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2003.12.10
Art of toys
In early December, Japanese toy maker Takara will release a new product
eagerly awaited by lovers of pop art.
The item is what Japanese refer to as “toy confection” ---
a premium usually enclosed with candies, gum or other sweets. Only
this time it will be vastly different from regular cheap plastic toys.
Labeled "Takashi Murakami's SUPERFLATMUSEUM," each pack includes two
pieces of chewing gum and a miniature replica of a work by one of
Japan's popular contemporary artists, Takashi Murakami.
The 10 items in the SUPERFLATMUSEUM series will be sold in a limited
edition of 300,000 pieces (30,000 of each item) through convenience
store outlets across Japan for 350 yen (about U.S. $3.20) each.
Among the items (the purchaser won’t know which one until he
or she opens the package) will be Murakami’s most famous figure,
named “Miss Ko2,” the original of which fetched U.S. $567,500
at an auction in New York in May 2003. The others will include such
figures as “Hiropon,” which was auctioned a year earlier
at $380,000; “Rumble-kun in a Jar”; “Machikado-kun”;
“Mr. Oval the Mediator” and so on. Each piece is numbered
and comes with a certificate identifying it.
"I believe this is a revolution in the
art world that will change the history of Japan,” asserted Murakami,
41, when he unveiled his bold plan at a press conference in October.
Reigning on top of the Japan’s hierarchy are the masses of people,
he claimed. “I am so happy to deliver my art to these ordinary
people in form of toys.” That way, Takara agrees, people will
be also able to feel greater affinity with art.
Tokyo-born Murakami was quick to win more enthusiastic followers overseas
than at home in Japan. Initially he studied Japanese traditional black-and-white
brush panting at the prestigious Japan National University of Fine
Arts and Music. But by the time he obtained his master’s degree
he had become attracted to contemporary pop culture, particularly
anime (animation) and manga (cartoons), and then completed his doctoral
thesis on the theme of ”The meaning of the nonsense of the meaning.”
Murakami has been plugging away since the mid-1990s at drawing paintings
and creating figurines of his own animated characters, typically large-eyed
and drawn in strong, simple lines and in bright colors. After the
legendary trades of his works at the New York auction, his work became
more familiar in Japan as well. When he designed a handbag for an
internationally famous brand company in collaboration with a fashion
house earlier this year --- an item carrying a price tag of more than
U.S. $5,000 --- he won new fans among young females.
More than just a creative artist, Murakami has also proved his mettle
as a successful entrepreneur and media-savvy producer. He owns KaiKai
Kiki Corporation, a company where aspiring young artists are trained
and engaged to fabricate his or other artists’ work. He produces
a wide range of merchandise from T-shirts, posters, videos and wristwatches
to stuffed animals that are made available at many outlets and online.
Perhaps as Murakami implies, he represents a new lifestyle of level-headed
contemporary artist with a modernesque mindset. And, the new “toy
confection art” from Takara may be providing him with yet another
arena in which to launch his latest activities. |
2003.10.29
When news became an art form
The genre of woodblock prints known as “ukiyo-e”
(floating world pictures) flourished during the Edo Period (1603-1867).
Today, works by famous Japanese illustrators are appreciated
by art lovers around the world and eagerly sought by museums
and collectors.
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Woodblock prints are produced by superimposing a master sketch
over panels of wood (called hangi), tracing the design, and
then using woodworking tools to engrave lines into the wood.
For each color used in printing, a separate hangi is required.
While cumbersome compared to modern printing technology, this
art form is still in existence today, and has even been mastered
by non-Japanese artists.
One little-known aspect in the history of woodblock prints is
their brief existence as the forerunner of today’s tabloid
newspapers. Called “nishiki-e shimbun” -- which has
been translated as “colored woodblock print newssheet”
or “illustrated ukiyo-e newspapers” -- they existed
from 1872 to 1880 and were, before the age of news photography,
unique in their method of combining accounts of news stories
with graphic illustrations.
Published mainly in Tokyo and Osaka, they went by such names
as “Tokyo Nichinichi Shimbun” and “Yubin Hochi
Shimbun.” Their “logos” were usually indicated
at the top of the page by a banner held up, somewhat bizarrely,
by a pair of nude cherubs, a good example of how quickly Western
elements were being incorporated into traditional art. The printers
also made use of new aniline dyes imported from the West. Printed
on single sheets, they sold for between 1.6 to 2 sen (a sen
is 1/100 of a yen (1 yen approximately 1 cent USD)), making
them affordable by ordinary working people.
The tabloids were illustrated by skilled print artists, perhaps
the best known of whom were Ochiai Yoshiiku (1833-1904) and
Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839-1892), themselves bitter rivals, to
produce spectacular, multicolored drawings depicting stories
making the news. Working from second- or third-hand accounts,
the artists visualized the story and then quickly produced a
drawing that was printed in realistic detail (exaggerated to
the point that some were quite gruesome!).
 Themes
reflected the tremendous social changes taking place in Japan
during the first decade of the Meiji era (1868-1912). Popular
themes included battle scenes and uprisings against the government.
More typical topics included heroic acts, such as policemen
apprehending thieves; touching acts of filial piety; love suicides;
lurid accounts of duels and vendettas; marital discord; crimes
of passion; matters involving foreigners; natural disasters;
and stories of people who claimed to have encountered ghosts
or monsters.
Combining the oral storytelling tradition, woodblock print art
and aspects of modern-day tabloid journalism, the nishiki-e
newspapers attest to the common man’s fascination with
the human drama. While conventional newspapers were still in
their infancy, and long before the invention of moving pictures,
photography and television, it is evident that people were already
hungry for the kind of stimulating news they could discuss among
themselves. The nishiki-e newspapers can also be regarded as
a sub-genre of Japanese popular culture that was to evolve into
the manga and animated cartoons that have become so popular
around the world today.
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