Before and After Superflat Yoshitomo Nara, Harmless Kitty (1994) Contemporary Art 1990 - 2011 Contemporary Art 1990 A Short History of Japanese Talk of Japanese contemporary art and everyone inevitably thinks of the pop culture fantasies of Takashi Murakami, along with Yoshitomo Nara and others connected to Murakami’s “Superflat” movement. Meanwhile, Japan has stumbled through a series of economic, social and ecological Before and After Superflat crises since the collapse of its “Bubble” economy in the early 1990s. How did Murakami, Nara and “Superflat” rise to become the dominant artistic vision of Japan today? What lies behind their image A Short History of of a childish and decadent society unable to face up to reality? Before and After Superflat tellstells thethe Japanese Contemporary Art truetrue storystory ofof thethe JapaneseJapanese artart worldworld sincesince 1990,1990, itsits strugglestruggle toto findfind aa voicevoice amidstamidst Japan’sJapan’s declinedecline andand thethe riserise ofof China,China, andand thethe responsesresponses ofof otherother artists,artists, lessless wellwell knownknown outside,outside, whowho offeroffer alternativealternative 1990-2011 visions of its troubled present and future. Adrian Favell Adrian Favell is a Professor of Sociology at Sciences Po, Paris. He has also taught at UCLA, Aarhus University and the University of Sussex. In 2007 he was invited to Tokyo as a Japan Foundation Abe Fellow, and has since Favell Adrian then been closely involved as an observer, writer and occasional curator on the Japanese contemporary art scene, both home and abroad. He writes a popular blog for the online Japanese magazine ART-iT, as well as catalogue essays, reviews and contributions to magazines such as Art Forum and Art in America. He was born in England and lives in Paris. Adrian Favell Front cover: Makoto Aida, Azemichi (1991) Before and After Superflat A Short History of Japanese Contemporary Art 1990-2011 Adrian Favell Published by Blue Kingfisher Limited 19A Entertainment Building 30 Queen’s Road Central Hong Kong e-mail: [email protected] www.timezone8.com Copyright © 2011 by Author and Blue Kingfisher Limited All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced ortransmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. All works of art copyright the artists, their heirs and assigns. ISBN: 978-988-15064-1-2 Author: Adrian Favell Cover: Makoto Aida, Azemichi [A Path Between Rice Fields] (1991) panel, Japanese paper and mineral pigment, acrylic 73 x 52 cm © AIDA Makoto Collection of Toyota Municipal Museum of Art Courtesy of Mizuma Art Gallery and Toyota Municipal Museum of Art Back Cover: Yoshitomo Nara, Harmless Kitty (1994) acrylic on canvas 150 x 140cm Courtesy of Tomio Koyama Gallery Printed in China. Contents PROLOGUE Tourists in the Japanese Pavilion .......................................................................................... 7 PART ONE Little Boys and Tokyo Girls: The Rise of Superflat Artist in Wonderland: Takashi Murakami ........................................................................... 15 The Little Prince: Yoshitomo Nara ..................................................................................... 23 Tokyo Girls Bravo! Kaikai Kiki and Mariko Mori ............................................................. 31 Utsukushii Kuni: Yokoso Japan! ......................................................................................... 41 PART TWO How to be A-Zillionaire: Commerce, Design and Art in the Superflat World The Art Entrepreneurship Theory ....................................................................................... 49 Nara as Businessman .......................................................................................................... 56 The World is Flat ................................................................................................................. 63 The Creative Surplus ........................................................................................................... 69 PART THREE Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? The Tokyo Art World in the 1990s Tokyo 1991-1995: The Birth of the Cool ............................................................................ 79 Ginza Days, Omori Nights: The Birth of a Contemporary Art Scene ................................ 86 Art and Money: The Birth of a Contemporary Art Market ............................................... 101 When Will Aida Be Famous? Before and After Zero Japan ............................................ 109 PART FOUR Art & The City: How Art Replaced God at the Heart of Neo-Tokyo The Tower of Power: The Mori Story ............................................................................... 139 Yokohama: From Triennial to Debacle ............................................................................. 154 What are Contemporary Art Museums in Japan Really For? ........................................... 163 Echigo-Tsumari and Rural Art Festivals: Rise of the Northern River .............................. 174 PART FIVE After the Gold Rush: The New Japanese Art Scene in the 2000s China Mania ...................................................................................................................... 185 The Zero Zero Generation ................................................................................................ 191 Aida’s Children ................................................................................................................. 201 Space for Our Future ......................................................................................................... 209 EPILOGUE After the Tsunami .............................................................................................................. 221 Sources and Acknowledgements .................................................................................... 231 Cast of Characters / Index .............................................................................................. 237 PROLOGUE Tourists in the Japanese Pavilion What image should Japan present to the world? The Japanese worry a lot about this question. Every year, in fact, the Japanese Foreign Ministry, Japan Foundation and Agency for Cultural Affairs (Bunka-cho) spend millions of yen trying to answer it. Among the many fields of culture they cover, contem- porary art is one of the central pillars of their mission. Although it is a small and specialized field, contemporary art is the cultural lingua franca of some of the world’s most cosmopolitan and influential elites. In major cities around the globe, it is what can be seen at top museums, in the fanciest auction hous- es, and on the walls of the richest millionaires. With the symbolic importance of art in mind, the Japan Foundation organizes the Japanese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale once every two years. This is the world’s biggest festival of global contemporary art. At any World Expo like this, with so many wonderful countries on show, strong images are needed to 7 pull in the viewers. Many will often overlook or forget the Japanese Pavilion. But, although it was not the official selection in the Pavilion that year, at Ven- ice in 2009 a contemporary Japanese artist certainly gave the world something “Japanese” it could remember. The sun was shining, and the famous old city was full of rich and beautiful tourists. High on their list of things to see was the newly reopened customs house on the Grand Canal. On display here were the works of a global art col- lector, François Pinault, the multi-millionaire owner of Gucci and Christie’s auction house. He had engaged the Japanese architect Tadao Ando to renovate this spectacular waterside building at the entrance to the city. There are many famous American, German and British names in Pinault’s collection. But at Venice there was also something Japanese. Near the centre of the show, in a big white room, stood a monstrous eight foot high plastic sculpture. It seemed like something straight off the pages of a disturbing adult comic book. A na- ked cartoon boy with a big grin, enormous eyes and crazy hair stood there masturbating, a wild lasso of plastic semen filling the air around him. The sculpture was Takashi Murakami’s My Lonesome Cowboy. Sold to Pinault by the auction house Sotheby’s of New York in May 2008 for a reported $15 million, Murakami’s provocative “little boy” stands as the most successful piece of Japanese art ever. It was one of the last big trophy acquisitions of the global art elite, before the collapse later that same year of the world economy and the global bubble in art prices of the mid 2000s. As a result of his success, Murakami represented during those years most of what anybody in the West knew about Japanese contemporary art. He called this distinctively Japanese style art “Superflat”. It was inspired by the country’s animation and comic cul- tures, and it seemed to be everywhere. ©MURAKAMI, a major world tour and retrospective of the artist’s works during 2008 and 2009, took his vision from Los Angeles, via New York, to Europe and the Guggenheim Museum in Bil- bao. In 2008 he was listed by Time magazine among the 100 most influential persons of the year – the only fine artist in the list – and in 2009 was ranked 8 P RO L O G U E by the magazine Art Review as no.17 of the 100 most important persons in