5/07/2007

Mr.

37 comments:

Painter said...

Mr. @
Lehmann Maupin
540 West 26 Street
New York, New York 10001

Martin said...

i've never liked mr.

no-where-man said...

Paintings were cute but failed to 'wow' perhaps i have been over exposed to Otaku recently. What really did work for me was the large decapitated toy head in the front room of this show with its doll house interior.

Martin said...

this piece is way different than all the previous stuff i've seen by him... mostly drawings on throwaway paper, figure with no ground pieces...

youth--less said...

adolescent girls is one of my favorite subjects but this artist doesnt seem to have much empathy or insight. sailor moon nostalgia at best. japanese lolita at worst.

whats really in their heads is much more twisted--interesting--heartbreaking

Nomi Lubin said...

The huge head seems much more effective than the paintings.

Can someone explain to me why in the paintings the figures are put in front of a relatively naturalistically painted background? Does that come out of some anime convention?

zipthwung said...

Lehman Maupin has the Rem Coolhouse design with the exposed plywood truth to materials architectural review thing but like a lot of galleries, they have these made for museum shows that make me wonder if the tension there is just insecurity masquerading as pretention. Maybe its just me, but I don't wonder too hard.

They have good shows - Bikerton (edgy!) starn twins (moody!) and some bad (ussually involving expensive made for museum installations of video work)

Reminds me of Urban outfitters. Have you been there recently? Urban outfitters should do video.

For my money I'd go to Giant Robot or Threadless.com or Moss.

Nomi Lubin said...

What's Rem Coolhouse? What's Moss?

None said...

Nomi, I believe he means the architect Rem Koolhaas, and the Moss store (http://www.mossonline.com)

CAP said...

Any dimensions for this one?

Nomi Lubin said...

Thank you, Quisquilloso.

Anonymous said...

I think the background is just a mixing it up, giving a sense of warmth as added bonus to the drama. It's pretty exciting kaikaikiki are everywhere now. They are the new Tofu.
The mixing up also may have something to do with some of the research going on here. The Japanese broadcast system is undergoing a current boom with the new wave of Mobile phones, no not the IPhone. A whole new industry is being created and researched to supply entertainment across the Japanese mobile world [for the size of the screen you get on your phone]. This means a new wave of anime, TV drama, talk shows, info shows, 'live' (which has already begun), specifically designed to be marketed to capture the imagination and attention span of an 'on the move' mobile user. A whole new industry, one which the arts can really get in there and tinker around with in that size. The new small potential is huge. Let's start with your phone's screen-saver, by adding your favorite artist's animated gif.

Elsewhere, not so far away.
I think I'd like the current Murakami show: titles like this -- Tranquility of the Heart Torment of the Flesh - Open Wide the Eye of the Heart, and Nothing is Invisible. Don't you love it? Don't you want that on a T-shirt> I want a poster, that's for sure.
He's really mixing it up. he promised he would.

CAP said...

What is the difference between anime and manga?

Anonymous said...

C'mon old guy ... the difference is with one you turn the pages [whimsical, light and funny]=[giga], and, well with the other they are turned for you [animēshon], and well that's just plain and simple English. Here's a question, why always the big eyes?
I have a life drawing class and on the first day I always pair off and do a get to know session, draw your partner's face. And about half always draw these huge eyes and cute little nose. I say, 'take a look is that what you are seeing?'. And the eraser will come out, and I'd move on to the next. Sure things are redrawn, but bigger, better, or whatever, and it's fascinating...

no-where-man said...

in my euro world, manga is a comic - anime an animation.

"Can someone explain to me why in the paintings the figures are put in front of a relatively naturalistically painted background? Does that come out of some anime convention?"

often the characters have very stylized proportions say - large eyes, (there are alot of sex sites dedicated to this fetishized in masks and costumes as well... but that starts to become Hentai) while the backgrounds classically rendered. Some anime classics everyone should check out r Grave of the fireflys &Ghost in the shell

Martin said...

i think that some of the figure/background difference is coming from popular tv cartoons like sazae-san... they do something similar, having cartoony characters in a less cartoony background.

speaking of the ga of manga... the word for painter is gaka. same ga. manga shunga nihonga eiga.

i am otaku, but i still don't like mr.

Unknown said...

watashi mo.

no-where-man said...

im into these little details of the picto bubblesfrom some of these mural scale ones Tie the show together in scale and execution - does it all go well with the murakami updown?

Martin said...

are mr. and chiho aoshima still assistants to murakami? weird to see artists assistants that probably have artists assistants.

CAP said...

Thank's for the education. I thought maybe manga was a sub-class of anime - the more fantastical or something.
But the eye thing I've always assumed is because of western round-eyes. I mean they can't help but see it in westerners, to ‘stress’ it to our way of seeing.
The puzzling thing is why it should feature so prominently throughout anime – even when they are set in an ‘international’ milieu – pointedly it is a western society, even when produced firstly for local consumption.
My theory is it’s a kind of passive/aggressive acknowledgement of cultural imperialism. ‘They’ talk ‘our’ pictorial language, but the figures are so doll-like and infantile, it’s also saying something a lot more subversive to the Japanese.

no-where-man said...

