The Un-Austere Beauty of Takako Yamaguchi

Takako Yamaguchi, Procession, 2024. Courtesy of the artist; Ortuzar, New York; and as-is.la, Los Angeles

Takako Yamaguchi's work was a standout at the 2024 Whitney Biennial and in recent historical surveys of Pattern and Decoration (2019) and Photorealism (2024) at MOCA. Now MOCA Grand Ave. is showing ten of her recent "Seascapes" as an installment of its rebooted Focus series. It's Yamaguchi's first solo museum exhibition in her adopted hometown. 

A Japanese citizen living in Santa Monica, Yamaguchi began making art in the 1970s, the age of peak minimalism and conceptualism. Her goal was to "sidestep such then-mainstream positions in contemporary art as 'the tough,' 'the ugly,' 'the angry'…" 

Takako Yamaguchi, Crocheted Top, 2012-2017. Collection of Brad and Cynthia Thiel 

Yamaguchi works in series, each so different that it could be taken as the work of a distinct artist. Such paintings as Crocheted Top and Untitled (2) could hardly be more different from the abstracted seascapes now on view.

Takako Yamaguchi, Untitled (2), 2017-2019

Takako Yamaguchi, Pilot, 2024. Collection of Simone Frediani

The artist describes the Seascapes as "abstractions in reverse." They layer hard-edge color and pneumatic braids into sea, land, clouds, and sky. The use of gold evokes Japanese screens and Renaissance panels. Vertical, cloud-to-sea lines are a shorthand for Japanese downpours and/or California's atmospheric rivers. There is an Art Deco influence. That Western movement was popular and widely appropriated in Japan. In the U.S. the Museum of Modern Art disdained Art Deco (exception: early Brancusi), apparently judging it a middlebrow and girly betrayal of the avant-garde. 

Takako Yamaguchi, Accomplice, 2025. Courtesy of the artist; Ortuzar, New York; and as-is.la, Los Angeles

The Seascapes bear comparison to the proto-postmodern American landscapes of Georgia O'Keeffe, Rockwell Kent, and Agnes Pelton. Accomplice, created for this exhibition, uses the classicism of Ionic columns and gold ground in a weather map for a climate spiraling out of control.

"MOCA Focus: Takako Yamaguchi" is at MOCA Grand Ave. through Jan. 4, 2026. Anna Katz curated, with Emilia Nicholson-Fajardo.

Takako Yamaguchi, Residue, 2023. Private collection

Takako Yamaguchi, Trap, 2024. Private collection, United Kingdom