The Last Day of Research

It finally came down to the last day of research yesterday, only one more full day to go! Throughout the trip, as you know, we have all been doing work towards our own personal research topics as well as an overarching topic of printmaking in South Korea. Every day so far has worked itself into someone’s research and we have been working full steam ahead to make sure that we can learn as much as possible in our short three weeks! It has been an amazing experience, and the last day and a half will be a bit of a break from all of our hard work. I didn’t log on to write about the break (yet) but to tell you about the fruits of yesterday’s labor as our last day on the field!

We got a late start yesterday, giving us a little extra time to sleep in and prepare for the day ahead of us. We left at noon to go back to visit our friend Nam ChunWoo sunsaengnim where he was holding a woodblock demonstration in his Print Research Center. In case you don’t remember this visit you can always revisit this adventure:

https://hellojenna.wordpress.com/2013/05/16/gangnam-style-school-festival/

There’s Nam sunsaengnim in case you’ve already forgotten his face! The demonstration was done by a woman who specialized in traditional Japanese Ukiyo-e techniques, and was currently using her prints to raise money for an organization promoting education in Africa. Talk about using printmaking to be responsibly engaged in the world (a shout out to you Concordia, I saw some BREWing taking place!) Anyways, I took like a bijillion pictures of her process, but through a freak camera accident I no longer have any of them! Augh! So frustrating! She obviously gave her presentation in Korean, but Nam sunsaengnim translated a hand out for us giving us the specifics of her technique. I haven’t been passed the handout yet, so I’ll just give you my quick rundown of the process!

She uses a water based ink, and I believe she mixes it with a sort of watercolor. (all the details of her ink recipe are on the aforementioned handout). She works with both wet and dry paper, as each technique gives a slightly different appearance. Using dry paper allows the ink to absorb more on the surface, and gives a rich, punchy color. Using dry  paper is best when you have strong lines or extreme colors that you want to stand out on the paper. She also uses wet paper, which allows the color to soak in deeper, and provides a soft, watercolor like appearance. For the  demonstration she used wet paper, which she sprayed with water, layered it between newspaper and sprayed again, and then put the whole little package in a sealed bag. She also had a variety of different brushes that she got from Japan and this handy little hand-press thingamabob that looks like a hand sized disk about 1/8 of an inch thick with slightly protruding metal orbs on one side. The other side has a handle so you can push down on the little guy and get even pressure as you move it over your image. Heidi says we have one in the studio, but it’s rather poor quality.

She started by wetting down the back of her woodblock, so that it wouldn’t move around. I thought that this was a pretty clever idea, especially if you’re going to be hand-printing and not using a press! She then wet the area she was going to print by spraying it with water and dabbing off any standing water with a towel. Using one of her brushes she applied the lightest color to the area that she wanted to be that color. She made use of selective inking which I think is much easier!! In order to make an ombre effect she dabbed the paint thickly in one place and then using another brush and some water she smudged the ink around so that it would go from a very rich color to a very soft one. After the block was sufficiently inked she pulled out her paper and rolled it onto the block using an interesting registration technique that I didn’t really get to see. After the paper was securely on the woodblock she put a piece of parchment paper on top of it and went to town using the little hand-printing thing. She moved it around rather quickly, attempting to put the same amount of pressure in every part of the image. She checked it a few times, added more ink in necessary and continued to push. Once she was satisfied with the color she removed it and put it back in between the newspapers. She was using multiple blocks so she just grabbed her next color block and repeated the process over again to print the next darkest color on top.

She also had a new and more innovative technique that she used in order to print thinner lines and dark blacks. She drew into the woodblock like a copper plate and ten put some sort of chemical on the wood that she didn’t want to print. Whatever it was that she put on the block made it so that the ink wouldn’t stick there and she could with away those places before she printed. That way she was able to use her woodblock to print intaglio style! I’m not sure EXACTLY how it works, but it was pretty cool!

It was really nice of Nam Sunsaengnim to invite us to this demo, and you can tell that he was doing everything in his power to foster the love of printmaking! He had books everywhere for people to see, chatted excitedly with all of the teachers and students that were crowded into the studio, and went to the effort to translate what the speaker was saying for us! I asked him how often he had these demos, and if they would still be going on two years from now when I graduate (in case I come back to teach) and he told me that he’d be glad to have me, and that it was important that I still make prints while teaching!

