Art Movements of 2000s: Superflat

Superflat is a postmodern art movement, founded by the artist Takashi Murakami, which is influenced by manga and anime. It is also the name of a 2001 art exhibition, curated by Murakami, that toured West Hollywood, Minneapolis and Seattle.

Superflat treatment of the Moe fetish, showing an idealized Miyazakian character greatly distorted (Illustration by Tatsuyuki Tanaka).

Description

Superflat is used by Murakami to refer to various flattened forms in Japanese graphic art, animation, pop culture and fine arts, as well as the “shallow emptiness of Japanese consumer culture.” A self-proclaimed art movement, it was a successful piece of niche marketing, a branded art painting techniques phenomenon designed for Western audiences.

In addition to Murakami, artists whose work is considered “Superflat” include Chiho Aoshima, Mahomi Kunikata, Sayuri Michima, Yoshitomo Nara, Tatsuyuki Tanaka, and Aya Takano. In addition, some animators within anime and some mangaka are considered Superflat, especially Koji Morimoto (and much of the output of his animation studio Studio 4°C), and the work of Hitoshi Tomizawa, author of Alien 9 and Milk Closet.

Murakami defines Superflat in broad terms, so the subject matter is very diverse. Often the works take a critical look at the consumerism and sexual fetishism that is prevalent in post-war Japanese culture. One target of this criticism is lolicon painting techniques, which is satirized by works such as those by Henmaru Machino. These works are an exploration of otaku sexuality through grotesque and/or distorted images. Other works are more concerned with a fear of growing up. For example, Yoshitomo Nara’s work often features playful graffiti on old Japaneseukiyo-e executed in a childish manner. And some works focus on the structure and underlying desires that comprise otaku and overall post-war Japanese culture.

Controversy of Sotheby’s. Scandals

Illegal antiquities

In 1997, a Channel 4 Dispatches programme alleged that Sotheby’s had been trading in antiquities with no published provenance, and that the organization continued to use dealers involved in the smuggling of artifacts with various art painting techniques.

As a result of this exposé, Sotheby’s commissioned their own report into illegal antiquities, and made assurances that only legal items with published providence would be traded in the future.

Price fixing scandal

In February 2000, A. Alfred Taubman and Diana (Dede) Brooks, the CEO of the company, stepped down amidst a price fixing scandal. The FBI had been investigating auction practices in which it was revealed that collusion involving commission fixing between Christie’s and Sotheby’s was occurring in painting techniques.

In October 2000, Brooks admitted her guilt in hopes of receiving a reduced sentence, implicating Taubman.

In December 2001, jurors in a high profile New York City courtroom found Taubman guilty of conspiracy. He served ten months of a one year sentence in prison, while Brooks received a six-month home confinement and a penalty of US$350,000. No staff from Christie’s was charged.

At the time of the scandal 59 percent of the company’s Class A was owned by Baron Funds.

Art Movements: New European Painting

European Painting

emerged in the 1980s and has clearly reached a critical point of major distinction and influence in the 1990s with painters like Gerhard Richter and Bracha Ettinger whose paintings realistic have established and continue to create a new dialogue between the historical archive, American Abstraction and figurality, followed by painters like Luc Tuymans, Marlene Dumas and others. A third wave came with artists like Neo Rauch, Michaël Borremans and Chris Ofili.

Neo-expressionism and other related movements in painting techniques have emerged in the final two decades of the 20th century in Europe and in the United States, but this New Painting is not expressionist. Rather it is a renovative kind of abstraction and figuration that relates to the parallel practice of a turning into art of personal and historical photographic archives. The New European Painting relates to the post traumatic traces of war and it involves working oil painting and drawings with new media like photography, xerox and digital media to create and develop a postmodern archive “fever”. This painting relates through this aspect to the post WW2 “archive” art with artists like Christian Boltanski and Jochen Gerz, and it is often a part of this tendency. Yet, though this painting has a clear figurative stroke it is strongly connected to Lyrical Abstraction and to contemporary reconsiderations of theSublime in art.

Since 2000

Though the height of Photorealism was in the 1970s the movement continues and includes several of the original photorealists as well as many of their contemporaries. According to Meisel’s Photorealism at the Millennium, only eight of the original photorealists were still creating photorealist work in 2002; nine including Howard Kanovitz.

Artists Charles Bell, John Kacere, and Howard Kanovitz have died; Audrey Flack, Chuck Close, and Don Eddy have moved in different directions other than photorealism; and Robert Cottingham no longer considers himself a photorealist.

Newer Photorealists are building upon the foundations set by the original photorealists. Examples would be the influence of Richard Estes in works by Anthony Brunelli or the influence of Ralph Goings and Charles Bell in works by Glennray Tutor. However, this has led many to move on from the strict definition of photorealism as the emulation of the photograph, and the artist Clive Head now actively disassociates himself from the term, even though he has been closely associated with photorealism in the past.

Photorealism is also no longer mainly an American art painting techniques movement. Starting with Franz Gertsch in the 1980s Clive Head, Raphaella Spence, Bertrand Meniel, and Roberto Bernardi are several European photorealists that have emerged since the mid-1990s.

The evolution of technology has brought forth photorealistic paintings realistic that exceed what was thought possible with paintings; these newer paintings by the photorealists are sometimes referred to as “Hyperrealism.” With new technology in cameras and digital equipment, artists are able to be far more precision-oriented.

Being Botticelli. Forgery

In the 19th century the painting techniques of Venus with three putti was thought to be by Sandro Botticelli. It was acquired by the Gallery with Botticelli’s famous Venus and Mars, although more was paid for the former work despite the fact that it is today the less well-known of the two pictures. The attribution of the painting now laconically entitled An Allegory has been downgraded, but this does not call into question its authenticity, however awkward and eccentric its design.

