Posts Tagged "japan"

While Rumi Matsumoto’s drawings are not about earthquakes or tsunamis, I can’t help associating her figures floating in the night sky with Japan’s current struggles.

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In the wake of this disaster, I have to tack on another post following Kristy’s. The situation is worsening and the sorrow and fear rises.
Please help.
Designed by Max Erdenberger, printed by Walker Cahall and Steve Denekas and on sale via the Goodness shop.

Also:
W+K Tokyo has set up this person finding aggregator http://buji.me.

Our thoughts are with Japan this morning as we woke up to find that they’ve been hit by a massive earthquake and tsunami. If you’d like to help out directly, you can donate to Red Cross disaster relief efforts around the world by visiting redcross.org or text “Red Cross” to 90999. If you text in, $10 will be automatically charged to your phone bill as a donation. If this is the first you’re hearing of this tragedy, The Atlantic is compiling moving images of the disaster, updated by the minute.

Thanks to Friends of Type for the thoughtful design.

Jacob Ring shoots straight-up 35mm on his old Nikon f4.  He likes his double exposures + so do I.  Photos from Australia, Japan + Thailand.

Overture is Jason & Aya Brown, a talented husband/wife duo who work in illustration and animation. They’ve worked with some big companies like Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network Japan, but I enjoy some of their less renown work better.

These images are from a series they did for their Caffine Exhibition. You can check out the rest of the set here.

Bryum & Kapok 03: A Lilt from Overture on Vimeo.This is an animation they did for FatCat Records. I love the characters, and I think the animation technique with the watercolors is really interesting. If you want to see something really crazy, check out their Rhubarbidoo video on their website.

Takashi Murakami is a prolific contemporary Japanese artist whose work, like the ironic work of the Pop & Neo Geo artists who preceded him, blurs the already tenuous boundaries between high and low art. He appropriates popular motifs from mass media and pop culture, then transforms them into thirty-foot sculptures, paintings, or commercial schlock such as figurines and phone caddies. Murakami’s work pays homage to anime and manga, popular Japanese styles of animation and comic art. He calls his style “Superflat,” and he envisions it as the catalyst for a new, uniquely Japanese culture.

But I wonder: Does Murakami’s work amount to genuine cultural critique – or even some new cultural paradigm – or is it simply kitsch repackaged for the fine art market (ala Jeff Koons’ over-hyped work)? FYI: “My Lonesome Cowboy,” the masturbating figure on the left, sold for over 15 million at Sotheby’s. Whee-ha!

Here’s a video about Murakami’s work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3i2hyHK0_g

You might also want to read Peter Schjeldahl’s review in the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/artworld/2008/04/14/080414craw_artworld_schjeldahl