Takashi Murakami

Watching the movie on Crumb reminded me of Takashi Murakami, a Japanese artist that has some rather perverted work.  Not all of Murakami’s work is perverted but two statues he made came to my mind while viewing some of Crumb’s cartoons.  Takashi Murakami’s work can’t be pinned down to any specific media. He has done paintings, sculptures, large inflatable balloons, performance art, and even done some work for Louis Vuitton in the fashion industry. One thing that is pretty consistent in his work however, is that he likes to fuse both “high” and “low” art together in his works which has led some to compare him to Andy Warhol.

            Murakami is also heavily influenced by the anime and manga culture of Japan which is evident from any of his works. He likes the anime/manga style because he believes it is a good reflection of modern day Japan. He has a signature character that is named Mr. DOB that often reappears in his works and this character is so popular it has even been made into t-shirts, cell phone straps, and various other goods. I found this quote by Murakami about what the driving force behind his works, “To become a living example of the potential of art.” Murakami now has his own company called Kaikai Kiki which is an organization of artists that produce art in a variety of fields. Kaikai Kiki has offices in both Japan and the US and the two offices work opposite hours making Kaikai Kiki a company that’s always open.

Frank Lloyd Wright

 

I think in the movie about Frank Ghrey they mentioned Frank Lloyd Wright and although I know he’s been mentioned in multiple video’s I don’t remember us watching a video on him so I’ll do this post on Frank Lloyd Wright. Frank Lloyd Wright is one of the most well known American architects.  When I was looking at colleges down here in Florida I visited Florida Southern College which boasts a lot of work done by Wright so I’ve seen some of his work firsthand.  Most notably of the work I saw was his waterdome which is, as the name suggests, is a giant dome of water created by many water jets that blast the water into the air. The other big thing I remember was a kind of walkway with a roof that he built that ran between most of the buildings. It was rather humorous to me because Wright was apparently a rather short man and when he built the walkway he did not take taller heights into much account which forced all of the taller people to stoop to walk underneath it. I’ve always found it funny that such a well known and brilliant architect wouldn’t take something like height into account when designing a structure.

                Danforth Chapel was another building I got to see done by Wright. It was a beautiful building from the outside but even better once you got in. Behind the pulpit was a large triangular area that stuck out from the building. This area was made of stained glass and was absolutely gorgeous when the sun hit it. He also did Annie Pfeiffer Chapel which was my favorite building that I saw when I was there. The building itself had an odd shape so it was interesting from when I first saw it but the real beauty was when you got up close. All along the walls were small squares of different colored stained glass making the inside of this building into a sort of giant kaleidoscope.  Again, I can say it was beautiful like I did for the last chapel but for either of them word’s can’t really do what you get to see justice.

Propaganda Art

The title reads “the angry one hundred million will defeat America and England.”

Watching Persepolis made me think of propaganda art. The movie isn’t really propaganda itself but as it deals with a revolution I’m sure there was propaganda art used during that time. After all, propaganda art is used for pretty much everything.  Propaganda art is used to influence the viewer by making them feel a certain way. Often this art is very selective in what it presents and is very biased and one sided though that is really to be expected since the goal is to get the viewer to agree with the art’s point of view.  As it is fresh in my mind from my timeline I’ll start with some propaganda manga that was used during WWII. During WWII the Japanese government created the Shin Nippon Mangaka Kyokai, The New Cartoonists Association of Japan, to create manga that painted the Japanese war effort in a positive light. The manga depicted such things as glorifying the Japanese soldiers and demonizing the enemy as well as making humorous comics on the inventiveness of the Japanese civilians to create useful things out of junk as a way to deal with the shortages. The Japanese also made comics specifically for the Allied Nations. They made manga showing the Japanese destroying the Allies and telling them to give up the fight because it was hopeless. This all was a tactic to undermine the morale of the Allied Nations.

Funnily enough, the Allies used manga as propaganda as well. Taro Yashima was a Japanese citizen who disagreed with the war and so he left Japan and moved to the US where he started to produce propaganda manga for the Allies.  Most notably is his comic Unganaizo which depicted the story of a peasant that became a soldier and died fighting for corrupt leaders. This comic was found rather often on the bodies of Japanese soldiers which shows the power it had to affect people. This comic had enough influence on the Japanese that they found it important enough to hold on to if they got a copy. If the story did not strike a cord in the hearts of the Japanese soldiers they would have simply thrown the comic away if they got a hold of it and because it did strike a cord with many of them it undermined their morale which was the point of this piece of propaganda art. I was going to discuss a few more pieces of propaganda art but as I’m way over the word count already I guess I should stop.