Yasumasa Morimura posuđuje ili rekonstruira slike povijesnih umjetnika (od Maneta i Rembrandta do Cindy Sherman) i slavne fotografije i portrete te u njih umeće vlastito lice i tijelo. Na fotografiji koja prikazuje Oswaldovo ubojstvo on je Oswald, on je i veliki diktator iz Chaplinova filma, on je i Mona Lisa i Greta Garbo i Einstein. Ukratko, u cijeloj ljudskoj povijesti riječ je zapravo uvijek i samo o - njemu.
Yasumasa Morimura - On-Self Portrait through the looking glass
Yasumasa Morimura discusses history, political art and the circularity of time
Special to The Japan Times
AM:
You are known for self-portraits reinterpreting canonical works of
Western art history. In your current show, however, you address the idea
of history itself. What led to the shift from art history to history?
YM:
In 1991, I had my first solo show in New York, featuring the series
“Daughter of Art History,” but I also included another one-off work —
actually on view here — re-enacting Eddie Adams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning
photograph of a street execution during the Tet Offensive. At that time
the United States was engaged in the First Gulf War and I was responding
to a deep sense of crisis.
I
always thought to pursue that work further, but, in fact, reflecting on
contemporary events was already part of “Daughter of Art History.” For
example, I felt that (Pieter) Brueghel’s “The Parable of the Blind”
(1568), with its line of blind people leading each other into a ditch,
is a good metaphor for Japan’s Bubble Economy. So in my version, there
is a rich developer, followed by a girl with all kinds of shopping bags,
a soldier and even an artist.
The
shift now is not so much from art history to history, as it is from
working with painting to working with photography as a source material.
If you’re dealing with historical subjects from the 19th century and
earlier, then the embodiment of the age is in painting. The “Mona Lisa”
is not just an artwork, it can help you understand the Italian
Renaissance, or a Rembrandt can help you understand the Holland of that
time.
When
I began considering the 20th century, there were plenty of fabulous
paintings to work with, but the medium that I felt most effectively
manifests the age is photography.
AM: Is it possible to interpret a political stance from your works?
YM: That
is not my intent. Political art can be a vehicle for expressing your
own identity, thoughts and political position, but it is ultimately
about using art to convey a message.
But
if you want to convey a message, it doesn’t have to be through art.
Maybe you could be a politician, or an activist, or even a terrorist. I
try to engage viewers in a dialogue. I think good works create an
impetus for reflection.
Another
way of looking at it is to compare the Japanese words bureruand yureru.
Bureru (literally, to blur) means that your opinions are always
undefined, easily corrupted by what other people say. But there is a
slight difference with the word yureru (to shake or waver). I know it
sounds very Zen, but wavering between two points can actually be a way
of defining your opinions.
For
my current project, I’m dealing with controversial revolutionary
figures like Lenin. Maybe people will ask me which side I’m on, and I
don’t really have a good answer except to say that I’m on both sides. I
think if you were to line up Leftist and Rightist ideologues back to
back, there would be many overlapping points. The radical desire to
change the world may manifest itself differently, but the spirit is
profoundly similar.
It’s
not as simple as picking sides. For example, I made many works dealing
with Western art history, so someone could say, “oh, you must like
Western art history.” Of course I do, but there’s more to it than that.
There’s a love-hate aspect to it. Maybe there are times when you have to
pick sides, but even as you’re going through that process, you’re
wavering between the two extremes, and that feels more real to me. I
believe art is what is able to express that reality.
In
other words, a politician cannot afford to waver. Nor can a CEO, who
always has to be ready with a decision. That’s fine if those are the
demands of the job, but if art is reduced to those terms then it loses
its essence. Making art is about being able to address what other
professions predicated on daily “A” or “B” choices cannot. Rather than
choosing between “A” or “B,” art is about recognizing that something can
be not only “A” but also “B.”
AM:
How about your new video, “Gift of Sea: Raising a flag on the
battlefield” (2010). Is it partly a retrospective of your own career?
YM:There’s
a retrospective element to it, maybe a spiritual retrospective. It
features footage of the house where I grew up, or it revisits certain
things that I’d done, like my performance as Marilyn Monroe at Tokyo
University of the Arts in 1995. I’ve exhibited photographs of the
performance before, but never the video documentation.
And
it occupies the last room of the exhibition layout. Visitors progress
through all the other works to reach it. But maybe more than a
retrospective, it represents the things that I really want to say. Not
that my other works don’t achieve that, but I think “Gift of Sea” in
particular reflects the fact that I am now in a position where I can say
the things I want to say and tell the stories I want to tell.
