In 1962, as one of the exhibits in his first solo fine art exhibition, Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans shocked the world and led the way for Pop Art to break into the mainstream. In the same year of Andy Warhol's fame, a Japanese man was born, and he debuted as a contemporary artist 29 years later with his first art show. This art exhibition was called TAKASHI, TAMIYA, and the Japanese man was Takashi Murakami, and from his creation, Japanese Pop Art began.
Pop Art is an art movement that explores the connection between popular culture and art, and is defined by one of its representative artists, Richard Hamilton, as "popular, fleeting, consumable, mass-produced, and youthful". (Filipowska 34) The name Pop Art is derived from Popular Art, a term coined by British art critic Lawrence Allowey in 1956 to refer to banal commercial-themed paintings and sculptures, as well as a contraction of words such as “lollipop” and “soda pop” that suggest relaxation and enjoyment. Pop Art began in the mid- to-late 1950s, first sparked in England by a group of artists called the Independent Group, and subsequently represented by artists such as Andy Warhol, Richard Hamilton, and Roy Lichtenstein, who moved Pop Art into the mainstream in the early 1960s without breaking away from popular and commercial culture. The popularity of the Pop Art movement faded in the early 1970s as postmodern art took shape, but it not only left a strong mark on the art landscape, but soon afterwards revived and made waves again outside the Western art world in a new form.
Among the important artists who revived and developed a new style of Pop Art were Takashi Murakami, Tadanori Yokoo, and Yayoi Kusama, who established Japanese New Pop Art as a distinct genre. They made the style first visible in the collage and psychedelicism of the 1960s and reached a new height in the Superflat concept of the 1990s, which then became popular to these days. By fusing traditional Japanese techniques with popular culture, and Japanese aesthetic thought with the original absurdity and humor of Pop Art, they created works that not only reflected the emptiness of consumer culture and mass entertainment as their predecessors had done, but also brought a reflection on Japanese popular culture and social issues.
What makes Japanese Pop Art truly different from the likes of Andy Warhol and Richard Hamilton actually comes from Japanese culture - it includes traditional painting techniques such as Ukiyo-e, Japanese aesthetics such as death and erotic aesthetics, and the Japanese subculture of the 80s and 90s called Otaku. These things were blended together, and out of them came the important elements that make up Japanese Pop Art: the superflat style, traditional Asian cultural symbols, and modern kawaii culture, and have supported the flourishing of Japanese Pop Art as an independent genre.
The representative artist of Japanese Pop Art, Takashi Murakami, drew many lessons from Ukiyo-e, and his "superflat" style built on Ukiyo-e has driven Japanese Pop Art forward in both technical and ideological directions.
Ukiyo-e is one of the traditional Japanese art genres, referring to paintings that represent the ever-changing world, which emerged in the Edo period. This genre exists mainly in the form of woodblock prints, and common subjects include landscapes, beauty, history and folklore, flora and fauna. One of the distinctive features of ukiyo-e prints is that they appear visually "flat": the technique is to use contour lines to depict the image and fill in the different figures with single color; compared to the Western art of the same period, which emphasized light, shadow and volume, ukiyo-e clearly brought a stylistic impact: flat, two- dimensional generalizations and expressions (focusing on lines and flat colors), the commonplace themes of the works, and the Japanese customs they depicted. These allowed Japanese Pop Art to develop with its own style a century later, with the superflat style and theories born out of Ukiyo-e.
Takashi Murakami introduced the concept of "superflat" in 2001 (Hebdige 15), a term that initially contained two meanings: it referred to the traditional two-dimensional expression of Japanese painting art represented by Ukiyo-e, where perspective and shadows were removed, and it also alluded to Japan's economic fluctuation after the 1980s, when consumerism was rampant and the aesthetic mainstream of society was dominated by superficial and flat subcultures. In this new world, the hierarchy of art collapsed and became a flat but vibrant pop art.
The first level of superflat is related to the technique of ukiyo-e and the visual effect it brings. There is usually no perspective in ukiyo-e, and what is depicted is presented in an extremely two- dimensional, flat manner, and the use of shadows is rare, so that every part of the painting is given equal status and importance. In this way, the Ukiyo-e can be assembled from panels of different sizes, thus allowing for variation in size and adaptation to the needs of different sites.
The second layer of superflat is based on the cultural and social attributes of ukiyo-e. The wide range of subject matter, bright colors, and universal nature of ukiyo-e reflected the hedonism and consumerism of Edo-period society, while the nobility and commoners of the Edo period had equal access to and enjoyment of this universal art form, despite the differences in quality and price of ukiyo-e itself. (Srđan 261) This is reflected in the meaning that Takashi Murakami wanted the superflat to carry, that is, art ceased to have class and became a popular commodity, and began to carry the universal culture.
