Ironical art of a new generation

The exterior of a museum is judged like a book's cover is to the story inside. It sets a tone to otherwise encompass the body of artwork within the museum's walls. In the recent move from Expo Park to Nakanoshima, The National Museum of Art in Osaka celebrated its centrality in this often overlooked, grungier little sister city to Tokyo. Kansai expats and natives alike respect the gritty nature of a city internationally untold, and profess bold attempts to culturally enliven areas of Osaka, in a particularly modern way.

Japanese society certainly adheres to its traditions of ancient form, and of course, use its rich identity of archaic culture to inspire a generation of modernity. The current exhibition at The National Museum of Art celebrates 28 different Japanese modern and contemporary artists who use figurative painting to express a seismic shift in Japanese contemporary art that sets these artists in a category liberated from the context of western art history.

With this coexisting juxtaposition between an ancient culture still so vibrant in today's time along with a reach for modernity that often struggles to step out from the shadows of western influence, Japanese contemporary artists are asserting an ironical attitude about Japanese life. From modern sources of inspiration such as manga, picture books and the overwhelming imagery seen in Japanese advertising and daily life, these artists have come together to purport an enlivened expression of Japan from unique perspectives and uncommon attitudes of art.

A few highlights from the show:

Kato Izumi Untitled

Embryo-like figures are the recurring image of Kato's paintings as well as sculptures. He calls upon a womb-like existence, or fundamental component of human nature. He often has the shape of the embryo image extend its limbs into some sort of stem or bud, representative of a close connection between humans and nature and the cyclical behavior of living beings. What's interesting about his style is he uses his fingers instead of a paintbrush, which only compliments the functionality he's trying to capture in the connectedness of human existence. He is as connected to his art as his own fingers are his tools for construction.

His use of color is deliberate and more vibrant hues are used to emphasize the head and sex organs, an attempt to explain that humans are both instinctive and intuitive. Through our own self-reflection, we may see ourselves as an extension of what we touch, much like Kato's connection to his own art.

O JUN OCHIRUCO

The title translates into "the foreigner" and shows the flesh tone as washed out as the background. In a sense of distorted reality being upside down, many foreigners feel turned around in Japanese society. Yet, the person depicted looks Japanese herself, and in traditional school uniform, so perhaps its attributing the alienation and often sterile environment many Japanese feel within their own society, especially those of the budding youth. Aside from this particular piece, O JUN has a highly sexualized style that is depicted ironically in these soft strokes of oil paint, almost melting back into the canvas, as if some secret of the human condition is revealed to an otherwise droid-like sexual environment. However, adhering to the theme of ironic transitions, this perversity of O JUN's art isn't expressed as overtly as a western painter where society is completely inclined to such imagery. O JUN trumps the normal values of a Japanese life and challenges its very existence. It could be that this secret of human sexuality isn't a secret after all and thus the irony ensues.

Aida Makoto Blender

The sheer enormity (290 x 210.5 cm) of this image, painted in acrylic is certainly important to the piece. Aida has the mind of an otaku who has been more than influenced by the vulgarity and rawness of manga and Japanese comics. With such a strong infusion of the absurd, it is again in an ironical light that he composes this painting with the design to look like a real photograph. Inside this oversized blender is hundreds of nude women bodies, contorted and writhing with confusion. Toward the bottom, the blade had the better of them, and many of their heads and limbs are shown slushing around in blood. It is a thoughtless concept--this kind of tortured woman, trapped in a life similar to her female counterparts and struggling to make it to the top. The symbolism may have been apparent, but the execution was jarring and of course evocative--kind of like a car crash, you can't help but stare.

Kusama Yayoi Girls

One of the more veteran artists featured in the collection, Kusama has been completely influenced by western art and earlier modern movements such as Art Brut, Pop art and abstract expressionism. Nonetheless, her biggest inspiration has been her own insanity. Now living in a mental ward under her own will, Kusama continues to paint in what seems to be a surrealist style fused with a hyperbolic sense of feminism. Her most prominent feature is polka dots, which she attributes to hallucinations she had as a young woman. She would often construct paintings and installations with ideas she conceived during these bouts of mental illness. In a true surrealist sense, Kusama toys with this idea of infinity, much like Dali and Miro. In these sinuous lines that extend up like flowers and then follow the shape of a female face, the image continues into infinity, much like the aforementioned pattern of polka dots. As the image of the woman in the painting extends into that of another woman and so on, she also begins to lose her sense of direction, which would mirror her inability to delineate between reality and fantasy.

Nara Yoshitomo The Little Judge

Nara is a playful artist who is in the forefront of the Japanese Pop art movement, which started in the 1990's. He has gained a cult following around the world for his demurely designed children and animals that are often paired with unusually aggressive objects such as knives or other weapons. With influence from the crass collision of manga, graffiti and punk rock, Nara's confident yet cartoonish drawings are a sign of the darkness within the light. In a similar vein of the Children of the Corn, these children possess a potential evil, but what's ironic about Nara's work is that his children aren't self inflicting this poisonous violence, they're merely trying to protect their innocence from the rest of the world's negative space.