After visiting the Print Research center we went to the Seoul Arts Center to see a new exhibition and meet another contact of Heidi’s. It was a graphic arts exhibition, and it was jam packed with young artists trying to promote themselves. I have to say, out of all the galleries and museums that we’ve looked at I think this one was the most enjoyable, and the most relate able to my topic! Again, not all of my pictures saved, but I do have a few of them to share with you! There were a lot of young artists working with the cute aesthetic that I am researching, which is good because a lot of the older generation are trying to stick to more traditional works. That’s good too of course, but not as helpful to my research 😉

I picked up a LOT of business cards, and I am thinking that I might work with Susan to send them some email questions that I can use for my research. Just some questions about their aesthetic, if they perceive it as “cute”, if cuteness was a conscious decision, and something about the love of cuteness in Korean society. I have a 19 hour plane ride to think of questions tomorrow, so I’ll get things straightened out soon enough! I also noticed the use of quite a few “characters” meaning that the landscapes and imagery would change, but there was a re-occuring figure or character that the audience could relate to. This seems to be popular with Koreans, as I have seen even just coffee shops who have a little character logo that occurs throughout the cafe, or Subway characters, bus characters, and other assorted friends like Rilakuma who seems to be everywhere! Here are a few of the galleries who had a specific “character” in their work.

The use of this character is a really interesting way to capture your audience, and it really makes you become attached to their work! for example, I really love Hello Kitty so if I see a coffee mug with little flowers on it it’s cute but I already have a lot of coffee mugs so I don’t care too much. If I see the same mug with little flowers AND Hello Kitty it’s much more loveable because I can connect to the art through Hello Kitty. Making use of a character like this could potentially be the way that these artists are attempting to bring you closer to their work. You want to follow the little character you know and love, and see what adventures they come across next!! Anyways, my favorite booth at the fair made use of a character like this, and also had some really cute bunnies and BEAUTIFUL work! Here are a few pictures of her section.

Stunning right? All of this thoughts on characters made me realize that most of the artists I have been studying have a character of some sort. Although Kwon Ki Soo is upset that Dongguri is being viewed that way the public certainly sees Dongguri as a character. Other artists like Art Nom, Takahashi Murakami, and Nara all have “characters” that live within the space of their work. Maybe THIS is the key to their popularity with the Korean public. If, as my research has been indicating, Koreans are desperate for a Korean identity perhaps they are looking to these characters to give them a Korean identity. One that is soft, and kind, and can take them away from the real stress of Korean society. These characters represent an ideal through which they can live an alternate life in the worlds that are created by these artists. The use of characters could also go back to the idea of lonliness that many of the artists discussed, and perhaps these characters can be taken as a friend, someone who is also all alone but never upset.

Oh man guys, research epiphany.

Research: Chiho Aoshima

Chiho Aoshima is an artist more commonly talked about here in the states, but still fairly young so there wasn’t as much research on her work! I wanted to talk about her just a little bit because I had the chance to see her work “City Glow” in person last year at the Minneapolis Institute of Art! It is a lovely piece of animation work that took up an entire room at the gallery and stuck with me for hours after watching it.

Here Goes: Chiho Aoshima was born in Tokyo, Japan in the year 1974 and received no formal artistic training. Despite her lack of formal training her hauntingly beautiful murals of glowing cities, enchanted forests, and ghostly schoolgirls attracted the attention of Superflat inventor Takahashi Murakami and she became one of his collection of young artists called the KaiKai Kiki Co. Like Takano, and most artists associated with the Superflat movement young girls take a leading part in Aoshima’s work. Unlike the artists Aya Takano and Nara however is Aoshima’s focus on modernity and landscape. Where Aya Takano seems to be making a statement about the sexualization of our youth Aoshima’s piece City Glow has other goals in mind. In the animaiton (or large prints than can be seen in the New York Subway System) a story unfolds that tells the life of a modern city in balance with the powerful paradise that surrounds it. By day the paradise rules and fairies, plants and ghoul like girls dance around the scenery. Eventually however these figures become replaced by tall phallic skyscrapers and glowing lights. The skyscrapers however do not loose their humanity, and keep the forms and faces of her ghostly female figures. As the city grows the paradise begins to fade and the fairies disappear. At this point one could guess that the piece was a statement about modernity crushing the natural paradise around it, but the video takes another turn. As a storm errupts and the scene is filled with rain and an eerie underwater scene the paradise begins to regrow. The building like figures eventually move around in a more organic manner and join in the paradises’ natural beauty. As nighttime comes again the paradise is twisted into a nightmarish scene of ghosts, demons and decapitated heads only to become the same paradise in the morning.

