7/26/2006

Hideaki Kawashima

73 comments:

jeff said...

is this condom man??? the arch enemy of ultra-man.

cha said...

Strange!! but I love it..... simplicity but direct ....the difference in the eyes....

But now.... I think I'm over it!!!

Sven said...

Feed me Seymore!

zipthwung said...

I tink this is a shmoo, via ed pashke. shmoo are from lil abner. The comic strip posits a slave class of self-sacrificing Shmoos. THats pretty cool. WHy didn't computers free the masses from work? I got gyped.

kikkoman!

Kaiju Big Battel is playing Warsaw in brooklyn soon. Dont know how good they are, sort of an art thing. THey play at anime conventions.

I buzzed an anime fest once - kids dress up in their favorite anime characters.

In the same way towns have mascots -

As a cultural phenomenon, cuteness is increasingly accepted in Japan as a part of Japanese culture and national identity. Tomoyuki Sugiyama, author of "Cool Japan" believes that "cuteness" is rooted in Japan's harmony-loving culture, and Nobuyoshi Kurita, a sociology professor at Musashi University in Tokyo, has stated that "cute" is a "magic term" that encompasses everything that's acceptable and desirable in Japan.[9]

On the other hand, the minority of Japanese skeptical of cuteness consider it a sign of an infantile mentality.[9] In particular, Hiroto Murasawa, professor of beauty and culture at Osaka Shoin Women’s University asserts that cuteness is "a mentality that breeds non-assertion ... Individuals who choose to stand out get beaten down."[9]

also from aljazeera:

cute

Big in japan man. I think mascots are a good idea - totems, pagan gods, you name it. Plushies blow up dolls...sex robots...

zipthwung said...

here and

here

just as a side note - Fujishima Takeji and Kuroda Seiki went to Pars to learn how to paint like westerners - thats after commodore perry, the whole Tokugawa dealio, guns, ammo, the death of chivallry

kelli said...

sly gaze, sly painting

scrubbing bubbles?
just not creepy in the meaningful way Marc Quinn is sometimes creepy

cha said...

I'm trying to imagine it in it's actual dimensions rather than this little image I see... 150cm ?
Scale would add to the interest......

esotericaesthetic said...

I think this paintings power would depend a lot on the scale.
If it is relatively large, I can see it being pretty interesting.
I get the sense that this is a kind of mask, made of skin. Kind of like the one Leatherface from "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre " wore, only cuter, flaccid, and more ghostlike. It probably has something to do with how the Japanese have to have a "public" face, while the real person and their thoughts are hidden beneath the surface. Notice how the eyes have two different expressions.One introspective, and one looking outward, questioning..
All in all, one of the more interesting Japanese pieces. I like the creepiness.

cha said...

ah yes to the mask... and eye asymmetry.
Why do we like creepiness? [just that little bit!]

zipthwung said...

I like symetrical eyes, in sort of a Julian James "THe Origins of consciousness and the breakdown of the bicameral mind", sort of way.

Like Freddy vs. Jason

kelli said...

The belief that early people functioned in a schizophrenic state seems dubious Zip. I tend to side with the belief held by most evolutionary biologists that maladaptive traits persist in the gene pool because they confer hidden advantages. The explanation for the persistence of mental illness is usually that when hunter gatherers depleted the food within a given area mentally unstable individuals would hear the voice of god telling them that there was a Dairy Queen or a promised land somewhere over the horizon.
www.bbsonline.org

Sven said...

creepy in2.

poppy said...

don't get creeped out over this,
holds my interest which i've found hard to say for some of the paintings..
thumbs up for the psychological portrait.

kelli said...

Creepy or a total hoax. I can't even tell.
http://www.sexinchrist.com/fist.html

poppy said...

good question mr. wakeup
it doesn't make a difference to me personally. but in an all over type of painting you can hide your subject and sometimes assume less responsibilty..
I do find this type of work more challenging then say..cicily brown. where i might appreciate her work for some technique.. then i might look for something interesting going on if it wasn't completely on the surface. i seem to like work that doesn't apologize for itself and knows what it is.. it may not even be technically well done..

zipthwung said...

More objects is harder to do. Faces are easier compositionally without having to deal with the figure or the ground in my experience. how about this

seems a bit obvious, but sometimes me droogies like a little bit of the obblie wobblies.

Sven said...

more challenging than Brown? whoaa

For starters what dialogue is this artist having with any painting tradition besides the seductiveness of Manga

Google his name you get 20 of these faces

weak.

How self-aware is this painting? Not that that's so necessary but the only thing this artist seems to be interested in doing is making creepy subtley sexy schmoos.(thanks zip)

A lot of these artists, such as Nara and Kawashima, seem to think that paying attention to the surface of their work will make it stand out from what they're referencing.