As each artist extends themselves to the public, a new meaning of modern is unveiled. This dichotomy of old world versus new happened so long ago for western artists (think Impressionism) that there is no longer this grappling of transition. For Japanese contemporaries, there is a louder cry for unadulterated Japanese culture--the one we know today and the one the rest of the world has to visit Osaka to find out.

blister

My runs get longer as my days here get shorter. Each morning, around the same marker on the road, I start to have these overwhelming images of myself at the airport in the US. I picture myself frightened of all the westerners, and a child-like urgency to find my mother in the mess my mind has made of reality at that point. Running clears my head and helps me figure my next steps. I have so many blisters on my feet now as my mileage increase. But, I've started to think in kilometers instead and I think a new pair of shoes is needed.

A thousand steps to spiritual

When I first heard we were headed to a shrine with a thousand stairs, I imagined the scene from The Simpsons where Homer eats extremely hot chili and goes on some sort of psychedelic trip where he ends up in the desert and climbs to the top of a pyramid-esque platform to talk to a fox formed god.

Of course, the true trek to Konpira-san was nothing of the American animated sort, but something had to beset my imagination for the duration of the two hours car ride to Kagawa prefecture.
After heaving up a few patches of steep concrete stairs, the small souvenir shops that accompanied the climb began to thin out, and ahead lied only more stairs dampened by the drizzle of an ongoing light rain.
My surrogate Japanese grandmother said if I could barrel up the last patch of steps in less than a minute, I was promised good marriage by the fate of Konpira. I didn't even hesitate to assume complete gullibility while she took her time behind me, laughing all the way. My knees were so wobbly they were laughing from the exhaustion of the many flights. I was happy to see even the fog-filled view of the forestry below. And behind me was Konpira-jynja, which even in a biting cold and dreary afternoon, seemed to glow with a presence of greatness. Or maybe it was just having to travel so far to get here, it felt so welcoming and warm.

There was a mixed level karate class practicing in the forum of the shrine's gravel ground. We stood and waited, watching the martial experts of men, women and children alike do warm up exercises in the pitter-patter pings of sporadic rain drops. As gaijin, special permission for our admittance into the shrine was requested and fortunately granted. We sat in a waiting area and warmed ourselves until our group was called into the shrine where the Buddhist priest chanted unknown words of good fortune for the year and blessed us over the head with a special sheathes of leaves attached to a bamboo pole. We then drank from a saucer a thimble full of sake and walked back across a wooden walkway to where our shoes were waiting for us.

We then got to choose our fortunes and I chose one somewhat in the middle. The short scroll told me that my health would be in pristine condition this year, but my business and money would be lacking in growth. In the realm of love, I would need to open my heart more to a man, but of course, all of this was haphazardly translated by granny and her husband, so I caught some significant bits and pieces, enough to make me believe in a fortune at all.

The descent was actually more difficult than the first attempt. My laughing knees remembered the strain from an hour past and had trouble keeping a straight face as I tried not to slip on accumulated rain that had started to amass in larger puddled as the day dripped on.

Udon for breakfast and lunch sandwiched our summit to Konpira-san. I was gastronomically and spiritually satisfied. If only I could've kept my feet warm enough not to catch a cold. I guess my fortune may have predicted the opposite after all.

Turning Japanese

I made my first bold attempt at traditional Japanese cooking.

Here was the menu:

niku jaga (thin beef mixed with potatoes and carrots and onions in a sauce base of sugar, soy sauce, bonito soup [fish flakes] and sweet sake)

dashi maki (eggs rolled thinly over and over mixed with the bonito soup--like a sushi roll)

miso soup (from scratch--tofu, dried seaweed and green onions)

daikon salada (white japanese radish sliced thin mixed with tuna--served cold)

gohan (steamed rice)

Everything was simple and delicious, much like the majority of Japanese cuisine. But, I had a sense of pride for understanding how to do it. And how to find the ingredients without really being able to read any of the labels. I was guided by a few helpful women who have generously cooked for me before, and encouraged me to try. I felt a sort of duty to perfection because that's how most Japanese make their food--even foreign foods. The French bakery is as authentically French as possible. The Italian restaurant attempts native flavors. And presentation is flawless.

In my makeshift kitchen with only one burner top, I was able to win the stomach of my dinner guest, who said it was better than his mother's. I think the trick was the thinly sliced, small shaved pieces of beef. It was proportionally balanced.

There is a Japanese word I've come to love--kaia. It means from the heart. Cooking definitely takes quality, fresh ingredients, but if it's made from the heart, with a sort of passion for who you're cooking for, it will undoubtedly taste better. And so it did.