imomus | Anastasia

Anastasia

I'm always fascinated by the things and people that Japanese women in their 20s list as their cultural "keywords". They're often culty, semi-underground Western artists, film-makers or designers who end up better known in Japan than in their home countries. I'm thinking of people like Harmony Korine, Christopher Nemeth, or United Bamboo's Thuy Pham. Without getting all Marxy on your ass, it makes me wonder whether there isn't some secret style council, a little cabal occupying a chic attic room in the Tokyo diet building. "This year it's Anastase!" they proclaim, and the printing presses start rolling with profiles on Anastase, his cats, his favourite art books, his latest Little Red Ridinghood and Alice in Wonderland-inspired outfits...

I thought I'd ask Fumiko Imano, who knows Anastase quite well, about this Franco-British 27 year-old. Who is he, and how did she end up playing the music for one of his fashion shows, accompanied by two of his sisters?

"I met him in Paris, Palais de Tokyo Crash magazine exhibition in 2002 when I was visiting to help Marjan Pejoski show," Fumiko tells me by e mail from Japan. "But he doesnt remember. He was showing his work there. Officially, we met at boutique. Just said hello. didnt talk... He mailed me through Minimix magazine (Eko Sato mag French x Japanese) [Momus notes: great little free magazine, I used to read it religiously when I lived in Paris!] where he found my works in. We started mailing eachother. That time, I was in Japan for while, and he said "Come to paris, you can live with us!" [Momus notes: wow, impulsive!] So I went to Paris in 2004. It was nice flat just behind Amelie's cafe in Blanche... I still love the place."

"He was doing haute couture collection that time. It was his project. He had made hand silk painted t-shirt collection, fresh vegitable accessory collection, stained tights, animal bags, and porceline tea set with drawing. He got ANDAM prize in 2004 (Bless got it at the same time) so he started his own ready to wear collections in october 2004 with his collaborator Olivier. I played keyboad, his little sisters played noise, and oboe as a band called Foulard. I made acccessory for this show. He directed music too. We did for autumn winter 2005 2006 too. His clothes theme was Alice in Wonderland. Very girly and colourful. Red Riding Hood, and Oz the Wisard, and then Napoleon last time. Its not only cute but propper made high quality clothes. I would say."

"He is very smart," Fumiko concludes. "He dreams, and make it happen. Magical one. Very lovely fun person. I love making maki sushi for him."

I asked a Paris artist friend about Anastase, and got a more nuanced opinion. "Yes, I saw an exhibition in Paris, in a little gallery which had just opened on the Rue St Claude in the Marais, last winter I think. At first I was very seduced, but later, the second time I went, I really looked at how it was made, and I was less enchanted, I sensed a bit too much the presence of the photos he'd worked from. Nevertheless, he's very good at composition, in my opinion that's his best quality. The drawings are immediate, like confectionery, there's nothing to discover, no second reading. Fashion-fashion, really."

I suddenly remembered at this point that I'd also seen that exhibition in the Marais, in early May 2005, at Galerie Baumet Sultana. While it made a strong impression, and the drawing was very good, there was something a bit "fashion-fashion" about it.

"The transition from drawing to designing is tricky," says Mark Holgate of Style.com, as if overhearing us. "Just look at Julie Verhoeven's short tenure at Gibo."

Holgate has an interesting description of Anastase's debut fashion show: "...pitched somewhere between Cyndi Lauper eighties (puffball miniskirts, cropped bomber jackets) and rave culture nineties (jacket emblazoned with an acid-house smiley face, straight-out-of-Goa tie-dye silk jumpsuits). Anastase also added in a dance theme, with crop leggings, tulle skirts, and satin ballet slippers... The oddness of this esoteric mix was only heightened by the presentation itself, which included a trio composed of Anastase's sisters Kimbilly Nina and Tamara Anna and an artist friend, Fumiko. One played clarinet, another keyboards, and the third took the mic, occasionally giving herself the odd, desultory tap on the head to add a muffled beat to the music."

Sylvie Lambert, a writer for Les Inrockuptibles, quotes Anastase as saying: "Everything started with eight pages of fashion illustrations I did for the magazine Crash in 2000." This, explains Lambert, intrigued the fashion world. Big brands like APC, Wendy & Jim and Calvin Klein asked him to do campaigns for them, Beck commissioned an album sleeve. (It seems to have been replaced at the last minute by the Marcel Dzama's sleeve for Guero.)

"But for drawing," Lambert tells us, the young artist keeps things pretty basic. A piece of A4 or A3, a pencil, everything marked by an imagery which is sometimes (still) academic (hands, eyes), sometimes also strangely disturbing (his drawings are copied from magazine photos), finally closer to Beardsley or Tracey Emin than Shrigley or Sechas."

Some facts about Charles Anastase:

Touche a tout, he's even made a tea service!

He likes McDonald's and the Pompidou Centre because most parisians hate them!

His clothes are more readily available in Japan than in the West.

He's now based in London.

The new Chara video has some suspiciously Anastase-looking drawings in it.

His MySpace page almost manages to cheat the site's endemic ugliness.

He has a website.

He looks like this.

