Media and Culture in the Art of Takashi Murakami

While I was home in Los Angeles this past weekend for Thanksgiving break, I went and saw the Takashi Murakami exhibit at MOCA. The show consists of a wide variety of mixed medium and thematically, it touches on a number of subjects having to do with the mass media and its relation to technology, as well as, culture. Specifically, Murakami has a Warhol like propensity for taking images that would otherwise be considered examples of lowbrow, popular culture and transforming them into “high art.” However, what is so interesting about Murakami’s work is the way in which he does this with icons from both American and Japanese culture. Moreover, Murakami does not merely elevate these images, but he reappropriates them as well. As a result of this process, the final work consists of an American image that has been reappropriated as a Japanese image, which has in turn been repappropriated as an American image, which has been reappropriated as a Japanese image, and so on in this manner until it is unclear as to which culture the original iconography is a reference to. For example, in one sculpture entitled Miss Ko^2, Murakami depicts a buxom, blonde waitress who bares a striking resemblance to both Barbie and some sort of heroine that you might find in a Japanese anime. Consequently, the piece, which stands at the entrance to the exhibit, establishes a theme of East meets West, while at the same time underscoring the problems that can arise from this sort of cultural mash up. Specifically, the contrast between Miss Ko’s doe eyed, childlike expression and her exaggerated, womanly physique implies pedophilia and perversion in the Western psyche where as in Japan, it does not. Accordingly, the individual piece and the retrospect as a whole both serve to illustrate a number of important topics in the anthropology of media. In particular, it serves as a material example of Tomlinson’s theory of mediation by illustrating how media is interpreted and absorbed given a certain cultural context.

"Whiteness" in Arlene Davila's "Culture in the Ad World: Producing the Latin Look"

In Arlene Davila’s, “Culture in the Ad World: Producing the Latin Look,” she explores representations of the Hispanic population by corporate advertisers and attempts to offer an explanation as to why these depictions look the way they do. In particular, Davila describes the typical Latino creative exec and subsequently illustrates how in their attempts to challenge stereotypes of the traditional Hispanic consumer, these so called “creatives,” end up “defending the whiteness, affluence, and marketability of the Hispanic consumer.” These characteristics end up becoming the basis for a new Latino stereotype that is both “whitened” and largely based on the advertising executives own self-image. This repeated allusion to the “whitening” of the prototypical Hispanic consumer in turn made me wonder about Davila’s perception of whiteness and the construction of a white identity by the mass media. Specifically, I thought about the concept of ‘the other,” and the degree to which Caucasian representations in the media are defined in relation to stereotypes and models of otherness. From the point of view of Davila’s essay, it is implicit that mainstream white America serves as the standard for normalcy in the realm of popular representation. Given this perspective, the question then becomes, from where does this representation of whiteness come from and what exactly does it comprise? Specifically, are American immigrants from Ireland or Poland included as part of this depiction? What about homosexuals and Jews? Where exactly does one draw the line in terms of normality? Is simply being white enough? Looking back, this was my problem with Davila’s argument, what I saw as her failure to define “whiteness” in terms of anything other than being a good consumer and being a member of the upper class. While I understand that the point of the focal point of the article was Latino representation in the ad world, her decision to leave the concept of “whiteness” largely unexplored left the essay somewhat deficient.

The Ipod as a Ritual Object

Today I was reminded of a discussion we began in class regarding public and private space and the way in which this difference relates to the act of listening to music. In particular, the distinction made by Jo Tacci early on in “Radio Texture: Between Self and Others,” concerning “the mundane context of domestic media consumption, and the ritualized use of percussive sounds in rites de passage." Tacci’s ultimate conclusion is that during the act of listening to music, radio in particular, in a typical, home environment, the music has the effect of “conceptualiz[ing] social relationships.” This conclusion suggests that for a fair amount of the time we spend listening to music, we are not actually engaged with the music itself, but rather that we experience sound as “part of the material culture of the home, and that it contributes greatly to the creation of domestic environments". Though I agree with much of what Tacci has to say, I believe that parts of her argument runs contrary to my own personal experience. Specifically, when I initially read the essay, I immediately thought of listening to music on my record player and the way in which this process becomes one of ritual for me in my everyday life. For the most part, every morning when I’m home in California, the first thing I do upon waking up is to make a music selection and play it on my dad’s old turntable from when he was roughly my age. The turntable and the records themselves have all the characteristics of ritual objects, from their more superficial symbolic functions (they connect me to my father and to my extended family through him) to their deeper, symbolic ones (the circular shape of the record is reminiscent of the human life cycle). I could almost argue that my father’s gift of the record player to me when I was roughly sixteen was in and of itself a right of passage. Though I don’t have my record player here in Chicago, I think that in some ways my Ipod serves the same ritual function. Though the Ipod lacks the sense of community that is suggested by the physical characteristics of the record player, I’ve begun to notice that my roommates and I have created a ritual around the Ipod dock in our living room, which, we all share. Though the time frame changes on a day-to-day basis, it can be assumed that at some point, usually whomever returns home from class first will put their Ipod on the dock and start playing music. When I enter my apartment and I hear one of my roommates’ music playing, I am reminded of them and in turn, this ritual serves to reinforce the community that we three encompass. Though Tacci would say that this is again, “contributing to my sociality,” as a “reminder of social life outside of the home,” I fail to see how this necessarily discounts it as a ritual act.