Thus, just as ukiyo-e was expanding on a flat piece of wood and as modern pop culture was growing rapidly in Japanese society, Superflat has the potential to be able to extend infinitely in a two-dimensional world. It’s also similar to Takashi Murakami's sunflowers - whether one, or hundreds or thousands of them - the sunflowers covered the white walls, and Japanese pop art covered every aspect of modern Japanese society.
Another element that occupies an important place in Japanese pop art is the unique Japanese aesthetics and ideology, which is reflected in the actual creative expression as extremely Japanese cultural symbols and visual elements.
The Japanese culture of "Mono no aware" (もののあわれ), which believes that the highest level of beauty is the beauty of brokenness and despair, is a core element of traditional Japanese culture and a characteristic of Japanese literature. Mono no aware plays an important role in Japanese people's lives and behavior, such as Yukio Mishima’s suicide at the peak of his career as a writer, and his death led the Japanese pop artist Tadanori Yokoo to a state of confusion, reflection, and the search for mysticism.
The birth of "Mono no aware" has a lot to do with the geography of Japan. Surrounded by snow-capped mountains, coasts, streams, hot springs, waterfalls, volcanoes, earthquakes, the world perceived by people in Japan is constantly changing.Even the cherry blossoms, one of the symbols of the nation, have a very short flowering period and their beauty is only fleeting. At the end of the 19th century, the idea of aestheticism was introduced to Japan and combined with the culture of Mono no aware, gradually shaped the unique Japanese national aesthetic sentiment. Even the war in the first half of the 20th century could not divest them from this aesthetic and thought. Influenced by this aesthetic, beautiful images symbolizing fragility, such as cherry blossoms, volcanoes, waves and birds, appeared in literature and traditional painting, and were even reconstructed and continued to be used in the creation of Japanese pop art afterwards.
Ukiyo-e still holds a place when discussing the content and elements of Japanese Pop Art. Ukiyo-e not only inspired the superflat style, but also contributed greatly to the dissemination and emphasis of traditional Japanese culture through its impressive techniques and its depiction of themes of Japanese folk life and natural beauty, as well as bringing direct visual elements such as the distinctive red sun, cherry blossoms, Mount Fuji, and torii. Perhaps the most successful of these is Katsushika Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa, which depicts naturally decorative and flat waves that have become quite iconic visual (and even linguistic) symbols. These visual symbols, combined with traditional Japanese thought, have been reconstructed and expressed in the hands of a number of Japanese pop artists, and the artist who has used these elements most skillfully is Tadanori Yokoo, once obsessed with mysticism and curious about the world of the dead.
Tadanori Yokoo's TADANURI YOKOO is his interpretation of death and rebirth. In the TADANURI YOKOO poster, he shows his creative concept graphically: Tadanori Yokoo is hanging himself holding a rose, and the cursing gesture in the lower right corner expresses his determination to bury the past and hope for the future; there are two erupting volcanos in the upper left and upper right corners, echoing the "Climax" in the poster. The symbol of the rising sun (rather than the militaristic flag of the rising sun), which dominates the background of the poster, represents a vision of the future. Through his works, Tadanori Yokoo confronts people with sex, desire and death, which is his design philosophy and his farewell statement to part ways with modernist design. After the exhibition of TADANURI YOKOO, Tadanori Yokoo's Pop posters have continued to use a lot of Japanese symbols such as the rising sun, cherry blossoms, waves, etc. The subjects expressed range from violence, to eroticism, to curiosity.
Tadanori Yokoo, Made in Japan, Tadanori Yokoo, Having Reached A Climax At 29, I Was Dead, 1965, screen print
The "unique Japanese ideas and symbols" are not only found in the history and traditional culture. The radical changes of modern society and the redistribution of the world have brought to this island nation in the Pacific their unique experiences and traumas: the two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki half a century ago stripped Japan of its power and cultural identity, while leaving behind the ruins of war and the trauma that must continue to slowly heal for generations. While the razed city destroyed Japanese militarism, it also forced Japan to re-examine its country and its history, and to rethink where the country's future should go.
Japanese pop art works, when dealing with the themes of nuclear bombs, war and death, often present a paradoxical combination of emotions about post-war trauma: the pain and powerlessness brought by the destruction of war is presented to the world through an image of powerlessness and harmless innocence. Frequent images also include mushrooms and skulls, which can also be interpreted as a yearning for power, and an obsession with destruction, respectively. Takashi Murakami's Time-Bokan expresses this with the theme of atomic bomb trauma.