But I know you can find plenty of manga artists who do the creepy subtle subversion thing as well. This painting seems completely caught up in its own flimsy affectations.

SisterRye said...

I'm getting a submarine feeling from it. Like jellyfish tentacles, the bangs and hair and eyelashes are electrostatic feelers sent out to test waters and sight lines.

poppy said...

why do you seem to think painting has to have a dialogue with a painting tradition.? If that is the rule and that is what you follow, that is weak..you can stop thinking all together.
the fact that all i see when i see a cicily brown is simple device to have a dialogue with a painting tradition spells sadness...
but back to the question,.. one or many objects?

kelli said...

Is it one object versus many or is the question really simple artistic statements versus complex ones. Seriously compare this image to Marc Quinn and it comes out limping.

Sven said...

a dialogue is just one way of looking at contemporary painting of course. whats the point of getting antagonistic?
the other question is incredibly open-ended

kelli said...

Cooky I wasn't picking on Poppy. They are both good questions.
I'm on the fence with this painting. The eyes make me think it isn't that simple.

Sven said...

I was referring to poppy, sorry. I agree that its limping

poppy said...

that wasnt an antagonistic comment towards anyone specifically...
more just saying i find it weak that certain painters need an excuse to paint a certain way... im not even a huge fan of this work..paintings that are not afraid to be what they are without gimmick.
this isn't antagonistic either but screw art history.. and the"its been done before mentality' - it is way too prevalent and easy to say in art criticism.

no-where-man said...

i wouldn't worry your pretty little brains about what u like

kelli said...

More creepy!!!
I'm not even gonna post stuff from ogrish.com or houseofgord.com. I want to but I won't.
Is creepiness in art post-romantic, the uncanny, the sublime gone wrong or is it older?

cha said...

experience the painting or analyse it...... Ecstasy sounds sooo good!

cha said...

That Ribera makes me think of quite a few by Odd Nerdrum....
What's the name of that Ribera?

cha said...

Yes that's it thanks. Interesting that it was a commission.. not his fantasy! or illustrating a myth ... different kind of creepy.

no-where-man said...

what ever goes up must go down...

We can have playtime
In my little playroom
Disco dollies
My sex dwarf
And my dumb chauffeur
I would like you on a long black lead
You can bring me all the things I need

Sex dwarf
Isn't it nice
Luring disco dollies to a life of vice
Isn't it nice
Sugar and spice
Luring disco dollies to a life of vice

flesheater99 said...

my initial response...possibly the most interesting image posted here yet. Definitively the best thing in weeks.

poppy said...

the "you" was not personal
it is responding in knee jerk fashion-
like saying people..
people that follow rules for instance..
Really having so much outside influence from academic and art world guiding your thought process.. I can never agree that is a good thing... I'm sure it is fine for some...How about the difference between the musicians who keep playing and writing music without chance of being a music idol - same respect..

kelli said...

Kalm James Andre Malreaux might have disagreed with your formalist assumptions. He felt that a painting of a madonna is first of all a madonna. There are a lot of things that haven't been painted. Just look at some of No-Where Man's posted images above (well maybe by Atilla Lucaks or Ken Weaver). Nobody painted car accidents and electric chairs before Warhol.
There are few art historical precedents for single images on flat backgrounds unless you count the veil of Veronica. It is purely an art-school trope in the same family with bald androgynous figures curled in the fetal position.

Sven said...

a lot of cock art.

kelli said...

That's an old pagan thing, Priapus and what not. Still nobody painted a mushroom cloud before Rosenquist.
There are however no new or original ways to smear paint around.

no-where-man said...

i saw rosenquist demo his techniques, all came from sign painting, as warhol was to prints... perhaps that is the problem not enough commerical work for painters. we live in a disposable culture.

zipthwung said...

kikkoman!

Know your market.

I assume youall are being making a point about "ownership" rather than authorial originality in paitning when you refer to electric chairs and such..

<wayne thiebaud did a chair in 57 for example, but who the fuck cares right? Am I right? History is too fucking heavy to carry over the desert of the real.

I like these

kelli said...

Thanks Zip: I didn't even know about that painting. Unfortunately violent subject matter is the only source of original content as it is the only thing humanity thinks of novel ways to do over time.

kelli said...

James: I'm more into thinking than seeing. I hate nothing more than po-mo and the rejection of originality. When they showed me Sherry Levine in art school I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. The tradition of depictive painting is a long one and there are many subjects which have not been depicted and probably should be. If Thiebaud did it first and Warhol did it second that's fine- at least they did it instead of creating more head in the ass Mandarin abstraction. Formalism was a moment in time which is long since exhausted. It can only be inhabited. I guess it works out OK for grant proposals and teaching jobs but it hardly seems an adequate way of "seeing" the violent world we inhabit. Sadly there is no gestalt.

kelli said...