Group Representation in the Art of William Pope.L and Steve McQueen

This past weekend I went to see William Pope’s exhibit, Drawing, Dreaming, Drowning, at the Art Institute here in Chicago. Best known for his work which challenges the idea of cultural identity, the centrepiece of Drawing, Dreaming, Drowning, is an installation titled Relational Painting aka If Black is Beautiful… The ambiguity of the piece’s medium (it contains elements of painting, sculpture, and even some audio components) raises a number of questions regarding the notion of artistic discipline; however, it seems to me that the nature of race is again the artist’s primary thematic concern. The piece’s apparent focal point is a large black tarp that is heavily adorned with drawings, paintings, and collage. This tarp is the most formal aspect of Relational Painting aka If Black is Beautiful, which, expands outward in all directions and does literally invite the viewer to enter into it. Initially, I found this aspect of the work to be suggestive of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, an association that is further heightened by the soundtrack of jungle noises that play from a group of speakers arranged on the floor in front of/within the piece. Subsequently, I was reminded of the Steve McQueen piece Gravesend that just finished playing at the Renaissance society, which, also deals with colonialism and specifically, the degree to which the British Empire is still very much a reality in modern day Africa. Though McQueen does not really explore the themes of beauty and representation, I felt that there were substantial similarities involving the subject matter of Gravesend and Relational Painting aka If Black is Beautiful…; however, what is almost even more interesting are the differences with which the two artists depict themselves in relation to their work. I am unsure of Steve McQueen’s race but, he is originally from England and as a possible consequence of this, the perspective of Gravesend is decidedly third person. In particular, McQueen’s camerawork is static and observational, even during the sequences depicting African workers mining for coltan. In contrast, Pope’s work is both a blatant example of self-representation, as well as, an attempt to synthesize the experiences of the viewer with his own as an African-American, as is evidenced by his invitation to observer to become a part of the art object. Thus, it becomes unclear as to whether the heart of darkness that Pope alludes to belongs to him or the person that has chosen to enter the space of Relational Painting aka If Black is Beautiful… Furthermore, it is made ambiguous as to whether the plain black tarp, obscured by paint and various other components that camouflage its original color, is a reference to Pope’s identification with his own racial heritage, or if it is a more grand statement regarding the nature of what it is to be an African-American.

The Embedded Aesthetic of Performance Art

This past week in my Art Practice and Theory class, we have begun to focus on performance art and its implications. In particular, I was struck by how many parallels I was able to draw between Guillermo Gomez-Pena’s discussion of his craft in “In Defense of Performance,” and Faye Ginsburg’s essay “Embedded Aesthetics: Creating a Discursive Space for Indigenous Media.” Specifically, I found that Ginsburg’s whole notion of an “embedded aesthetic,” to be very much akin with Gomez-Pena’s view of his body and the way that it functions in his art. Though Gomez-Pena initially refers to his body as an “empty canvas,” this is a misnomer, as he later goes on to liken it to “a tiny model for humankind,” as well as, “a metaphor for the larger sociopolitical body.” By utilizing the body’s representational nature as part of his work, Gomez-Pena hopes that others will in turn view the connections that he establishes through his pieces and subsequently “recognize them in their own bodies.” The success of the artist’s work thus relies upon its ability to embody social relations at both the individual and the communal level with the human body acting as a symbol for both. This is more or less the same goal of Aboriginal filmmakers who, as Ginsburg states, strive to produce work that has the capacity “to embody, sustain, and even revive or create certain social relations,” also via aesthetic representation. I believe it is no coincidence that both Gomez-Pena and the Aboriginal filmmakers are members of formerly colonized ethnic groups and accordingly, this manifests itself in their art by way of their perceived need to appeal to a specific cultural community, as well as, the global population. As Gomez-Pena states, by attempting to literally “decolonize” his body in his performance pieces and by “making these decolonizing mechanisms apparent,” hopefully his audience “will get inspired to do the same.”