Takashi Murakami + Nara Yoshitomo

(Takashi Murakami's "Cosmos")

During the 1980's, Japan's consumer culture started coming to a head. Most citizens were involved in the commercial business, allowing for some to lead a "pure consumer" lifestyle. With this cultural shift, the line between fine art and consumerism was blurred, giving way to a new face of art. Murakami is one of the flagship artists of this new movement, often combining pop-culture and consumer goods with the craftsmanship of any good art work. Many of these images have "kawaii" qualities. The innocent cuteness of these works is indicative of a time when some women could only survive in closed, anti-social environments. Murakami's creativity is fully aware of what it is, designed to expose the narcissistic nature of this new culture.

This new artistic synthesis can be spotted just in the color scheme alone. There's something almost garish about the bright, multicolored flowers (a common image of Murakami). The stylized smiles on the flowers presents this more as patron piece rather than an art piece. This kind of design would seem more suited to a children's toy or cartoon, but the tasteful (and highly deliberate) spacing of the vines helps satisfy the artistic precision. The distribution of vines allows the eyes to roll playfully down its length. "Cosmos" was painted on three joined canvases. It's difficult to discard the comparison to traditional Japanese interior - truly, it looks like a sliding door. This choice, be it deliberate or not, its powerful since it reflects the closed, introverted nature of a consumerist society.

(Nara Yoshitomo's "Home")

Nara's work often expresses a nostalgic yearning for the past. His images of fresh faced girls are conveyed through simplistic color schemes and minimalist design. In terms of his artistic output, he seems obsessed with the appearance of youth. Children are an interesting thing to focus on. They've not fully assumed the role of their body or consciousness, thus existing in a kind of limbo space where they're unbiased and not fully "formed." There's always a struggle between the real and unreal in Nara's work, a full acknowledgement of not one, but two realms of being.

The backgrounds are rarely given much attention. This presents the viewer with a clean viewing frame, sure, but this helps satisfy these concepts even more. Oceans of color, like the one above, express an exposure to the infinite, a search for equilibrium among any number of possibilities or directions. Interesting, then, that the image of this girl depicts her looking for something, in this case, a house. She's largely disassociated with her surroundings - she's not even aware of what direction she's headed in fact. The lack of realistic scale and proportion clarifies one thing: The little girl is only a piece of her surroundings by circumstance and is mostly disconnected. The scheme of color doesn't convey emotions of joy or wonder, either. In fact, there's something quite solemn and lonely about the piece.