I agree with you about one thing though: Vermeer was considered insignificant before the invention of photography because camera obscura images were just a curiosity before photographic images became our defintion of realism.

kelli said...

Why paint is a good question. For me personally formal issues and discovery are not the answer. Why do something so repetitive, time consuming and lonely? Maybe because things mean something the 20th time you think them that is different from the first time. And OCD.
If there is ever is a gestalt let's keep it away from Zip. He's more interesting formless.

kelli said...

No not at all but I kind of think you get what you pay for. I'm amazed by how many people use assistants sometimes for work where the artist's skill is part of the meaning or their personal identity is part of the meaning. Not mentioning names.

zipthwung said...

I've been doing my homework. Google found the electric chair.

muzan-e "attrocity print" check it out yo!

suehiro Maruo

Suehiro Maruo bio

kelli said...

The deal seems to be:
-photoshop images together
-use a projector to blow it up
-hire people to paint it and paint a few parts yourself
-don't invite them to the afterparty
-repeat three times and have the same show in three countries

no-where-man said...

i don't think that paintings are a stranger to the theme of images posted in this thread, now is there a connection between that and the priesthood practice. i don't think Art is a stranger to that as well, wrap all the smart talk you want around it when the lunch bell rings Art/collecting one can not tame the carnel nature of the beast.

kelli said...

Priesthood or monastic contemplation?
Atilla Lucak's new work sucks . Painters get soft in middle age. The manga guy Zip just posted has been original, albeit in a horrifying disturbing way for a long time.
Is it possible to be original in ways that aren't disturbing? Ever heard the saying" every happy artist is the same, every unhappy artist is unhappy in a different way".

no-where-man said...

After he had graduated from the University, he enterd to the Buddhism
priesthood practice. While in the University, he settled on the subject
matter of the Yukio Mishima's novels and it seems that his early works'
toughend style was much influenced by this subject. His style has gradually
changed to fairy style of Portrat, comical Buddha and boys and girls have
appeared to Kawashima's paintings.

poppy said...

how many ways does one need to say:
do what ever the fuck you want and don't worry about it! You won't suffocate doing that...

poppy said...

kelli - i don't think it is a matter of happy or sad artist.. it is possible to be original. that will usually happen when it isn't the goal to be original in the first place..everything has been done is like saying everything has been invented and everthing has evolved to its final resting place..the thing is, most people are stuck in the past..feel they are bound to it and need it to form their present situation..original thinking individuals can see a future.. good or bad..

kelli said...

The thing is I can think of plenty of original images and themes like the ones several people have posted in this thread but they are always violent. Maybe things that are good never change and we just think of new ways to violate them.
Or maybe the pretty Saeko Takagi painting is original in a pristine, beautiful way and none of us care.

Sven said...

very engrossing at the end......
I have to agree (though not completely) with KJ's fish analogy, only for the reason that its frightening to repeat images which you have'nt yet seen

In the case of Murakami, who may be an inspiring force in artists like Kawashima's work, he definitely set out to be original and suceeded. This interview is informative

http://www.jca-online.com/murakami.html

Wakasa: In the beginning, making art was a personal matter for you?

Murakami: I wanted to be commercially successful. I just wanted to make a living in the “entertainment” world, but since then my motivation has changed.

Wakasa: How?

Murakami: What I have done so far was to make a living. And I was highly strategic about what kind of paintings I should make for that purpose. Even this interview could be considered good for business.

zipthwung said...

My guess is these paintings are not twisted at all - just a guess. Furthermore Japan seemsa to have a more relaxed sexual dealio - I think I mentioned you can read porographic cartoons on the subway and no one cares. In new york people will be reading over your shoulder. I hate that.

blows your fucking mind!

how about this?

One time I made a painting and the prof dude said I had obvious sexual imagery, but sometimes people will see a dick even when you meant Dick. Valuable lesson there though, I got a refresher in inter-subjectivity 101. Or whatever you call it when a Dick gets mad at a dick.

But it kind of hurt, because sex is such an obvious read, but then again its a read and sex is allways there, because the universe is in a grain of sand and paint is obviously an analagous substance for man juice - duchamp thought so, the wag.

But then again prof dude didnt say much else, so for my money I could have got a blow up doll or a hundred and my thesis show would have been better. It does look like one? Its not just me?

cha said...

Kelli.. if painters get soft in middle age.... what happens if they start painting in middle age?

and something new / original... will come up. it's just a matter of time.....

kelli said...

OK one more creepy post. Cha just tell me that the manga stuff we have been posting isn't better or at least more original than most painting.
http://www.orient-doll.com/catalog/2006/np/04.jpg

cha said...

Kelli.... way better than what I see at a lot of galleries!!
It's just hard to imagine a new idea until someone has it!..obviously :] But the next new one may be brewing right now...
{wish it could be mine!}

ec said...