So what is Aoshima saying? Is it a statement about Modernity destroying the natural world? I don’t think so. Keep in mind that I am only an undergraduate student, and speak with absolutely no authority on the subject, but I would like to offer an interpretation of my own. One of the key elements binding the work of the Kaikai Kiki Co. is their belief that the different cultures of Japan and different scopes of art aren’t really so different at all. Although scholars can argue to high heaven that Michelangelo is art and Superman is just commercialism these artists don’t see the world in as black and white terms. Japan has a history of blurring the lines between “fine art” and “low art” that can be clearly observed in the celebration of the Ukiyo subculture of the 16th – 19th century. I wont go too into depth on the work of Ukiyo-e here, as the fascinating subject deserves it’s own post, but it essentially was a massive movement of artists depicting the life of people within one subculture. The subculture at hand was the “floating world” or the red-light district of Edo Japan. These scenes often depicted scenes from popular plays, beautiful women, every day life, and sexual scenes of courtesan’s and their patrons as well as young lovers “in the act”. According to the scholar Tetsuya Ozaki the word for “fine art” (bijitsu) in Japan wasn’t even created until the later Meiji Period (around 1873) after a flood of western influence. In his book entitled Superflat Takahashi Murakami says that he considers the words used for fine art (bijitsu) and the word for low art (geijitsu) to be too similar to be differentiated, and that he wishes to use then interchangeably. So we must return to the work “City Glow” by Chiho Aoshima. Her piece shows a wide variety of pictures from the same scene. We are treated to the overgrown paradise, the booming cityscape, the underwater fantasy, and the ghoul infested horror zone. But these scenes are all the same picture. Hopefully my point is becoming clear now. Aoshima is flattening the different cultures and flattening the different times and worlds within her city. There is no longer a barrier between the modern city and the overgrown paradise because they have become one within her work. Likewise Japan is no longer made up of past and present, bijitsu and geijitsu, or subculture and art. They are all one and CAN exist in harmony.

I could have her all wrong, maybe this piece is about the decapitation of femenism in a male dominated society, I don’t know, but that’s the great thing about Chiho Aoshima’s piece, it’s up to you to decide what to take from it.

Research: Aya Takano

Since I am bored and feel that if I don’t start now I will never update this blog I have decided to slowly post some of my preliminary research online! Although this isn’t going to be heavily in depth I have a bit of an artist spotlight if you will! One of my current favorite artists is the Superflat artist Aya Takano.

Aya Takano was born on December 22nd 1976 and attended Tama Art University in Tokyo. She is known for her ethereal, and unnatural forms that combine fantasy and science fiction. One of the most common themes of her work is the idea of flying, or floating in space. Her figures are not bound by the gravity that exists in our reality. She also tackles the Otaku Subculture through a feminist perspective. She takes on the issue of sexualizing young girls and places it at the heart of her work. In doing so her paintings are often filled with androgynous figures in a state of undress. They are often unaware of their sensuality and seem to be minding their own business. Her figures are notably distorted, and emphasize the idea of youth. They have large heads and eyes, thin and curveless bodies, long gangly limbs and a pinkish warmth at the joints. Takano says that these manipulations of the body not only go back to the idea of the otaku and sexualization of our youth, but also point to Japan’s desire to stay stuck in a state of immortal childhood.

The idea of an immortal childhood is one that personally interests me, and has often been tied to the super-cuteness and Superflat movement in Japan. Most Scholars believe that the cuteness factor can at least in part be attributed to the strict and unforgiving nature of Japanese society. I am not saying that Japan is a horrible place to be, by any means, but growing up in Japan seems to be a much harder experience than growing up in the states. In his book Japan: A System That Doesn’t Make People Happy he refers to the high suicide rate (over 30,000 per year) that placed Japan 6th in the counties with the highest suicide rate in 2009. (It is interesting to note here that South Korea has recently surpassed Japan’s suicide rate). He also references the fierce competitions in schools called “exam wars”, a high rate of agoraphobia, bullying, domestic violence, sexual harassment and social discrimination. He, along with contemporary artist Makoto Aida blame this social pressure on the Japanese Salary Man. The Japanese have a focus on the Confucian idea of blending in and conforming, and the Salary Man is the perfect example of this. Aida refers to the Salary Man as having “unquestioning conformism, lubricious sexlessness, and lack of individual spirit.” The idea that all Japanese adults must eventually become the Salary Man has sparked fear in the hearts of Japanese Youth and led them to seek eternal youth. And that is how we return to Aya Takano. Takano allows her figures to exist in a world where reason doesn’t exist. People float along their daily lives with no fear of aging. The Salary Man does not exist in Takano’s world, just as responsibility, suicide, exams or maturity are hidden from the viewer’s eyes.