Natsuyuki Nakanishi’s career began in the late ’60s with his membership in the neo-Dadaist group “Taka-Aka-Naka.” After participating in a number of performances, as well as making objects and some paintings, he turned to full-time painting, and this recent retrospective concentrated on his painting of the ’80s. Nakanishi seems an exemplary contemporary Japanese artist. His work is as decorative as it is radical; as public as it is private; as systematic as it is emotional. The viewer is free to revel in the lushness of the colors and their patterns, the viscosity of the paint, while being