Super flat

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The Japanese art movement Superflat (Eng. "Superflach") observes and interprets contemporary Japanese culture, especially the forms of otaku . Your means of expression are therefore clearly related to manga and anime . Superflat goes back to the Japanese artist Takashi Murakami . In addition to Murakami, other representatives today include Chiho Aoshima , Mahomi Kunikata , Yoshitomo Nara and Aya Takano . But also some mangaka , such as Koji Morimoto and many productions in Studio 4 ° C (which produced Animatrix among others ) are referred to as superflat, as well as the works of the author Hitoshi Tomizawa .

Otaku and Superflat

The Lolicon -Kunst one of the themed Super Flat areas of otaku culture.

By the 1970s at the latest, a cultural group emerged in Japan, which was mainly characterized by a high willingness to consume and a fascination for Japanese post-war subcultures such as manga , anime , tokusatsu ( SFX films), science fiction (and enthusiasm for technology), Pornography and pop culture ( pop music ( J-pop ), pop stars ( idol ), models). The subjective impression in public is that of people who are anti-social and perverted, without real social contacts and activities, who just sit at the computer, read comics or watch animes. On the one hand, the impression of being introverted is not completely wrong; on the other hand, there is constant exchange within this very closed cultural group, especially on the so-called amateur comic market “ Comiket ”.

Otaku is so enormously important in Japanese society because many objects of everyday culture (both art and industrial products) come from otaku culture. Moreover, because otaku is gaining more and more influence over Japanese society as a whole.

Murakami (born 1962) belongs to the first generation of otaku. His current superflat art is now characterized by the fact that it combines high culture and subculture in order to reach a mass audience by being based on the still traditionally pre-modern Japanese art (see also: Edo period ) and at the same time the post-modern otaku. This goes back to the theory , now also advocated by the Japanese , that Japanese society lacked modernization , since it was Americanized immediately after the Second World War , especially after the trauma of the lost war and the experience of the atomic bomb , and so into postmodernism has been thrown. Even if artists like Murakami draw this direct connection between Edo and Otaku, this is only partially correct and it must be emphasized that Otaku could only come about through the massive importation of American culture and subculture, such as Pop Art , and the enormous economic growth of Japan in the 1950s and 60s and the resurgence of nationalization after the war.

Superflat, however, is neither a clearly defined art movement nor an artistic concept, it is rather a certain form of looking at otaku culture. In some of his works, for example, Murakami shows the Americanism and pornography of otaku, as in the sculpture Lonesome Cowboy , in which a male, ejaculating anime character throws a lasso out of his sperm , or another sculpture, a female, expelling milk with a strand of milk her mammary rope jumps. Murakami, who regards Japan as "culturally impotent", shifts the cult of cuteness to fetish in the superflat view.

literature

  • Takashi Murakami: The Meaning of the Nonsense of the Meaning . Harry N Abrams, 2000, ISBN 978-0-8109-6702-1 .
  • Takashi Murakami (Ed.): Little Boy . The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture. Japan Society, New York 2005, ISBN 978-0-913304-57-0 .
  • Takashi Murakami: Super flat . Madra Publishing, 2000, ISBN 978-4-944079-20-9 .
  • Michael Darling: Plumbing the Depths of Superflatness . In: Art Journal . Vol. 60, No. 3 , 2001, p. 76-89 .

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