California Coastline

Masami Teraoka, a contemporary pop artist, was born in Japan in 1936 and has lived and worked in the United States since 1961. He is known for satirical content and gentle social criticism.

Teraoka was inspired by his visit to Santa Cruz in 1986 to create this impressive seascape with its expansive view of the Pacific Ocean off the California coastline. Only a rugged cliff on the left interrupts the vista. Here, Teraoka eliminated his usual narrative and erotic elements and focused on nature itself. Gone are the sensuous figures based on the Japanese woodblock tradition that appear in many of his paintings; instead one sees translucent blue rippling water. Still, a critical aspect is implicit even here—commenting on this painting, Teraoka wrote, "Working on my AIDS Series was emotionally intense, and taking a break from it to create uncluttered landscape paintings helped to balance my psyche.… By painting this landscape I was portraying what I felt most strongly about California and dreaming that California's air would be unpolluted so that I could stay there."

In many ways this painting is indebted to the Japanese tradition: the exaggeration of the woodblock line and surface, for example, and the translucent blue color that delicately bleeds, as seen in the prints of Hokusai (1760–1849) and Hiroshige (1797–1858). Also, the extremely horizontal painting is appropriately mounted in a traditional Japanese folding screen.

Inscriptions:
on the right portion of the screen
1. California Landscape
2. Teraoka Masami
on left portion of the screen
1. "After visiting New York, I stayed in San Francisco before I drove Highway One to Santa Cruz.
Every time I drive the California coastline my
fondness for the California Coastline deepens."
2. Cliffs, Ocean, and Sky (a descriptive subtitle for the painting)