Yasumasa Morimura is a Japanese appropriation artist. He was born in Osaka and graduated from Kyoto City University of Arts in 1978. Since 1985, Morimura has primarily shown his work in international solo exhibitions, although he has been involved in various group exhibitions.
Education and early works
Yasumasa Marimura graduated from Kyōto CityUniversity of Arts in 1978, Philadelphia College of Art in 1982, and Columbia University in 1985. Then he served as an assistant at the university and devoted himself to painting, drawing, photography, and wood-block art. Morimura first attracted attention in 1988, when a number of his self-portraits were included in the Venice Bienalle's Aperto exhibition for young artists. Morimura's first published artword was a recreation titled Portrait in 1985 where he recreated Vincent van Gogh's famous portrait after he had cut off his ear. Next was his redoings of well-known pieces like,, and, world figures like Ché Guevara, Adolf Hitler, and Chairman Mao. Morimura's self-portraits were of Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Greta Garbo, and Liza Minnelli. Other earlier works include Little Sister, Angels Descending a Staircase, and Six Brides Six Brides all from 1991.
Themes
Re-creating Western Art
Morimura borrows images of figures from history and art history, and inserts his own face and body into them. He also disguises himself as the principal subjects that appear in the artworks he is inspired by. Many of the works he puts himself in pushes cultural, racial, ethnic, and gender boundaries as an Asian male because most of the artworks he appropriates have Western subjects, particularly female subjects. These include Mona Lisa, Frida Kahlo's self-portraits, and the characters in Velázquez's Las Meninas. He also inserted himself into some of the Western male subjects, and the majority of those works mostly deal with race and ethnicity. Through the use of disguises, he overturns the effects of the male gaze, gender, race, ethnicity, and cultural standards, challenging the traditional methods of portraiture that he alters the original Western artworks by incorporating details related to Japanese culture. In one of his works, , Morimura changes the floral shawl from the original artwork, Olympia by Manet, with a kimono decorated with cranes. Because traditional portraits were mostly Western dominated, Morimura's combination of crossing multiple boundaries at a marginalized position became a major focus through his photographic works. He has also created a series of hybrid self-portraits modeled after the art of Frida Kahlo.
Parody and Pop-Culture
Parody is discussed as the postmodern strategy. It is theorized with regard to concepts of gender and sexual identities as performative acts, as much as to aesthetic practices. Using photography and his own body, Morimura re-images some of art history's masterpieces. As well as, images drawn from popular culture such as stills of female movie stars like Marilyn Monroe, Jodie Foster, Vivien Leigh, and Marlene Dietrich. Through his masterworks, Morimura transgresses his cultural and gender territories; from East to West and from male to female. His photographs also reveal that photography deconstructs the self-portrait, and that the photographic self-portrait is a new way of constituting and realizing the self, and of our contemporary way of seeing our own absence.
