Superflat Kitty

So last week when I went to Massachusetts to visit my sister in college, I took 1 day to go to Boston to see an old friend. Also to see Boston, since I'd never been there before, and had been told by several people that I'd like it. I did. 24 hours wasn't enough by FAR.

We went to the Museum of Fine Arts and I was very excited to see this: OMGOMGOMGOMG TAKASHI MURAKAMI SUPERFLAT!!!!!
(I had to do the Japanese thing and hold up the "V" sign. This painting is "If the Double Helix Wakes Up..." )

And next to it OMGWTFBBQ CHIHO AOSHIMA I DIE NOW.
(Moral of the story: If your boyfriend says he wants to eat your beloved goldfish, ditch the jerk or lose an eye.)

Long story...back in college I worked in the library part-time during the school year, and full-time during the summer after my freshman year. One of the summer jobs was inventory, going up and down the stacks with a list of call numbers, to make sure that every single book was there. It would have been boring if I wasn't a voracious reader...which on the other hand meant that I was highly inefficient at the task.

I ended up browsing a lot in the art section (the "N"s in the Library of Congress system). Even though I love the visual arts, I'm usually too lazy to seek out artwork to look at, so I got bogged down there. I discovered a Japanese artist called Takashi Murakami who paints really weird surreal, cartoony stuff in bright colours that I can't tear my eyes from, and also some strangely funny/cute but obscene statues.

The statues are just too weird for me but I really like the 2D art. In fact, it's extra 2D because Murakami's labelled his style "Superflat". According to him, Japanese art, including the ukiyo-e prints from the 19th century, tends to have a quality that makes elements at all depths look like they're smushed together. There is perspective but things in the distance are perfectly sharp, they don't fade away.

Anyway, I was browing the net for pictures of his stuff idly one day when I ran across pictures by one of his proteges, Chiho Aoshima. I love her pictures even more - sweet young girls with bewildered eyes in dreamlike, sometimes nightmarish, situations, drawn in organic curves, and strange cities of the same dreamworld where buildings with faces blink at each other nestled among giant trees.

So anyway, I'm really happy I got to see Murakami and Aoshima works "for real" (even though Aoshima's prints are drawn on computer, obviously seeing them on a 15-inch monitor is quite different from a full-sized poster).

One of her prints has been my desktop wallpaper for most of the past year. Which one, I ain't sayin' nuthin'. ;)