Anime Sensibilities through Fine Art Object

Or "Anime Revered Through Fine Art" (Past)
First, I'd like to talk about anime-style art gaining Fine-art status through legitimization.

Let's say that an artist is someone who groups things in order to create connections and new feelings and ideas. The past few years have seen an explosion in American comic and comic memorabilia exhibitions in the US. Galleries have staged numerous exhibits of actual comic artifacts, such as storyboards, original pages, and toys. As you can guess, the same has happened for manga.

In a Duchampian "If it's in the Gallery, it is art," manner, when the west puts your illustrations in a gallery, they supposedly gain the "importance" of fine art. But do they have to be something more than illustrations first?
Exhibitions like "Shoujo Manga:Girl Power" or "How Manga Took Over the World," seek to make fine art out of collections of memorabilia to talk about a social history. What does Shoujo Manga, as a trend, mean as cultural phenomena? What is the effect of Manga on the world? When you put all of Osamu Tezuka's work in one gallery, what is he saying about Japan and Culture? These questions, or rather, the answers generated by their respective exhibitions, are the work of art. The actual discreet objects never shake their "low art" status, but together, they add up to "high art."

So, manner number one in which animé-style art becomes fine art: Group it for Examination as a Cultural Phenomenon.

The only related exhibition I was able to attend was "Masters of American Comics" at the Jewish Museum New York. It examined comics artifacts from the 1950's onward. It was fascinating, as it depicted a change in American values, tastes, and tolerances over the years, as well as allowed for an appreciation of the individual comic artist's skills. It included work by Will Eisner, Jack Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, R. Crumb, Gary Panter, and Chris Ware.


Image Credits:
Both photos from the Tour of "Shoujo Manga: Girl Power" at http://www.csuchico.edu/~mtoku/vc/Exhibitions/girlsmangaka/girlsmangaka_index.html

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

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

Anime in Fine Art: Past, Present, Future

I'm almost done writing my lecture for Fourth of July weekend at Portcon Maine.
Heres the jist.

In the western world, "Animé art" is a thing, but it's wholly removed from "Fine Art." "Animé Art" often refers to a style- animé styled art- functional in the massive leagues of amateur (and sometimes professional) mangaka, fanartists, and cartoonists. But there are numerous examples of animé appearing in fine art and fulfilling a role much greater than simply being "animé style."
I group them into three categories: Animé revered through Fine Art (Past), Animé used in Fine Art (Present), and Animé as Fine Art (Future).

Animé revered through Fine Art (Past)
Over the years, in the West, Animé has gained status as a legitimate art form. In turn, those marked as pioneers and champions of the medium come to be revered and honored, and their memorabilia, through their cultural value, attain the status of artwork. In a Duchampian "If it's in the Gallery, it is art," manner, when the west puts your illustrations in a gallery, they gain the "importance" of fine art.

Animé used in Fine Art (Present)
Animé, with its own very heavy stereotypes and stigmas, is sometimes used as a tool by an artist. It avoids being the subject by serving something loftier and more abstract. Its success hinges on assuming what the West recongnizes as "animé-ness" and what its implications are. The use of animé in the art can be either mocking or of reverence to the media.


Animé as Fine Art (Future)
Finally, there has been no shortage of late of artists using Fine Art to examine Animé, making Animé the unabashed subject of their work. A new school of Japanese artists in particular are declaring the implications and meanings of their native medium. Through work that emulates not only the style, but the spirit of anime, they call for the accountability of the culture and visuality of Otaku and Animé.

In My Work, I seek to approach animé as I know it: though Western eyes, and a fan's eyes.
I would fall then in group two, treating animé as a phenomenon of the present and using it as an aspect, not a subject, of my work. But I also seek to treat it with a mature reverence that goes beyond the animé stereotypes and draws on the aspects of the medium that have effected me, including the roles of females, the visual style of opening themes, and the visual flatness of color.

If you're in the New England Area, I recommend checking out Portcon Maine, a Four-Day Animé and Gaming Festival in Portland, Maine, July 3-6, 2008. My lecture will be on Friday, July 4 at 10 AM.
www.portconmaine.com