Nara Yoshitomo, Hawker's Glance, 2003
This painting was done by Nara Yoshitomo in 2003. In this image, a little girl and a puppy are present. The little girl's face is only half shown, and her mouth is covered, perhaps hidden. It even looks like she is somewhat scared to stand up from where she is peaking through. The puppy is wearing a crown, and he seems to be exhausted and sad. The whole background is covered in white, and it looks like its covered in snow.
The white color of the background makes this painting very simple, while drawing the audience's attention to the two subjects, a little girl and the puppy. Nara is known to utilize children and animals, especially puppies, to resemble his times of loneliness during his youth, not knowing what is to come in the future. It seems like he has portrayed his sense of loneliness in this image. The little girl looks very scared and uncertain. Although her exact emotions cannot be obtained since we cannot she her mouth, her body gesture, and the look in her eyes tell the audience that she is frightened and wants to hide. Although her eyes are not drawn as typical "kawaii" eyes, one can tell by her stature, hair, and by how her face features that she is a young, innocent girl.
I got two different interpretations out of this image, First, I think Nara has included a puppy in the image to connect the obedience of a little girl and a puppy.However, the little girl does not want to "obey" the norm of the society of what it means to be a Japanese woman. She seems to be wanting to hide away from the reality. For my second interpretation, although the little girl looks scared, she seems to be ready and determined to break away from the norm of the society. If she somehow jumps through/overcomes her fear, and stand up from wherever she is hiding, she can be free from the pressure of the society and pursue her dreams.
Murakami Takeshi
This image portrays all the themes/characters that Murakami seems to include in most of his paintings. First off, the whole background is gray, bringing out the colors and characters of interest. All the colors contrast with the gray background, and they look more vivid. In the middle, most of Murakami's characters are gathered. There are laughing flowers with their mouth wide open in a smiling-shape. Also, five different depictions of DOB is present. They all look different, and they seem to be depicting different emotions. For example, one in the very middle looks very scary, while the one on its left seems very happy. DOB in the middle also carries Murakami's main theme of zigzag. There is also a lightening-like zigzag in the middle of the picture. All the DOB seems to have different versions of green eyes that Murakami loves to use. All of the characters are smiling, giving the audience the sense of happiness and friendliness of Murakami's art. This colorful, vivid image seems to open a lot of space for different interpretations, and explore the idea of superflat.
Your analysis of the first image is very thorough and I like your personal interpretations of the picture. I think that the artists style greatly conveys the loneliness that you mention as well as the hiding from something. I also did Murakami images and found the super chaos that reigned in his imagery unique and hard to discern.
ReplyDeleteFor the first image, I agree with your analysis about how there is a sense of loneliness. The scared and breaking away from the norm ideas are also pretty interesting.
ReplyDeleteFor the second image, I really like the gray background. However, at the same time I think the background takes away from the colorfulness of the the DOB characters. It looks almost as if someone photo shopped the background out, and I think that makes this image look very different from most traditional works of art.
In the first image I can sense the little's girl fear from the way she peaking at the puppy. The thing you said about snow does convey the feeling of loneliness. I also feel like the puppy is her new toy that she is shy to receive from her parents but she eventually does accept it. For the second image, when I look at the second DOB from the left, it reminds me of pikachu. Initially you would think of the second image as happy and friendly but if you look closely, there is still something dark about the DOB characters.
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