Orientalism. 2018 VAH1042A Art, Science, and Technology

Orientalism NameCourse: 2018 VAH1042A Art, Science, and Technology Instructor  Date
 In Yasumasa Morimura’s version of Manet’s Olympia, titled Portrait (Twin), 1988 the Japanese appropriation artist toys with history and gender by depicting the nude female as himself. Olympia is a nude female probably a prostitute in Manet’s original painting, while Morimura represents himself as a male and the servant. In recasting the painting, the artist is critical of eurocentrism common in art and art history. The maid attends to the lady in Manet’s painting, and while this is included in the Japanese version, the artist is also like a servant. The artwork helps to preserve history and people in different eras may reinterpret the artwork.  When I chose Portrait, I wanted to explore how the artist understood the place of western art in Japan and his understanding of gender and culture in a society.To Morimura, in the western world, the imaginary Orient is a place of fantasies, where the western artists still dominate non-westerners in the art scene, and they emphasize Western stereotypes of the Orient.   The back woman in the Portrait wears expensive clothes when compared to Olympia, and she may not be a maid. Morimura, authorship of the photograph, but just because the artist is Eastern does not necessarily mean that it is Eastern artwork. As such, Morimura integrates both western and eastern elements.  In any case, recognizing different people’s perspectives allows western artists to engage with the non-Western art, sometimes resulting in fusion and hybridity (Pooke & Newall, 2008). Morimura reinterpreted the classical high art painting by including himself as the subject of the artwork.  The artist’s work is a color photograph of Morimura as a drag, with white-face make up, and blond wig while he recreates the original scene. In the gender bedding, artwork, the artist uses color and space to differentiate the settings where the beddings are white and bright colored while the background has darker colors, but has more variety of colors. Morimura chose a photograph, which makes the image...