Daughter of Art History
Photographs by Yasumasa Morimura.
I found this as a sideways book while I was rummaging through the library, looking for the fotonovelas that CAIR wanted to use to whip Mexicans with. Couldn't find any fotonovelas, because a bunch of teenage boys had already absconded with them and were using them to learn Spanish.
But I found this book lying on its side, looking rather forlorn. Nice edition, though, it's almost the size of a coffee-table book but not quite.
These photographs are both fascinating and disturbing - which I feel that good art should be, always. What Morimura does is recreate famous paintings, with his own face and body in the center. The Mona Lisa (in various stages of pregnancy) with this man's face. Rembrandt's self-portraits in Morimura-ture. He also takes on Van Gogh's bandages and becomes Manet's Olympia.
The most startling photograph, and for me my favourite, was Brothers (Late Autumn Prayer). I have never seen the original (if indeed this one was one of his "copies" and not an original Masimura - the text never revealed); however, the photograph is dark, brooding - there is a mushroom cloud in the distance which throws and eerie orange pallor across two brothers standing slightly facing each other in a field, each with guns. They looks as though they are about to commit a double-suicide, in the face of earthly destruction - but one looking at his pistol almost as if he's forgotten what it's for/ the other, bowing to his brother as a show of respect. Other guns are stuck in the ground behind them, a gas mask at their feet, a cannon behind one of them in a terribly "phallic" imagery (trust me, with the placement, you don't have to be any sort of Freudian to understand the impetus).
Then, after that, the book rather begins to lose it: Particularly because he recreates his image in most of Frida Kahlo's self-portraits (by the way, which of Kahlo's paintings weren't self-portraits - I can only think of about two.) This series he calls "Inner Dialogues with Frida Kahlo" - and the test in the back of the book cement what the portraitures already reveal: this is one narcissists chasing after others. He states he "only likes Rembrandt's self-portraits" and he absolutely worships Kahlo. I tell you, this man is not only reshaping these paintings, but he actually becomes these great artists as well - he's taking himself through history and remaking art in his own image.
Talented, sure - but the egomanical rantings . . . whoa! Kinda leaves you scratching your head.
Oh well, I s'pose artists are just like that.
VG
PS the version I found is published by Aperture, Hong Kong. 2003.
PPS if you want a better description of "Sideways Books," read the post in my other blog LocuaCity.
PPPS - have a mah-velous day!!!
I found this as a sideways book while I was rummaging through the library, looking for the fotonovelas that CAIR wanted to use to whip Mexicans with. Couldn't find any fotonovelas, because a bunch of teenage boys had already absconded with them and were using them to learn Spanish.
But I found this book lying on its side, looking rather forlorn. Nice edition, though, it's almost the size of a coffee-table book but not quite.
These photographs are both fascinating and disturbing - which I feel that good art should be, always. What Morimura does is recreate famous paintings, with his own face and body in the center. The Mona Lisa (in various stages of pregnancy) with this man's face. Rembrandt's self-portraits in Morimura-ture. He also takes on Van Gogh's bandages and becomes Manet's Olympia.
The most startling photograph, and for me my favourite, was Brothers (Late Autumn Prayer). I have never seen the original (if indeed this one was one of his "copies" and not an original Masimura - the text never revealed); however, the photograph is dark, brooding - there is a mushroom cloud in the distance which throws and eerie orange pallor across two brothers standing slightly facing each other in a field, each with guns. They looks as though they are about to commit a double-suicide, in the face of earthly destruction - but one looking at his pistol almost as if he's forgotten what it's for/ the other, bowing to his brother as a show of respect. Other guns are stuck in the ground behind them, a gas mask at their feet, a cannon behind one of them in a terribly "phallic" imagery (trust me, with the placement, you don't have to be any sort of Freudian to understand the impetus).
Then, after that, the book rather begins to lose it: Particularly because he recreates his image in most of Frida Kahlo's self-portraits (by the way, which of Kahlo's paintings weren't self-portraits - I can only think of about two.) This series he calls "Inner Dialogues with Frida Kahlo" - and the test in the back of the book cement what the portraitures already reveal: this is one narcissists chasing after others. He states he "only likes Rembrandt's self-portraits" and he absolutely worships Kahlo. I tell you, this man is not only reshaping these paintings, but he actually becomes these great artists as well - he's taking himself through history and remaking art in his own image.
Talented, sure - but the egomanical rantings . . . whoa! Kinda leaves you scratching your head.
Oh well, I s'pose artists are just like that.
VG
PS the version I found is published by Aperture, Hong Kong. 2003.
PPS if you want a better description of "Sideways Books," read the post in my other blog LocuaCity.
PPPS - have a mah-velous day!!!
posted by Verble Gherulous | 5:35 AM
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