Taro Okamoto¡¯s ¡°Men Aflame¡± (1955) is a swirling fusion of figuration, surrealism and abstraction. The content addresses the irradiation of Japanese sailors onboard the Dai-go Fukuryu-maru by fallout from American nuclear testing on Bikini Atoll. The painting is part of the 1950s Japanese art movement known as ¡°reportage.¡± It was serious art ¡ª politically engaged, socially conscious and outraged.
¡°Art informel¡± (unformed art) of the later 1950s swept aside reportage and everything else with such apparent force that it was refered to as a whirlwind or typhoon. It was, however, largely a generational development in abstract painting.
Before the end of World War II, the mostly 19th-century-born generation who instigated abstraction had died ¡ª Paul Klee in 1940, Robert Delaunay in 1941, Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian in 1944. Postwar Paris rehabilitated those ¡°cool¡± geometrical abstractions, though an oppositional trend focusing on an abstraction with figurative and expressive elements also arose. These were lyrical, organic and expressed inner sentiment. The trend gained traction in a 1945 loosely affiliated Salon de Mai exhibition by the postwar School of Paris artists. And it was this show, which was introduced to Japan in 1950-51, that segued into informel.
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