Yasumasa Morimura - The Art of Self-Portaiture in a Post-Modern Global Japan Page history last edited by PBworks 3 years ago

Yasumasa Morimura by JC Brew

Yasumasa Morimura is an internationally respected and controversial Japanese artist who embodies and displaces societal currents in Japanese culture, such as Western assimilation, capitalism, and gender values. He follows the spirit of wabisabi by drawing beauty from the rifts of Japan's connection with the global community and its connection with its own past. As a master of self-portraiture, Morimura is the androgynous outsider peering at the audience or the crowd, with the absent identity of a Noh performer, yet the piercing gaze of the Western critic. Like a wabi sabi ceramic, Morimura is wildly unpredictable and unable to pin down. GOAL OF WIKI: To explore how Japan interacts with the World through the lens of the artist and how the artist creates an identity within his culture and the global community. Background Yasumasa Morimura has achieved fame as a contemporary international artist due largely to his provocative interpretations of a unique subject matter: himself. Morimura appropriates iconic images from Western culture in his photographic selfportraits, including series in art history paintings, American leading actresses from the mid-twentieth century, and more recently, controversial historical world leaders. Morimura was born in Osaka, Japan, in 1951. His artistic training occurred at the Kyoto City University of the Arts, where he graduated in 1978. He has shown internationally in countless solo shows and many larger group exhibitions.. Some interpret the incessant self-portraits as a form of megalomania and selfaggrandizement, in order to gain wealth and prestige, yet this does not account for the risks that he takes as an artist. http://www.luhringaugustine.com/index.php?mode=artists&object_id=75&view=bio Exhibition History

Self-Portraiture "Taking photographs is generally an act of 'looking at the object, whereas 'being seen' or 'showing' is what is most interest to one who does a self-portrait...selfportraits deny not only photography itself but the 20th century as an era as well...an inevitable phenomenon at the end of the 20th century." - Yasumasa Morimura Morimura claims that over the course of his career, has has taken on 300 different faces or characters. It is a process of relinquishing individuality and self, and releasing the identity of the other into a new sphere of interpretation. In addition to achieving a high level of lookability, Morimura also explores his own identity behind the lens, and charts an evolution with his characters. Yasumasa Morimura's flow chart for beauty: Recollection-->Commotion Within-->Enthusiasm for Expression-->Beauty Postmodern Artist The question of what is an international, post-modern artist must also be examined. International audiences do not know how to react to Morimura. For the duration of its existence, the study of art history has maintained a grounding on Western works, and although global art has gained wide acceptance, Morimura's ressamblements create a dangerous mix of elements without firm footing. Critics in Paris and throughout Europe might find the work intellectually delighting yet offensive to their great masters. And does Morimura have greater understanding in Japan? Do they enjoy his satirical message on Western invasion? Do they like that his fame is enjoyed largely in international markets? In this confusion, there is a great amount of Post-modern wabi sabi, art on the edge by an illusive creator, that avoids strict definition, but that forces a guttural response. Modernization has been called the process of reproduction leading to a hybrid imitation. Morimura is clearly beyond the modernizing process. He does not want a hybrid, he wants the original essence of the subject, and he wants it to exist in a new world that calls upon what our world is facing. If it is a hybrid imitation, it is full of perforations that allow the viewer to absorb an art capable of shattering, or confusing, or flexing and delivering new light, to any global context. Postmodern works frequently call the viewer to the author's presence, in the work, in the gallery.

Morimura is both buried in the history and aesthetics of his work and gazing out to create an uncomfortable edge, almost like meeting the performer in makeup following the performance of a play. Yasumasa Morimura realized that the twentieth century had come to end at the end of the 1970's. How? After watching Star Wars, he knew that the "era of images," "as they were," was gone. From that point, images would be reconstructed. His work was postmodern in that its images rearranged signifiers unique to original cultures. The most striking way Morimura achieved this affect was by playing with the common signifiers of gender, and "the iconic metaphors of beauty." Globalization Japanese and Western Art has a long history of influencing each other. Morimura was taught western art history at his art school in Japan. Globalization occurred as a second wave of the Western invasion following World War II. Japanese culture molded with the West as it idolized Western celebrities. Morimura has worked through his work to interpret Western myths about success and celebrity, perhaps through the art of perversion Some critics interpret the body of Morimura's work as a call towards dewesternization and reclaiming local, Asian identities. Morimura, hiding in Western canvases, his face implanted in Van Gogh's sunflowers, can be seen as the emerging Asian presence in a succombing Western heirarchy. Yet it is difficult to conceive of Morimura as being fully political, even in his portrayals of dictators. He is out to mix cultures, not divide, and to heal ripples in the past, and inequities in cultural conglomeration into the future. Clearly Morimura's work is successful because of themes of globalization and a recurring awareness of the "other" and the "orient," infiltrating our Western heritage of beauty. Conclusion Yasumasa Morimura's work transcends the art world by becoming a form of communication for shifting values. He frequently breaks taboos through his performance and challenges both his culture and himself to form new identities. His

recent political work shows a desire to reconcile and memorialize the twentieth century and come to terms with those forces that could lead to catastrophe in the next century. By harnessing these waves of commotion and probing cultural divisions that defy definition, Morimura achieves uncommon expression and beauty.