This is a compelling, yet ignorant discussion. How does one separate perception and thinking? Is perception not a thought process in its own right, and the misapprehension of this is in itself problematic? And separation between formalism and painting? Why treat formalism like a severed leg, when it addresses the visual decisions in painting. Or is the idea of formalism stuck in some kind of protracted rebellion against school, Greenbergian criticism and ignorant professors?
On the same line, did it ever occur to the writer that thinking is not fixed, that in different times of life different perceptions and concerns arise? And why is that soft? Because it's not hard?
Back to formalism, these painting' relationship to traditional Asian forms and lavishly treated surfaces have everything to do with their level of interest, or not, for commenters on this blog. Who has seen them personally, who not? I think it would make a difference...a little...they do seem a bit 'produced' and are not the most interesting paintings.
The interesting tensions in painting IS its long history. That has to be negotiated, from the minute one picks up the brush to the moment when one looks at--dare I say analyze, the day's work. As a painter one wants to bring a whole lot else to it, but that's the ground rule, or maybe that's what defines the outsider artist category.

jeff said...

dolls for middle aged male perverts.
oh yeah that's art?

jeff said...

all long as we are the subject of starange visuals.
http://www.pileup.com/babyart/_top.htm

trevor brown

kelli said...

yes soft is not hard
phenomenology of mind , the discussion of perception and knowing and most middle aged painters: soft
manga:hard
and lets leave the middle-aged perverts out of it so long as they agree not to generate frothy images of vines and flowers or to ask the eternal question " does this need more green?".

jeff said...

the link to the japanese doll company.
they are made for this market, i don't know what the word is for them but its a guy who stays home alot and is aged from say late 20's to 50's.

kelli said...

let's make up a word:
surf and turfers
mombies
gamers
pimpled dimplers
only laid by Frito-Lay
gremlins

kelli said...

James my disapointment in middle aged painters is sad not gleeful. Ashley Bickerton is still good but not as good. Look up Atilla Lucak's new work and say you don't want to cry. I do.
Art dealers deserve some of the blame for asking artists to repeat images that sell. I think it is called a series. It seems like manga artists are encouraged to come up with ever more inventive and strange images.

kelli said...

....
-stay at home Toms
-senior account managers
-lumberwhacks
-shut-in Sams
-porky orcs
-old man of the seasonings
......

Sven said...

ashley bickerton is one of the most atrocious defunct artists I can think of (no offence to your taste)

kelli said...

One show was good. Now it's all pasted on collage. Atilla Lucak's please paint Gautanomo and cool it with the monkeys dressed like Shiva.
Cooky what do you call middle aged perverts?

jeff said...

Atilla Lucak burnt his brian with meth.

Sven said...

I havent really seen ashley's 80s stuff, I just know the goblins.

we could call em art critics..
PSYCHE!

off the topic anybody know any good literature on Canaanite fertility cults?

kelli said...

Canaanite fertility worship:
Mark Smith- Origins of Biblical Monotheism
Ancient peoples were so freakin kinky. Eunuchs for heaven in the NT refers not to celibacy but to well, eunuchs. Origen probably left this world without some of his original parts.
Lucian- the Eunuch

ec said...

Wade, thanks for the picture of the head-- and the IDEA of neural nets is great, which is why I don't see formalism as separate from painting, though I'm using the term beyond the Greenbergian what you see is what you see sense. Looking at Attila Lukac's work reminds me of disappointing it was to see Joan Brown and how her work moved into an archetypical, Eastern-influenced sphere similar to Lukacs' themes of human foolishness and violence via Indian painting.
Seems black and white turns gray and depending on your hair color, another view appears empty, flacid, whatever. I venture middle age brings a broader, more archetypical view at odds with the piercing specificity of a younger generation: Eric Fischl as one example. But when I think about Guston, late Titian, late deKooning or Judith Linhares, Charlene von Heyl, Jackie Saccoccio, I am filled with hope and courage. Yuskavage, Ellen Berkenblit: alive! not done. Maybe Lukacs would have headed into Stephen Assael territory if he hadn't taken a detour. Though his trees weren't good that might have been worse.

Sven said...

thanks kelli.


avant gaaaarde
(the action starts at 2 minutes)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzz1-ppIjOg&search=%E4%B8%89%E5%B3%B6%E7%94%B1%E7%B4%80%E5%A4%AB

jeff said...

ec,
titian is one of the greatist painters to have ever walked the earth, and in my opinion miles above any of the other artist you mentioned.

That he lived to be 91 in his day is an amzing feat alone, the fact that he reinvented oil painting and is to my knowledge one of the first inovators of the medium makes him a painter in a class of his own.

Yuskavage and the others can't even clean his brushes.

youth--less said...

anyone notice that this is a portrait of madonna?

cha said...

late deKooning... when he had Alzheimers ?! just kidding... I agree, so many great works from "old" artists.