japan thrived through the export of cutting-edge technologies from companies such as Sony and Panasonic, along with vehicles manufactured by Toyota, Nissan and Honda. As cash flow pumped through the hands of Japanese citizens, a new wealthy leisure class emerged. Buoyed by newfound optimism, people looked toward a modern living standard of leisure and abundance. Japan’s participation in a globalised economy prompted an increased interest in Western consumer goods and American popular culture. As Japan entered this bold new era, the urban sound known as city pop was born. This music genre is distinguished by its smooth and highly polished melodic tunes that blend synth pop, disco, funk, boogie, jazz-fusion, R&B and more. City pop had a purposefully Western flavour, but Japanese musicians and their lyrics offered local listeners relatability and thus a deeper affiliation with the music. While city pop made way for new music to emerge after Japan’s economic bubble burst at the end of 1989, decades later with the internet came a city pop resurgence. In 2017, a YouTube algorithm rediscovered the obscure 1984 pop-funk hit Plastic Love by Mariya Takeuchi.1 The city pop-style track became an online sensation and a new interest in city pop and nostalgia for the leisure lifestyle it produced spiked in the public imagination. City pop’s revival has paved the way for new subgenres like neo city pop, vaporwave and future funk, which reference the genre in new interpretations for the 21st century. T HE PA I N T I N G S I N S PI R E D T HE SON GS Although Nagai was not familiar with Japanese pop music at the time city pop was gaining popularity, the optimism and infatuation with American lifestyle conjured by his paintings drew interest from city pop musicians from the late 1970s onward. Renowned song writer and record producer Eiichi Ohtaki asked Nagai to collaborate on an illustrated book, which became the historic publication A Long Vacation. This fortuitous collaboration, as well as the subsequent record 2
of the same name, thrust Nagai’s work into the limelight, fusing the city pop genre with the illustrator’s unique visual style. Nagai has remarked that “it was actually the paintings of mine which lead to the songs. Mr. Ohtaki did write them under the influence of my paintings.”2 As a result, Nagai met heightened attention from the music industry, with artists eager for him to illustrate their record jackets. Gaining widespread popularity, Nagai’s glittering skylines and turquoise bodies of water moved beyond city pop to soul, funk, rock and other music genres and were absorbed into different aspects of Japanese popular culture, including consumer products and advertisements. HIROSH I N AGAI’ S L A S T I N G I MPA C T Along with city pop, Nagai’s summer landscapes are well-known as visual representations of the atmosphere of the 1980s. With city pop’s re-emergence in the 2010s, Nagai’s work has also drawn renewed widespread attention. Like Plastic Love, his early imagery has traversed online forums, blogs and streaming sites and found new appreciation in contemporary culture. Beyond this, as captured in this exhibition, Nagai’s indelible painting style fascinates artists and organisations across countries, generations and music genres, with commissioned works for Speedo and Tower Records, as well as cover art for the Pacific Breeze compilation albums and French musician Onra’s record Nobody Has To Know. Perhaps this is because the artist’s work has a universal appeal in enticing viewers to be transported into the paintings’ settings. Nagai’s work continues to invite us on an eternal vacation.
— 1. Patrick St. Michel, “Mariya Takeuchi: The pop genius behind 2018’s surprise online smash hit from Japan”, The Japan Times, November 17, 2018. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2018/11/17/music/mariya-takeuchi-pop-genius-behind-2018s-surprise-online-smash-hit-japan/. 2. Thomas Venker, “My Heart is Dedicated to Soul Music”, Kaput Magazine, March 19, 2015. https://kaput-mag.com/stories_en/hiroshi-nagai/.
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BIOGRAPHY バイオグラフィー
Born in Tokushima City in 1947, Hiroshi Nagai first gained experience as a graphic designer before launching his career as a freelance illustrator in 1978. His work is distinguished by his illustrations of crisp urban landscapes and tropical motifs, as seen on album covers such as Eiichi Ohtaki’s A Long Vacation and Niagara Song Book. Nagai’s publications include A Long Vacation (1979, CBS/Sony Publishing), Halation (1981, CBS/ Sony Publishing) and Niagara Songbook (1982, Shogakukan). He was awarded the Golden Disc as a special album cover prize for his work on A Long Vacation. Nagai’s style has gained iconic status and his work adorns album covers for numerous artists, including Naoya Matsuoka, Hiroshi Fujiwara/Hiroshi Kawanabe, Kiyotaka Sugiyama, Teen Runnings, ikkubaru, Sunny Day Service, and Kashif as well as the AOR breeze compilations. Today, he works not only as an illustrator but also as a designer, DJ and music critic.
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A MESSAGE FROM HIROSHI NAGAI アーティストメッセージ
For my first overseas show here in Sydney, Australia I have made a special selection spanning my career as an illustrator from the end of the 1970s through to my most recent work. Recently, the music and culture of Japanese artists who were deeply influenced by AOR and West Coast Rock has been getting attention as ‘city pop’. As this style grows in popularity internationally, it is being imported back into Japan, and as an artist who has been associated with it since the beginning, I have been getting support from overseas fans on Twitter and Instagram. I find myself bemused but at the same time intrigued by the fact that, without meaning to, I can collaborate with creators who are two generations younger than myself.