Two Botticellis?

In 1874 the sale of the collection of Alexander Barker, the son of a fashionable bootmaker, was eagerly watched in London. Even the Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, wrote to Lady Bradford that he meant “to rise early tomorrow and go to Christie’s. If the Barker pictures are as rare and wondrous as I hear, it shall be hard if the nation does not possess them.”

Shortly after the auction, writing in the ‘Art Journal’, the art critic J.W. Comyns Carr eulogised over the “important specimens of Art of the early Italian schools” which had just been acquired from the collection. “Two designs by Botticelli complete the list of the works purchased”, he wrote, noting that “these represent the classical side of Botticelli’s genius, of which side the National Gallery had previously no example”.

One of the two ‘Botticellis’ that were acquired by the Gallery – his justly famous ‘Venus and Mars’– still hangs on the main floor; it is his most celebrated mythological art painting techniques outside of the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. The other, ‘An Allegory’, has long been relegated to the lower floor and, until very recently, catalogued as ‘Follower of Sandro Botticelli’.

If price can be used as an indicator of aesthetic value, ’An Allegory’ was the more highly regarded painting when it was sold – it cost £600 more than ‘Venus and Mars’ (£1,627 10s as opposed to £1,050). Not everyone was enthralled by the painting, however. Shortly after the sale, Lady Eastlake wrote to the former Director, William Boxall, lamenting her fears: “[Burton, the new Director] has bought much that is second rate and much that is irreparably injured, and for enormous prices. That Venus and Amorini by S. Botticelli seems to me to be monstrous in price.”

Despite her disapproval, Lady Eastlake still believed that the painting was a work by Botticelli. Since 1899, however, its attribution has quite rightly been queried, and by 1951 the curator Martin Davies observed that “it is by some feeble imitator of Botticelli, and seems to be partly derived from Botticelli’s ‘Venus and Mars’”.

Art Movements: Photorealism

Photorealism

Photorealism is the genre of painting techniques based on using the camera and photographs to gather information and then from this information, creating a painting that appears to be very realistic like a photograph. The term is primarily applied to paintings from the United States art movement that began in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

History

Origins

As a full-fledged art movement, Photorealism evolved from Pop Art and as a counter to Abstract Expressionism as well as Minimalist art movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States. Photo realists use a photograph or several photographs to gather the information to create their paintings realistic and it can be argued that the use of a camera and photographs is an acceptance of Modernism. However, the blatant admittance to the use of photographs in Photorealism was met with intense criticism when the movement began to gain momentum in the late 1960s, despite the fact that visual devices had been used since the fifteenth century to aid artists with their work.

The invention of photography in the nineteenth century had three effects on art: portrait and scenic artists were deemed inadequate to the photograph and many turned to photography as careers; within nineteenth and twentieth century art movements it is well documented that artists used the photograph as source material and as an aid—however, they went to great lengths to deny the fact fearing that their work would be misunderstood as imitations; and through the photograph’s invention artists were open to a great deal of new experimentation. Thus, the culmination of the invention of the photograph was a break in art’s history towards the challenge facing the artist – since the earliest known cave drawings – trying to replicate the scenes they viewed.

By the time the Photorealists began producing their bodies of work the photograph had become the leading means of reproducing reality and abstraction was the focus of the art world.Realism continued as an on-going art movement, even experiencing a reemergence in the 1930s, but by the 1950s modernist critics and Abstract Expressionism had all but minimalized realism as a serious art undertaking. Though Photorealists share some aspects of American realists, such as Edward Hopper, they tried to set themselves as much apart from traditional realists as they did Abstract Expressionists. Photorealists were much more influenced by the work of Pop artists and were reacting against Abstract Expressionism.

Pop Art and Photorealism were both reactionary movements stemming from the ever increasing and overwhelming abundance of photographic media, which by the mid 20th century had grown into such a massive phenomenon that it was threatening to lessen the value of imagery in art. However, whereas the Pop artists were primarily pointing out the absurdity of much of the imagery (especially in commercial usage), the Photorealists were trying to reclaim and exalt the value of an image.

The association of Photorealism to Trompe L’oeil is a wrongly attributed comparison, an error in observation or interpretation made by many critics of the 1970s and 1980s. Trompe L’oeil paintings attempt to “fool the eye” and make the viewer think he is seeing an actual object, not a painted one. When observing a Photorealist painting, the viewer is always aware that they are looking at a painting.

Manifestos

In August 1999, Childish and Thomson wrote The Stuckists manifesto which places great importance on the value of painting techniques as a medium, as well as the use of it for communication and the expression of emotion and experience – as opposed to what they see as the superficial novelty, nihilism and irony of conceptual art and postmodernism. The most contentious statement in this manifesto is: “Artists who don’t paint aren’t artists”.

The second manifesto was An Open Letter to Sir Nicholas Serota which received a brief reply from him: “Thank you for your open letter dated 6 March. You will not be surprised to learn that I have no comment to make on your letter, or your manifesto ‘Remodernism’.”

In Remodernism, their third manifesto, the Stuckists declared that they aimed to replace postmodernism with Remodernism, a period of renewed spiritual (as opposed to religious) values in art painting techniques, culture and society. Other manifestos include Handy Hints, Anti-anti-art, the Cappuccino writer and the Idiocy of Contemporary Writing, The Turner Prize, The Decreptitude of the Critic and Stuckist critique of Damien Hirst.

Manifestos have been written by other Stuckists, including the Students for Stuckism group. An “Underage Stuckists” group was founded in 2006 with their own manifesto for teenagers by two 16 year olds, Liv Soul and Rebekah Maybury, on MySpace. In 2006, Allen Herndon published The Manifesto of the American Stuckists, whose content was challenged by the Los Angeles Stuckists group.