Animé in Fine Art: Introduction

All around the world, (I'm venturing a guess here) hundreds of thousands of people, young and old, are making "animé-styled art." Now, while I understand that there are many different styles of animé, for this lecture to proceed we have to agree that there is such a thing as animé-style: work that bears stylistic influences by Japanese animation.
From the Japanese mangaka industry professionals, to aspiring German mangaka, to the American hobbyist or illustrator, we are inundated with animé-styled art as it pervades as a legitimate art influence in our cartoon shows, media, and even packaging and marketing. As animé and animé-style gradually emerges as a cultural phenomenon, it becomes a subject of serious discourse. When one tries to examine the effect of something (animé) on a culture (ours), we turn to the artists and writers, who take the topic and translate it into something we can react to: Words and Pictures.

I'm going to talk about the pictures.

It's not uncommon nowadays to find an animé character on the wall of a gallery somewhere in the United States. But with all the animé-styled art in the world, how does an animé-themed work of art avoid being just a niche style or fad? How is animé used in intelligent social discourse through art?

I propose three main sorts of methods by which animé finds itself part of the fine art world, progressing to shorten the distance between anime-styled art— and fine art about animé.


For Fun, the following was my original Outline for the lecture. Since my audience is probably a younger crowd, I decided to make it a little simpler. In the end, I like these headings better.

1. Anime Sensibilities through Fine Art Object
-Yoshitaka Amano
-Osamu Tezuka
-Shoujo and Manga Exhibitions
"Shoujo Manga, Girl Power!"
"How Manga took over the world."

2. Western Sensibilities through Anime Object
-Pierre Hyuhe
Ann Lee Project

3. Cultural Sensibilies though Anime Objects
-Chinatsu ban
-Mr.
- Takashi Murakami

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Image Credit
Left:"Animé Style"by me, Right: "Anime Art" V by Mr. (His name is simply "Mr.") See him here.