Surrealist Terrors From A Visionary Japanese Pop Artist

This month in Zurich, 76-year-old artist Keiichi Tanaami shows vivid works made after a bout with severe illness. There are conventional ways to describe Japanese artist Keiichi Tanaami: Pop Art superstar. Designer of album covers for the Monkees and Super Furry Animals. Long-time art director of Japanese Playboy. Subject of dozens of solo exhibitions and inspiration to megastar artists like Takashi Murakami. Then there are unconventional descriptors, which somehow seem more appropriate: “Dark magician of electric cinema . . . manager of the mental discotheque . . . designer of young girls’ beards.” Tanaami, who is now 76, has lived through some of the most significant events of the 20th century. He was nine when he survived the Tokyo air raid, which threw him into “the enigmatic monstrosity of war.” He participated in the explosion of the city’s...