One of a number of strange, short animations made by Tanaami in the 1970s with the assistance of professional animators. IMDB lists 13 of these films but biographical notes for Tanaami refer to others before and after. This one is on YouTube together with a handful of others, or you can see the same films in better quality at Ubuweb.
There’s another book of his stuff called ‘A Portrait of Keiichi Tanaami’ that includes a DVD of his animations which I’ve been after for a while but been put off by the 60-odd pound asking price. However, reminded of it by today’s post I checked again on Amazon and got one for £20 so thanks! Another thought is how, via ‘Yellow Submarine’, he must have influenced the look of ‘Crystal Tipps and Alistair’ (a childhood fave) – particularly the Butterfly, the Bird and the Flora
A lot of this style seems to go back to Heinz Edelmann and (to some degree) Peter Max. I’ve wondered a few times who was most most influential out of those two; possibly Edelmann since everyone knows Yellow Submarine. Edelmann and Tanaami are both in the recent Electrical Banana book about psychedelic art.
Yes, Electrical Banana is a good one; did you ever come across a copy of the 70’s Mick Farren book, Get On Down, it allegedly bankrupted Big O Posters because it used such high quality inks for the reproductions of the posters including proper metallic inks for the major Hapshash ones that it presents. I’ve since collected the large size reprints of those produced by the San Francisco Art Labs and they fill my heart and eyes with joy whenever they catch the light in a certain way. My favourite one of those is the ‘I can See For Miles’ for The Who but my favourite of their work is the one they did for their own L.P. http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1155361/hapshash-and-the-coloured-coat-poster-hapshash-and-the/ which I sadly only have in the Farren book – the little girl in the bottom right of it really does seem to change colour as the light changes. Talking of Peter Max, I don’t if you’ve seen this before but it’s like a 30 second precis of ‘Yellow Submarine’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RLU0N0eoZ8 and whilst looking for this if found this even trippier one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rne9ayKc5qg
I have a battered copy of the Farren book bought when it was remaindered circa 1980. I wish now I’d bought two copies since you can’t find cheap ones any more, and I pulled out some of the posters to go on the wall. It’s a great book for the Hapshash designs; Michael English’s book has more of them but at smaller size and lacking the metallic inks.
And I’ve seen the Peter Max ads, thanks. Thought about linking to them in the past but ads of any variety tend to grate.