Hello again. Another entry in the continuing saga of my life. Today we went to church, ate lunch, went grocery shopping, angsted over headphones for my new i-pod (the old one was defective) forgot to buy the hoagie rolls and hot dogs, and found out that Dan Fogelberg had prostate cancer, which means that we can't go to his concerts (he isn't doing anymore) and my mom won't be stalking him on her business trip to Colorado this week ('nuff said). But yesterday...
Oh, wait, I forgot another funny little thing that happened today. We were at the Home Depot buying some flats of flowers for our yard, and as we stuck one of the flats into the floor in the backseat of the car, a little green frog jumped right out. It was so cute, and surprisingly enough, the first actual frog I have ever seen in Texas. The rest are actually toads. This one was bright green and nervous looking. I was over getting something else out of the cart and my mom yelled, "Oh my gosh, there's a frog in the car! What are we going to do!?!" I just went over and put my hand over him. He was a slippery bugger, he got out of my hand a couple of times before I managed to get him out of the car. I wasn't just going to leave him in a parking lot to get squished or fried, so I ran back to the verge to let him free. I think I must have made a funny picture, running across the parking lot in my nice church clothes, cupping the mysterious something in my hands. I then proceeded to run from one clump of plant species to another, because I couldn't decide where he would want to be. This bunch was too leafy, what if he wanted to be on the dirt? This was too stemmy, what if the dry ground was too hot? I finally left him in a wild tangle, and he sat on my pinky calmly for a few seconds before he took a mighty leap, clearing the vegetation altogether, and landed on the wooden pallet about three feet away. I guess someone wants a little more autonomy. But now that I think of it, this was all quite foolish. Clearly the poor lad was just looking for the kiss of transformation, which is why he jumped into our flat of flowers in the first place, which I staunchly and ignorantly denied him, not recognizing the royal blood beneath the green skin and seeing only a lowly amphibian. For shame, Shannon, you must learn to look beyond...
Yes, but yesterday. Yesterday was very delightful. I made my mom reschedule her haircut so we could take a trip to the art museum, which we don't usually get to do when Heather's in town, Heather being rather rapidly bored of art museums. The exhibit I had gone there to see, French master's of impressionism or something like that, which had left by quite a while by the time we got there, like back in May or something. Which begs the question of why they were still advertising it on their website, or whatever. So we ended up seeing an exhibit that I had very little initial interest in, but one which totally changed my mind when we actually got to see it, which was on the contemporary art of Asia. It is such absolutely fascinating stuff, I hardly know what to say or where to start. First of all, I think it showed rather starkly my own ignorance of Asian culture and history. It was like stumbling on a whole world which before you had only had the barest consciousness of, but once inside it seems to just go on and on in ever increasing complexity.
So the first really interesting theme that the exhibit highlighted is the process of rapid urbanization in Asia and how there are three stages that exist simultaneously, the old buildings and sections of cities, the rubble of disrepair that no one has cleaned up yet, and the new, modernized, Western highrises. One of the most fascinating pieces, I think entitled "Chemical Balance" was a sort of futuristic urban landscape made entirely out of towers of empty prescription bottles. I think this explores some of the angst of rapid change and westernization, seeming to create a kind of dystopian view of the future, but at the same time, the skyline was calm, orderly, structured, egalitarian (everybody's pill bottle tower being roughly the same size). I think a lot of the art in the exhibit showed at least some sort of ambivalence to all the change that was happening, rather than overt critical commentary.
One way that really exemplifies this is the new kind of pop art of Japan in particular, which, in the wake of socialist government and in the wake of rapidly expanding free market enterprise and industrialization, has produced the same kind of collision of market symbols and artistic/historical symbols. In China, this emerging trend is complicated by the embedded memory of widespread communist propoganda promoting the Maoist regime. Where is the line between commercialism and propoganda?
The Luo Brother's work and in particular, their series, "Welcome to the World's Famous Brands," uses an almost seamless combination of traditional mythological and popular Asian imagery, mixed with logos of iconic Western brands and products. Perhaps the most disturbing piece was one that actually interwove the photograph of the execution of a Vietcong officer during the Tet Offensive by Eddie Adams (just google it and you'll remember which one I'm talking about, it was one of the most famous photographs ever) with a montage of international brand logos. From far enough away, if you knew it was there you could make out the image of the execution, but from up close, it was completely invisible. This, to me, says some disturbing things about commercialism and the erasure of memory, both historical/communal and private.
There was so much in this exhibit about memory and history, I was really just blown away, even to the point of pop art referencing the images from the most ancient books of Japan. There was so much memory of events like the Maoist regime, Tienammen Square, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, all making indelible but subtle appearances. But perhaps far stranger than these were the lighthearted, almost air-headed, references to anime, manga, and otaku culture (mainly young male subculture centered around technology and gaming). There was this really intriguing painting that depicted the infiltration of female anime style characters into Tokyo's Akihabara district, a center of otaku culture, which was supposed to show the rising degree of infiltration of girls into this largely male world. To what end, I have no idea, but there you have it. Another aspect of this style of pop art is the Japanese concept of kawaii, or "cuteness," which is a widespread visual motif in Japanese culture, even into places that Westerners would find such images unnecessarily juvenile, such as office environments or even governement publications. Think the visual style of Hello Kitty or Pokemon magnified onto a grand canvas, and that pretty much sums up this particular subgenre of pop art. Why kawaii? This is clearly a kind of visual cultural identity that is deeply rooted in Japanese culture, but I have to say, beyond that, I don't really understand it. This kind of style is, in my opinion, most artfully rendered in the work of Chiho Aoshima, who's amazing animation, "City Glow," explores and subverts the concept of kawaii.
The work begins in darkness and goes through a kind of zombie graveyard, where the ghosts are banished by a troupe of colorful pixie like characters, kind of the mobile spirits of the half-human buildings that you can then see rising from the forest. They sway gently through a fierce storm, but ultimately the skies clear again, night falls and the stars come out for a peaceful evening of rest. It's an amazing integration of urbanization with nature, a connection Aoshima believes is quite close. The subversion of kawaii comes with the appearance of the storm, as well as the graveyard full of zombies, but ultimately kawaii is vindicated as good triumphs over evil. Elsewhere her paintings exhibit the brightly colored pixies on the same canvas as dark clouds dripping with blood. Artistically, I am in way over my head here. Cross-cultural interpretation, anyone?
Bleh, okay this has turned into quite the marathon post, so I think I am done for the moment and now...I'll go do something else.
Wonderingly,
S.
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