AM: So is it a “legacy” work?
YM:Well,
no. When you think about Paul Gauguin’s last major work, “Where Do We
Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?” (1897-98), I’d say from the
last part of the title that he’s looking into the future. I like the
fact that it’s posing a question. But how would I answer that question?
The idea that past, present and future follow each other linearly —
actually, what I feel happens is you progress and then loop back to your
past.
I’ve
finally come to understand that these things loop back together. It
doesn’t mean I’m going to repeat myself — there’s a new world waiting to
begin. The more I make works, the more I question where it’s going, and
the more I realize I’m heading back to where I started. It’s an
interesting experience.
Yasumasa Morimura at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art
by Monty DiPietro
A survey of 20th century art will
identify few individuals with as remarkable a story as that of Frida Kahlo
(1907-1954).
The Mexican painter's life is one
of those stranger-than-fiction phenomena: Already crippled by polio, a teenaged
Kahlo was impaled on a steel handrail in a horrific trolley accident that
shattered her spine. During a long rehabilitation she taught herself to paint,
and went on to produce critically-acclaimed self-portraits depicting the
agonizing pain that was her lifelong companion. She was courted by Breton and
the Surrealists, whose company she spurned. Bold, beautiful and bisexual, Kahlo
married, divorced, and remarried muralist Diego Rivera, and had love affairs
with the likes of Georgia O’Keeffe, Isamu Noguchi, and Leon Trotsky, who was
assassinated while staying with Kahlo in Mexico City. It is reported that at
her cremation the incinerator doors exploded open, sending Kahlo's blazing body
flying into the air, her lips twisted in a mocking grin, her long hair
describing a fiery orange halo.
A long-time cult hero, Kahlo is the
subject of a Hollywood biopic due for release this winter (Kahlo collector
Madonna had coveted the lead, but in the end Salma Hayek beat out Jennifer
Lopez to win the role). And so the world is finally "discovering" the
extraordinary artist. Here in Japan, the first out of the gate in the
Kahlomania race is artist Yasumasa Morimura, whose exhibition "An Inner
Dialogue With Frida Kahlo" is now in at the Hara Museum of Art in Tokyo's
Shinagawa Ward.
For about 15 years now, Yasumasa
Morimura's shtick has been taking well-known Western paintings and
superimposing his own face over the face of the original subject. The resulting
photographic works have brought Morimura his own sort of cult following -- he
is one of a handful of wildly popular contemporary artists in Japan, and enjoys
a dedicated and youngish fan base that actually collects his works. The Hara
show is Morimura's first in Tokyo since the successful "Self Portrait as
Art History" exhibition at MoT in 1998, and marks the first time he has
issued a body of work derived from the creations of a single artist. The show
features 15 self-portraits as Kahlo, two large flower-rimmed tondos, 11 mirror
works, six small pieces, and a video installation.
Morimura, who has only seen one of
Kahlo's original paintings and has never visited Mexico, seems well aware that
this show may seem to some both superficial and opportunistic. In one of the
"imaginary dialogues" included in the exhibition catalogue, Morimura
explains to an incredulous Kahlo, "I never look at the real thing. I thought
it over, but decided to keep to my usual practice. That is, to take in only a
very limited amount of information and to use only that information to create
works dedicated to you, Doña Frida. It is not my intention to reproduce Doña
Frida's life and work per se. This is not a look-alike contest. It's all a
concoction of my imagination. In that fantastic sphere, the various elements of
Doña Frida and myself mix into a muddle, a chemical reaction occurs, creating
this imaginary Frida of mine."
In many of the technically perfect
pictures, all of which are based on Kahlo canvases, Morimura has replaced not
only the face but also other compositional elements, substituting for example
the fresh flowers in Kahlo's hair with hana kanzashi (Japanese flower hairpins).
However, the power of the works continues to be informed primarily by Kahlo's
vision and not Morimura's treatment, and that is a problem.
The jarring juxtaposition of an
Asian face onto the subject of a Western masterpiece like the Mona Lisa was what
made Morimura's earlier work interesting. But because Kahlo was so startlingly
unique in her own right, the pictures in this show come off more as
caricatures.
Better is the video installation:
Two distinct and purposely-unsynchronized sources generate images of Morimura
and of Morimura playing Kahlo -- one character seated on either side of a
single wooden bench -- engaged in a disconnected and surreal dialogue. It is
evident here that Morimura admires and respects Kahlo, and the piece is quite
touching.
While "An Inner Dialogue with
Frida Kahlo" has its moments, what the exhibition ultimately illustrates
is the folly of building a tribute on what is essentially a gimmick.
