The success and broad acceptance of the work by Japanese ex-illustrator Takashi Murakami in today’s Museums and finest art galleries bellies a fascination with the connections between Japanese culture and our own. In his show “Mushrooms” he slyly hints at our troubling history and, at the same time, is able to turn it in to a humorous, whimsical, and slightly unsettling cartoon dreamscape.
This new spirit of acceptance and cooperation is especially found among young illustrators, to whom the problematic past of internment camps and dehumanizing propaganda is but a chapter in a textbook they don’t particularly enjoy remembering. I’ve chosen the work of three young American artists/illustrators who I think epitomize the changing relationship, tinged with a gooey, bubble-tea admiration of two-way pop culture but also seeking to humanize the cold, round edged efficiency of Japanese design with the hand done awkwardness of American individualism. It should go without saying that all their sites are well worth a visit.
Chicago born Ken Taya’s Nihon Town illustration for his Enfu blog takes the mash-up of Japanese and American visuals literally, click the image to see it larger and see how many cross cultural mutations you can spot… You’ll be busy for a while. Even Shepard Fairey’s Obey Giant isn't safe, it is crossed with Giant Baba to create Oubei Baba. http://enfu.com
Brooklyn based Saimon Chow was a classmate of mine in undergrad and has gone on to influence nearly all aspects of visual culture. One of my favorites is this clay-mation piece he did with his brother Albert for a show in Hong Kong celebrating the 30th anniversary of Hello Kitty… This chacter is also riffed on in Taya’s illustration as Hello Miffy. I’ve also included a silkscreen print I traded him for back at school and I hope he doesn’t mind it seeing the light of day, it certainly shows that he was very aware of his mish-mash influences early on. Click on the images for the video or a closer look.
Brooklyn based Saimon Chow was a classmate of mine in undergrad and has gone on to influence nearly all aspects of visual culture. One of my favorites is this clay-mation piece he did with his brother Albert for a show in Hong Kong celebrating the 30th anniversary of Hello Kitty… This chacter is also riffed on in Taya’s illustration as Hello Miffy. I’ve also included a silkscreen print I traded him for back at school and I hope he doesn’t mind it seeing the light of day, it certainly shows that he was very aware of his mish-mash influences early on. Click on the images for the video or a closer look. http://www.saimanchow.com
The Los Angeles based illustration team KozynDan have a history of creating truly unusual visual collaborations of their own. My favorites are their panoramics which paint a postmodern landscape in 360 degrees. Click the image to see it larger. Click here to see it in virtual 3-D. http://www.kozyndan.com
The Los Angeles based illustration team KozynDan have a history of creating truly unusual visual collaborations of their own. My favorites are their panoramics which paint a postmodern landscape in 360 degrees. Click the image to see it larger. Click here to see it in virtual 3-D. http://www.kozyndan.com My personal observations of this cross-ocean visual dynamism come from seeing my art students get more and more enraptured by Anime, starting with second graders eschewing Garfield for Pokemon back in the mid nineties to current college students using Kirosaywa stills to inspire their video game concept art. Similarly American bookstores stock their shelves with roughly 80% more Japanese comics (Manga) than their American counterparts (sorry Spiderman).
My first awareness of this cross-cultural potential came when my sixth grade class voted to watch ‘Transformers the Movie’ instead of ‘The Care Bears Movie II’ (a rare victory over the cutiefied girls). This 1986 animated feature was simply the capitalist punctuation on a very successful toy line and animated TV show at the end of its second season. The film boasted a blended crew of largely American writers and character designers and Japanese storyboard artists and animators. The Transformers TV shows in Japan and America were always separate and very, very different (as were the toy-lines), but for the feature film all the elements came together. As a child I understood its power immediately, and nothing permeated my psyche more than a John Wayne accent accompanying the fluid machismo of 80-foot, cell-shaded robots destroying each other as gracefully as a bullet train ballet. It was of course scored with a truly memorable hair metal soundtrack…all this and there is still no Blu-ray release.
The movie was meant to introduce a new line of more modern-looking toys, but after my generation of sixth-graders saw the film we simply couldn’t stomach returning to the creative limitations of the TV show, or its token plastic spawn, and the trend precipitously subsided (only to be eventually revived by computer graphics in the mid-nineties and by Michael Bay in recent live action.)
My first awareness of this cross-cultural potential came when my sixth grade class voted to watch ‘Transformers the Movie’ instead of ‘The Care Bears Movie II’ (a rare victory over the cutiefied girls). This 1986 animated feature was simply the capitalist punctuation on a very successful toy line and animated TV show at the end of its second season. The film boasted a blended crew of largely American writers and character designers and Japanese storyboard artists and animators. The Transformers TV shows in Japan and America were always separate and very, very different (as were the toy-lines), but for the feature film all the elements came together. As a child I understood its power immediately, and nothing permeated my psyche more than a John Wayne accent accompanying the fluid machismo of 80-foot, cell-shaded robots destroying each other as gracefully as a bullet train ballet. It was of course scored with a truly memorable hair metal soundtrack…all this and there is still no Blu-ray release.
The movie was meant to introduce a new line of more modern-looking toys, but after my generation of sixth-graders saw the film we simply couldn’t stomach returning to the creative limitations of the TV show, or its token plastic spawn, and the trend precipitously subsided (only to be eventually revived by computer graphics in the mid-nineties and by Michael Bay in recent live action.)
