The Japanese Experience: Inevitable (In the Floating World: Slash with a Knife, 1999) Book

At first sight, it appears brand new, pure Tokyo pop. But The Japanese Experience: Inevitable reveals far more than the successful cloning of morphed manga motifs onto stretched canvas and museum walls. It represents eight positions in contemporary Japanese art and scrutinizes their complex visual vocabulary, noting references to Japanese and Western art traditions as frequently as the borrowing of mass culture motifs from the realms of manga and animé. Takashi Murakami's MR. DOB questions the place of contemporary art in our global society; Aya Takano's glowing watercolors combine Japanese sensitivity, issues of female identity, and sci-fi; Masahiko Kuwahara's mutant animals provide shades of softness and mysterious openness, and Yoshitomo Nara's reworking of historical Japanese woodcuts disturbs the floating world. Not only are the artists' visual repertoires new and surprising, but their creative methods and strategies help conquer a public that is mostly untouched by contemporary art. Published in association with the Ursula Blickle Foundation. The world of the future might be like Japan is today--super flat. --Takashi Murakami Featuring the inevitable: Jun Hasegawa Hiropon Masahiko Kuwahara Shintaro Miyake Mr.Takashi Murakami Yoshitomo Nara Hiroshi Sugito Aya Takano Edited by Margrit Brehm for the Ursula Blickle Foundation. Essay by Gregor Janse and Margrit Brehm. Hardcover , 6.75 x 9.5 in.,208 pages, 190 color illustrationsRead More