Hisachika takahashi is an artist who worked as an assistant to Robert Rauschenberg in New York and died at the age of 85.
Takahashi has remained a relatively obscure figure for years, despite his close ties to well-known Western artists. Prior to joining Rauschenberg’s studio, he worked as an assistant to Lucio Fontana and invited Jasper Johns, Brice Marden, Gordon Matta-Clark and others to help a project called “Memory” to draw a picture of the United States’ collaboration, which his collaborators did. He even got food from a restaurant run by a famous New York artist, putting sushi and sashimi on the menu – at the time, it was a gesture from a restaurant in the city.
However, over the past decade, Takahashi has become an artist for artists. Photographer Yuki Okumura, for example, recalls seeing Takahashi’s art in the warehouse and then continues to work to bring Takahashi’s work to a wider public, helping to exhibit at venues such as the Centre for Contemporary Art in Brussels and the Fondazione Prada in Milan.
Takahasi was born in Tokyo in 1940 in the Japanese city of Yokosuka, and used these funds to purchase a cargo ship for a trip to Italy. In Venice, he established a connection with Fontana.
Takahashi has been making a group of works called his “flower paintings” which involves applying images of flowers to canvases painted with neon shadows. When Takahashi exhibited the works in 1967 and showed a wide gap in Antwerp, Fontana said the show “ensures his artistic future.”
Takahashi came to the United States in 1969 and was a assistant to Rauschenberg until the artist died in 2008.
The artist’s work is familiar to some extent: like Rausenberg, Takahashi also produced works that also involve materials cut from the mass media, which he then pieced together.
“Studio assistants, art managers, gardeners, gardeners, Cook, Handi, internal security guards and the perfect artist Hisachika Takahashi are a force that cannot be ignored and will be missed,” the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation wrote in a statement this week. “We express our deepest sympathy for Agathe Gonnet, Hummingbird takahashi, and Hisachika’s family and friends.”
