Takashi Murakami, The Oval Buddha, 2007 |
Pop . Pop for many is a kind of dirty word. If something is "pop" is poor, is obvious, useless, trivial. In fact the banality el ' futility can be detected even in what is not pop at all.
The Pop Art was a revolutionary current within the concept of Art. The art was good or bad considering the expression of the human spirit, its creativity and his inner ; what could not be told in words, could communicate a painting, a sculpture, even a color. In the first half of the twentieth century was crucial this kind of conception, it was an expression of conscious or unconscious, "automatic" for themselves. And since the Expressionists and the Dadaists , in particular, which started to come out a new way of understanding art. If you have concerns about this paternity, take a look the famous LHOOQ of Marcel Duchamp . Pop Art then took literally flying in the United States , which in the 60s were already a real consumer society, as Europe struggled a lot more after the Second World War. Campbell Soup of Andy Warhol , comics Lichtenstein the contents of cans of doubt Piero Manzoni.
But what happens when this way of understanding art meets East?
An example is Takashi Murakami . This Japanese artist has been very influenced by Warhol's Factory, the establishment of an artist's studio which was also a place to cultivate new talent, an operation that is managed effectively. Kaikai Kiki Co.
is the name of his collective and produces everything with a meaning of Pop Art, termed Poku. The Poku is created by Pop + otaku, or the obsession with manga, anime and video games. When you look at his work you get confused because it seems to be the face of illustrations for comic books, their characters for a new gadget or video game. There are two locations: one in Tokyo and the other, for obvious reasons New York. They produce works of art, but Murakami was able to draw a new creativity Louis Vuitton (so to speak, just look at the bags on the stalls' style Louis Vuitton "logo and small white and colored drawings and many other fantasy) and produce anything that can be marketed: wallpaper, calendars, pillows, candy, toys and more.
Today I'm interested in a single work: The Oval Buddha .
This is a sculpture metal 6 feet high, covered with platinum, the proposal for the exhibition organized by Moca of Los Angeles. The sculpture is composed of a base (an elephant) from which originates a lotus flower, this flower is the sitting Buddha in question. portrait artist, has two faces: a serene at the front of a sculpture and back with an open mouth and a row of sharp teeth, a kind of Janus. What is striking is the impression that it is definitely a character came out of a manga, but with a focus on Japanese culture, especially that of Buddhism. A comparison is effectively a large statue of Buddha of Kamakura : This sculpture dates from the thirteenth century and there is a temple to protect it. His being isolated from the rest of the place of worship is due to the multiple natural disasters, from storms to the tsunami, which wiped out the wooden structures, leaving religion as the only witness to the bronze sculpture, much larger than that of Murakami (more 13 meters).
Noble materials and otaku, East and West mixed in a way that certainly strikes.