"For reasons unknown, a blow up doll in Japan is called a dutch wife."

im not from japan nor have i been there... but i am into this mag. about latex love hotel dolls. does it have something to do with trade relations ?

Anonymous said...
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zipthwung said...

The figure-ground style can go two ways:

1) The background can be elaborately drawn because economicly it's the one thing that is not being re-drawn. The foreground (figures) are separate and have an economy of line so that they can be drawn again accurately. Picasso=easy, Disney=easy.

2) The background is kept simple to emphasize the foreground. Look at portraiture - the Bg and parts of the figure are often kept loose.

When the budget gets crunched you end up with Hannah Barberra and anime - notice how almost the only thing that changes is the mouth.

Ralph Bakshi and Miyazake make some nice stuff right?

The boar in Princess Mononoke was 3-d BTW.

The New after effects 8 looks pretty cool - along with Photoshop CS3 Im sure every artist will be dropping their brushes and poneying up the 1,600 for the suite.

Arte Pauvera anyone?

zipthwung said...

You can't ignore the impact of firebombing, nukes and millitary defeat on the national psyche. Look at 9-11 - it makes the US look wimpy by comparison.

I think its Stauckhausen or stockholm syndrome or whatever.

Incidentally the world trade complex was designed by Minoru Yamasaki, a second generation japanese (nissei).

Arbeit macht frei.

CAP said...

Don't forget Admiral Perry.

no-where-man said...

that forground/background tech answer explains the detailed to complex in terms of detail but not that dramatic a contrast from "Characters style" to "Background",
Something deeply psychological there for me.

Nomi were you commenting on the complexity of line? - or contrast in style?

suites on its way for me - along with the new FCP! they are INSANE seamless between still image and video. no render time! im going to rock em like its 2999

ill leave the Arte Povera 2 Dash Snow.

zipthwung said...

skillz

bittorent rulez.

jpegCritic said...

Yeah, I go off, but
so... what's the point again Mr?

Liked the sculptural stuff with imagery in the eyeballs. Maybe that's where the real stuff is happening.

Nomi Lubin said...

no-where-man: Definitely the contrast in style. I don't actually see that vast a difference in complexity of line. Certainly some, but not nearly the contrast in naturalism.

youth--less said...

so then its not about adolescence, but arrested development. cute and light as a way out? so subversive

Id like to see these little characters rioting in the streets or something

PrettyPablum said...

I wondered about the background for awhile then I realized it's got a lot of the same style of rendering as in Akira. That movie is all about the background because that shit is so amazing. This is just a poor knockoff. And what's with the composition? Could you get any flatter? At the opening there was this guy in a panda suit but the suit was on backwards and he was trying to go up this ladder and shit. It was funny/cool/interesting for about 4 minutes. The dollhouse thingie was okay, but nothing here seemed original, beautiful, or disturbing, just tired.

zipthwung said...

sunshine

is outside.

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

Japan is a very peaceful place, I've never seen a riot, and only one broken window--a car went through that. It's aggressive. Tokyo is mind-bendingly fast.
As a side effect the place harbors fantasy--very deep seated fantasies, some very superficial, others are a little insidious. Otaku character branding is both superficial and deep--accessible to youth and those who prey on them. Large eyes are portals that you can jump through, embody, roleplay. Consider yourself just for one moment as a cell-sucking geek in the lively of the molecular, who can dive into one of these cellular fantasies that supplys the kind of vitamins that stave of the riot, and fuel the economy.

youth--less said...

oh, fuel the economy. yes well that's obvious.

ever been in a riot? it's like being in love--you can barely breathe, your heart is pounding out of your chest, an incredible exhilarating experience. flip a police car and you learn something.

I knew 2 members of the sla, too.

Bee-Rawk said...

It reminds me of Berthe Morisot's balcony works. no?

Unknown said...

Old Guy - many western observers jump to characterize any japanese cultural development as an imitation of whites (e.g. eyelid tape & blepharoplasty, pale skin, anime eyes), repeating some notion of the japanese as incapable of inventing something themselves. it also completely ignores how the japanese perceive these traits themselves. it's instructive to look at an actual history of oversized eyes instead of conjecture. this cat osamu tezuka was responsible for most of the conventions that anime & manga follow today, and he copied oversized eyes from betty boop and maudlin disney flicks. i think you would be safer guessing that it took hold so strongly because of cuteness (a hegemonic japanese trait) instead of any perceived foreignness. japanese gender roles are fucked, otaku culture especially. it's a rather reactionary form of arrested development if you ask me.

remember that globalization implies intersubjectivity - is an american with dreads just copying rasta culture? are tattoos an inauthentic copy of maori tribesmen? read laura miller and matt thorn on this.