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LIST OF PAINTINGS ペインティング 1 Hiroshi Nagai
Sorry... Come Back Later 2017 Acrylic on canvas 455mm x 380mm Artwork for Sorry... Come Back Later by Aklo x Jayed 2 Hiroshi Nagai
Untitled 1993 Acrylic on canvas 530mm x 455mm Artwork for The Best of T.K. Records (Rock Your Soul) 3 Hiroshi Nagai
Downtown Sunset Aircraft - Nite Flyte 2019 Acrylic on canvas 455mm x 455mm 4 Hiroshi Nagai
Uptown Sunset 2013 Acrylic on canvas 455mm x 530mm Artwork for Record Store Day Japan 2013 5 Hiroshi Nagai
Urban Sunset - Two Palm Trees 1982 Acrylic on canvas 455mm x 530mm Artwork for Niagara Song Book by Eiichi Otaki 6 Hiroshi Nagai
Downtown Sunset - Poolside Red Flower 2006 Acrylic on canvas 455mm x 530mm
7 Hiroshi Nagai
Poolside - Yellow Towel 2019 Acrylic on canvas 455mm x 530mm 8 Hiroshi Nagai
Time Goes By... 2008 Acrylic on canvas 530mm x 455mm 9 Hiroshi Nagai
Uptown Poolside - Bondi Beach 2017 Acrylic on canvas 455mm x 530mm Artwork for Speedo 10 Hiroshi Nagai
Downtown Sunset Poolside 2009 Acrylic on canvas 530mm x 455mm Artwork for Afternoon Delight by Ginger Rose 11 Hiroshi Nagai
Uptown Poolside - Architecture 2000s Acrylic on canvas 455mm x 380mm Artwork for Delfonics / Rollbahn 12 Hiroshi Nagai
A Long Vacation 1987 Acrylic on canvas 455mm x 380mm Artwork for A Long Vacation by Eiichi Ohtaki
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13 Hiroshi Nagai
Uptown Poolside 2019 Acrylic on canvas 455mm x 530mm Artwork for Tower Records Japan 40th Anniversary 14 Hiroshi Nagai
Reimen de Koiwoshite 2001 Acrylic on canvas 455mm x 380mm Artwork for Reimen de Koiwoshite by Eiichi Shotaki (parody of A-Men de Koiwoshite, Niagara Triangle Vol. 2) 15 Hiroshi Nagai
夜韻 Night Tempo 2019 Acrylic on canvas 410mm x 410mm Artwork for 夜韻 Night Tempo by Night Tempo
16 Hiroshi Nagai
Brighter 2015 Acrylic on canvas 530mm x 455mm Artwork for Brighter by Ikkubaru 17 Hiroshi Nagai
Urban Tokyo Sunset 2017 Acrylic on canvas 530mm x 455mm Artwork for gotokyo.org, Tokyo Convention & Visitors Bureau
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18 Hiroshi Nagai
Rhythm from the Ocean 1995 Acrylic on canvas 455mm x 530mm Artwork for Rhythm from the Ocean by Kiyotaka Sugiyama 19 Hiroshi Nagai
Beachside Cloud Vehicle late 2000s Acrylic on canvas 530mm x 455mm 20 Hiroshi Nagai
Eleki on the Beach Ventures Medley 1984 Acrylic on canvas 455mm x 380mm Artwork for Nagisa-no Eleki Party by Sea-Boys
LIST OF VINYL レコード
21 Various Artists
Light Mellow Sealine 2017 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 22 Air Supply
Strangers in Love 1980 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 23 Various Artists
Breeze - AOR Best Selection 2002 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 24 Various Artists
Hawaiian Dream (soundtrack) 1987 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 25 Ikkubaru
Brighter 2017 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 26 Various Artists
Battle of Groups Vol.1 1977 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 27 Various Artists
Battle of Groups Vol.2 1977 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 28 Bronze
East Shore 2019 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai
29 Sea Boys
Eleki On The Beach Ventures Medley 1982 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 30 Niagara Fall of Sound Orchestral
Niagara Song Book 1982 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 31 Pictured Resort
Southern Freeway 2017 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 32 Anders & Poncia
Anders ‘N’ Poncia Rarities 1988 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 33 AAA
No Way Back 2017 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 34 Eiichi Ohtaki
A Long Vacation 1981 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 35 Various Artists
Pacific Breeze: Japanese City Pop, AOR & Boogie 1976-1986 2019 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 36 Various Artists
Pacific Breeze 2: Japanese City Pop, AOR & Boogie 1972-1986 2020 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 8
37 Onra
Nobody Has To Know 2018 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 38 Sunny Day Service
Dance To You 2016 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 39 Various artists
The Twist (The Best of Oldies But Goodies) 1977 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 40 Kay Ishiguro
Purple Road 1983 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 41 Max Romeo
Loving You 1983 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 42 Air Supply
The Whole Thing’s Started 1980 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 43 Boo
Smile In Your Face 2002 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai
45 Naoya Matsuoka and Wesing
The Wind Whispers 1982 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 46 Naoya Matsuoka and Wesing
Majorca 1982 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 47 Naoya Matsuoka and Wesing
The Show 1982 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 48 Naoya Matsuoka and Wesing
Son 1982 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 49 Sing Like Talking
Reveal (Sing Like Talking On Vinyl Vol.1) 2000 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 50 Hiroshi II Hiroshi
Hiroshi II Hiroshi Vol. 1 1993 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai The vinyl display will be rotated throughout the duration of the exhibition. 21-38 Sept 25, 2020 - Nov 25, 2020 34-50 Nov 26, 2020 - Jan 23, 2021
44 Naoya Matsuoka and Wesing
September Wind 1982 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai
PAIN T IN GS FOR M USIC : SOUN D T RAC K
サウンドトラック
Playlist available on Spotify 9
THE JAPAN FOUNDATION GALLERY
PRESENTED BY The Japan Foundation, Sydney Yurika Sugie, Simonne Goran, Susan Bui, Anne Lee, Aurora Newton IN COLLABORATION WITH
SUPPORTED BY
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