글로벌 맥락에서 본 일본 컨템포러리 미술 또는 그 역: 1920년대부터 2010년대까지

Abstract

1. Similarity: 1920s and 1990s My presentation starts with a Japanese painter, Foujita Tsuguharu (1886-1968) who made success in Paris during the 1920s. Because his paintings were too emphasizing his “Japaneseness” to be accepted by the European art world, such as the flat surface with no spacial depth or the thin line made with sumi-ink both taken from Ukiyoe, the reception of Foujita in Japanese art world was always ambiguous. According to Japanese artist, Aida Makoto (1965- ), this situation of Foujita is very much similar to the one with Nara Yoshitomo (1959- ) and Murakami Takashi (1962- ) , especially the latter (Aida, “About Mr. Foujita Tsuguharu,” in Bijutsu Techo, June 2000). They both face the same difficulty of being strategically “exotic.”In 2000, Murakami proclaimed his key concept, “super-flat” and produced important exhibition, “FORET ART PROJECT: Harajuku Flat” (La Foret Museum, Tokyo). According to Murakami, “super-flat” is an anti-one-point-view perspective visual system with “no camera eyes, no depth of space, no structural layers, and with no inner-self, or no human being. Instead there are multiple eyes, deep-focused images, with network, movement and freedom.” (Murakami, “Statement,” in Kokoku, February 2000). At the same time Murakami stressed that those elements were originally from traditional Japanese art before the Edo period (1600-1867) and inherited in the visual language such as Anime and Manga today. As a critic, Asada Akira (1957- ) mentioned in a symposium for the exhibition, an attitude like “we [=Japanese] are the indigenous, so we do it in our own way. We are the indigenous but the frontier of the world so we are going to conquer the world market with our way” may sometimes work as an effective strategy but there is a danger of being a naive praise of the national culture without self reflective irony (Asada, “Superflat symposium: a complete document of Harajuku Flat” in Bijutsu Techo, February 2001). Throughout these discussions from 2000s to 2010s, Murakami rapidly became an icon of Japanese contemporary art with important exhibitions like “Kaikai kiki: Takashi Murakami” (Fondation Cartier, Paris, 2002), “Little Boy” (Curation, Japan Society, New York, 2005) and “@Murakami” (The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2006). 2. Transition: 2010s This year I curated a solo exhibition of an artist, Koki Tanaka called “abstract speaking: sharing uncertainty and collective acts” in the Japan Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition (June 1 - November 24, 2013). In this show the artist and I featured five videos and seven photographs from seven projects alongside with texts by the artist himself. All of the works are referred to our experiences of the Great East Japan Earthquake in March 11, 2011 in various ways. For example the videos such as a piano played by 5 pianists at once (first attempt), a haircut by 9 hairdressers at once (second attempt), a pottery produced by 5 potters at once (silent attempt0), and a poem written by 5 poets at once (first attempt) are all showing collaborative works by certain groups of people, processes of discussing, fighting and negotiating. These works are intended to be a kind of a metaphor for creating a new society after the disaster. The most important challenge for Tanaka and I was how to convey our experiences of the earthquake to audiences in Venice which was quite far away from the situation in Japan. At last we decided to make videos “abstracted,” instead of dealing the situation directory in a manner of documentary video. As you seeing the videos you soon realize that the participants are all professionals in the field of artistic creation, such as music, haircut, pottery and poem writing. They are not making something useful for the post-quake society like the seawalls. If the collaborative works are transplanted to the artistic field and be “abstracted,” lose its directness to the post-quake situation, then there will be a possible space that audiences can reflect their own experiences because there are countless of disasters, both natural and the man-made, and the societies waiting for the reconstruction around the world today. This exhibition awarded “Special Mention” for the first time in the Japan Pavilion’s 61-year history of participating Venice Biennale. The reason was, according to the jury, “for its poignant reflection on issues of collaboration and failure.” (55th Venice Biennale official HP) As we heard this notion of the jury, through discussions we had with visitors during the three-day opening, Tanaka and I gradually realized that audiences from various regions understood the works as a metaphor for the democracy, not just the disaster. We set an issue of the disaster as an entrance to share our experience but far beyond our expectation, discussing, fighting and negotiating process was received as referring to the democracy in general, which often needs the long discussion and sometimes the result will be in fail. The Japan Pavilion has been produced exhibitions focused on its local characters, sub-cultural issues like “gal [=girl’s]” culture and Anime such as “Windswept Women” (artist: Yanagi Miwa, 2009) and “Teleco-soup” (artist: Tabaimo, 2011). It is no doubt that each artist’s work was sincere but put in the context of the national competition they inevitably seemed as if to reinforce the “Cool Japan” campaign run by Japanese Government. Through my experiences of the Biennale, I would like to point out the possibility that the show had newly opened especially to the art of non-Western regions. In the occasion like Venice Biennale run by the rule of national competition, we sometimes emphasize the locality of our own. But there must be another way, to borrow the words of Ming Tiampo, a Canadian art historian, of sifting from "displaying Japan” towards "speaking from Japan" and addressing global issues. (Tiampo’s email, August 16, 2013) 3. Connection: 1990s and 2010s My presentation is not intended to emphasize the alternation of generations, a transition from one trend to another. Tanaka’s show was obviously made possible after the struggle to the world art market that Murakami overcame one by one. Here I point out two issues shared both by Murakami and Tanaka. Murakami and Tanaka are interested in the history of art, both Western and Japanese. They do not hide the influences and quotations they made. But Murakami’s one is more about the free association of visual elements such as multiple eyes and meticulously depicted details, while Tanaka’s is more about the social situation in the 1950s and 1960s, which is made possible with the experiences of the Great East Japan Earthquake. The other issue they may share is the painting. In the Western world the issue of painting has its long history back to the Renaissance, when the one-point-view perspective was invented and artists from Western regions still conscious about it. If you wish to compete in the field of the painting, you inevitably have to face with the difficulties of how to deal with this “heritage of Western painting” as non Western artist. Murakami dealt with this with anti-perspective elements, while Tanaka detour this difficulties as he was essentially a video artist. Although the 20 years of attention to the non Western art and the establishment of its evaluation, a certain criteria of the art still strongly rooted in the Western visual system. But if you think of this point in the 100-year long term, this situation will be dramatically changed. Together with Korea and non Western regions, now we need to have more and more discussions for the future.