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beigonethoughts · 2 years

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On Kawara (1932-2014)

On Kawara, a Japanese born artist based in New York, became a household name after gaining sensational response from his contemporaries for his graphic images. He came to stand for the new generation of social realism which was determined to confront the reality of Japan’s postwar society with a vision unclouded by the older generations' nostalgia for the prewar past.

The Bathroom series, 1953

In these pencil sketches, the bathroom is a distorted, claustrophobic space filled with scenes of murder, dismembered bodies and Matricidal images. The naked bodies of wide-eyed men and women are cut into pieces with various body parts floating inside a neatly tiled bathroom.

It is not difficult to see that Kawara's drawings are associated with the tumultuous state of the Japanese nation during his time. A close examination of the conflict betwen the subject of brutality and the formal strategy of indifference (the subjects seem indifferent to their their own murder) allows us to infer that the disrupted representation of Kawara's Bathroom series echoes the psychological effect of the nuclear explosion and its social aftermath. Some images can be seen below.

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beigonethoughts · 2 years

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ISHII SHIGEO (1933-1962)

Ishii Shigeo became a reportage painter by exploring his country’s uneasy subconscious. Though he studied classical painting as a teenager, he developed a distinct style of social critique in his oil paintings through his association with Ikeda Tatsuo, Nakamura Hiroshi, and other reportage and avant-garde painters. He died at age 28, leaving a lot of his work neglected.

"The force driving any individual attempting to create a work of art in our modern world must be his desire to revolt against the inhumane mechanism of his society in order to transform it. Without that craving it is impossible to create art."

Shigeo's dominate works fall under a series of over 15 paintings, collectively named as "Violence" by him; The series include, “The Room,” “Floating Skulls,” “Pleasure" and so on.

His intention was to map the basic contradictions of postwar Japan—the humiliation of occupation, collusion in a neighboring war, political entrapment, and social inequality, though some of the works are highly allegorical.

Some of his works are shown below.

"The Decoy"

The unattractive head depicts Kishi Nobusuke, who became prime minister in 1957 and negotiated the renewal of the security treaty in 1960. Kishi was imprisoned as an accused war criminal between 1945 and 1948, but never brought to trial.

In several works, Ishii set his sights on specific targets, such as war profiteers in his untitled painting below.

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