dc.description.abstract | Contemporary Japanese photographer Morimura Yasumasa (1951-) creates self-portrait photographs with strategies of parody and appropriation. The motifs in Morimura’s oeuvres contain multiple spheres including history, avant-gardism, popular culture and history etc. Synchronically, Morimura proceeds with various crossover performances interacting between the realms of Japanese and international art. This thesis mainly concentrates on Morimura’s photographs created in the period of 1985-2010, with focuses on the series of “Japanese Art History”, “Art History”, “The Actress”, and “A Requiem: Art on the Top of Battlefield” to discuss the ambiguity of cultural identities and transformation of themes that are reflected in Morimura’s Japanese subjectivity.
The majority of literature on Morimura has been from European and American perspectives, much of which are brought forth through the lens of oriental exoticism. However, the grounding tone of this thesis will be the recently emerged Japanese essays on Morimura, as well as the artist’s own prolific writings. This selection of literature aims to affirm the Japanese cultural accumulation for Morimura, which becomes manifold images that inspire his works. Morimura parodies an artwork of Jakuchū to initiate the “return to Japan” and expresses traditional eastern aesthetics of Zen. Moreover, these series of photographs carry the dilemma of modernization in Japan through western art history and popular culture, juxtaposing nostalgia of pre-modernity and vulnerability of modernity, then simultaneously dispersing the spectrum of Japanese modern art: avant-garde art and anti-art performance. Finally, Morimura accomplishes his own “return to Japan” through the cultural carrier of Mishima Yukio, and also composes requiem dedicated to the 20th century historical Men. From “Art History” to “A Requiem: Art on the Top of Battlefield”, spectators perceive diversified masquerades of Morimura from women to men, and the intertwinement of oeuvres with personal experiences reveals the private sphere of Morimura, thus renders a more delicate dialogue between photographs and artist.
Morimura never ceases the voyage of exploring himself from masterpieces to historical characters. Through deconstructing the signs of artworks, parodies used by Morimura escape the confines of western gender narratives, indicating the affection of the Japanese with their external life and interior mentality in the post-war atmosphere. Furthermore, the cultural constructions in post-war context ultimately manifest the Japanese subjectivity of Morimura. In the post-modern condition of multiple identities, this thesis argues for a perspective on Morimura that is vastly different from previous obscure interpretations: one that attributes a more lucid position to the artist, where his self-portraits establish hybrids from contemporary and traditional cultures spiced with the comical elements of parody.
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