In Time-Bokan (2001), Takashi Murakami draws a white skeleton with a cloud-like outline that contrasts with the vibrant pink of the background. The cloud-like outline, the skull - this work was born from a photograph of a mushroom cloud. Takashi Murakami's use of his superflat style makes it seem less serious; the skull's wavy shape softens its form, while the colorful pupils, gold strokes, and pink background make it look even somewhat cute and endearing. The work maintains its underlying themes of historical memory, war trauma and national shadow with the still visible skull and mushroom cloud shape, and attempts to provoke reflection and empathy, yet the bright colors and the skull's large pair of eyes soften the heaviness of the subject matter - it presents not the dark side of death, but the rebirth after the destruction, and also represents Japan's attitude towards defeat after World War II: painful, reflective, but still hopeful and aesthetic.
Time-Bokan, acrylic, canvas, wood, 2001.
Otaku culture and Kawaii culture are also important components of Japanese pop art, and they can be the subject and main theme of Japanese pop art creation as representatives of popular culture, or they can be used as a support in other themes, playing an ironic, contrasting or moderating role - for example, the aforementioned, Murakami Takashi uses lovely color schemes and graphics to dilute the heaviness of mushroom clouds and nuclear war, and in still maintain the reflection on death and social issues that his works are intended to convey.
Otaku culture is a subculture that was born in the 1970s and 1980s out of the great excitement of movies, anime, and exaggerated electric toys for Japanese teenagers, representing the pursuit of personal spirit and private space. (Takashia) After that, with the development of technology, otaku culture, represented by manga, games and pornographic goods, occupied the privileged seat of Japan's cultural exports to other countries and instead propelled Japan to build a new subcultural empire around the world, from which Kawaii culture was born, using animation, manga, beauty girls and anthropomorphic images as a medium to convey the light-hearted, harmless and popular "cuteness."
After World War II, Japan went through the upwardly developed Showa era, and the unreal but wonderful bubble economy period, and the demand for cheap entertainment grew throughout society, so a number of flat, easy-to-understand anime, manga, and games, and the cute characters and elements they brought, came into prominence. (Favell 54)
Animation and manga are visually and naturally superflat: those cute cartoon characters, from Pikachu to Hello Kitty, to Kaikai and Kiki created by Japanese pop artists, are made up of simple, generous lines and one or two large areas of vibrant color. They have distinctive fixed features (making them less likely to lose recognition in reproduction and dissemination) and parts that can be modified such as costumes and color schemes, and can be reduced to a symbol at any time, just as Hello Kitty's head can appear individually or in combinations on everything from walls to canvas bags. These two-dimensional images, which are easy to remember, reproduce and disseminate, reflect the culture of cuteness and Pop Art's emphasis on mass popular culture and commercialization.
In addition to using the Kawaii image as the subject of the work, Kawaii culture itself represents a style. Many works that use Kawaii culture as a visual style or borrow bright colors draw on the visual concept of flatness, mixing traditional Japanese painting techniques with computer- generated graphics, using flat graphics, high contrast, distortion and strong colors to convey emotions and ideas that contrast with or emphasize a specific theme. (Kimberly) In addition to Takashi Murakami's use of cute colors and anthropomorphic shapes in Time-Bokan, Tomoko Nagao's 2015 drawing La Liberté guidant le peuple also reinforces the themes he wants to express through flat, cute drawings, popular characters and commercial culture. No one would find the topless Cinderella erotic, not only because the composition (and the title) is an homage to Delacroix's painting, but also because the graphic and highly generalized cartoon style dilutes the sexual innuendo present and focuses the subject matter more strongly on pop culture and consumer culture.
Tomoko Nagao, 'La Liberté guidant le peuple', 2015.
In conclusion, it was Japan's own unique social environment, ideology and culture that enabled Japanese Pop Art to revive after a decade of decline, to establish its own style and to flourish and maintain popular today.
From the two-dimensional technique of ukiyo-e and its social popularity to the superflat; from the exploration of life and death in the aesthetics of Mono no aware to the national trauma and reflection after World War II; from the emphasis on repetitive entertainment and consumption in Otaku culture to the subject and expression of Kawaii culture in art; Japan has shaped these artists and their Japanese pop art, and continues to bring this popular, young, and upbeat and vibrant art form continues to live on.
Reference
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Hebdige, Dick. "Flat boy vs. skinny: Takashi Murakami and the battle for Japan." Murakami (2007): 14-52.
Murakami, Takashia. "Pop Art vs. Neo-Pop Art-" Neo-Pop Culture.”
Tunić, Srđan. "Ukiyo-e between Pop Art and (Trans) cultural Appropriation: On the Art of Muhamed Kafedžić (Muha)." The Journal of Transcultural Studies 8.1 (2017): 259-283.
Nichols, Kimberly. “Superflat Movement Overview and Analysis.” Superflat, 28 Mar. 2017, https://www.theartstory.org/movement/superflat/ .
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Madoff, Steven Henry, ed. Pop art: A critical history. University of California Press, 1997.
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