Anastase's company is called A Frog With A Cigarette Ltd, reports The Hindu, with surprise.

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The link to the Chara video is dead. Was it for the Japanese folk/pop singer Chara? I didn't know she was still putting out music.

Speaking of, Cornelius' new single is out today. I have yet to hear it... I'm hoping the b-sides are good.

i think that myspace design is a template, as two swedish or swiss fold recently friended me, and they had the same design (more or less)...

APC...

*a lesser sigh from underneath this wanderlust*

ahem *folk*

bwahh, there are really hordes of artists aimed at art market friendly mediocrity doing such zero dimensional drawings based on photographs. judging from his meager website, his fashion doesn't elevate the whole shallow affair anywhere. to wash my eyes, give me anything by gary panter (http://www.garypanter.com), cf (http://www.kramersergot.com/images/kramersergot/ke4/cf.jpg) (see "kramer's ergot" 4, 5, 6 or "the ganzfeld" 4) or ben jones / paperrad (http://www.paperrad.org) instead, anytime. and alot of http://lederniercri.org to exorcise the anastase "iwantbeautyandsuccessandmyonlycontentwillbeexactlythatipromise" embarrassement.

Ugh. His myspace page is terrible with its broken table (6 screens wide!), tiled background and the automatically-playing music (as if no one is already listening to their own music while they surf, thanks). His drawings are sweet but his webpage sense sucks. But myspace sucks too.

so,if you know it, dont go there anymore,then!

Momus said:

His MySpace page almost manages to cheat the site's endemic ugliness.

Which would seem to compel someone to check it out. Only the reality seems to be the exact opposite of what Momus claimed.

Nice to here Doherfuckher again.

Can't get that thing out of my head!

Associating himself with Chara, though not recommendable, is a much better move than when Murakami Takashi made an album cover for ゆず.

Oh wait, you said that the video resemble his drawings which, may Marxy have mercy on us, makes it unabashed PAKURI!

Do you know if he is the artist behind the decoration of Cheap Monday's (http://www.cheapmonday.com/) catalogue?

(I dunno why they have a catalogue called "Döda min mamma", "Kill my mother").

I'm always fascinated by the things and people that Japanese women in their 20s list as their cultural "keywords"...it makes me wonder whether there isn't some secret style council, a little cabal occupying a chic attic room in the Tokyo diet building.

what's so fascinating about a cultish devotion to whatever purple decides to put in its pages? sorry but people who take their cultural cues from magazines are people who don't have enough style or sense to decide for themselves what is "cool". everything in magazines is mostly irrelevant anyway.

i dont get this entry. so anastase is popular with young japanese tastemakers and his work may or may not be as beguiling as his popularity merits. so fucking what?

i agree, this is kinda douche-y.

usually, the japanese women who are into this sort of stuff are homely and short legged. these girls always feel the need to assert their pseudo-intelligence and cachet, compensating for their physical deficiencies.

mmm.. as i said before.. charles is fantiddlyabulous.. hmm.. i agree with fumiko, very enchanting.. that alice in wonderland show was so delightful.. and although he's only had a couple shows.. i really think that THAT show was his little signature.. mmmm.. porcelain
anyways.. subsequent shows have been just as subtle and pale and nice.. i really think that charles is part of a newer type of clothing-design that stems from a minimal-ish and cerebral type of fashion design that has roots in antwerp amongst other things.. but really is taking on a little canon of its own these days.. maybe it can be felt in magazines like purple or fantastic man or maybe in the LJ (defunct?) cerebral fashion community? but i dunno sometimes.. anyways.. mm yess his porcelain necklaces..

Your icon is mesmerising. Is it possible to make it stop, or would that involve switching off my computer?

it would involve switching off your soul.

I agree, I can't stop looking at blair's avatar. My favorite glimpse is the telephone pole and wires.

It's like magic. Wish I had the cojones to make an icon like that.

thats because it is magick..
it operates as a sort of protective e-sigil
blessed by the powers of illustrator and pomo-thee-temple-ov-psychick-youth-chaos magick..

<< pomo-thee-temple-ov-psychick-youth-chaos magick..>>

Sounds like a Sonic Youth song. Are you Thurston Moore?

he was in the latest OK Fred mag,
the photos of his studio were the most interesting.
fashion ok for that sort of thing, drawings not-so-great i thought.

don't all myspace pages play music?
but yeah, why automatically?

Momus, I want so badly to appreciate Anastase's work! But his web site is super slow, I can't duplicate his beautiful and delicate red riding hood image (on flicker, it's protected), I am scared to look at his myspace page given commentary here, the Chara video doesn't work; so I don't think I can really get a feel for him.

He doesn't seem to be very technically sophisticated.

Is this officially "worse post ever" material? I'm often confused as to why a non-designer (though certainly an aficionado) writes for VOICE magazine but I’m even more confused when this arbiter of taste gives kudos to an obviously BROKEN myspace layout that is far more annoying than the already horrid stock layout Myspace provides.

Perhaps this will become a regular column.."Getting to Know a Random and Myspacer that Some Japanese Girls Like."

Anonymous criticism is so cowardly.

Alice's Tea Party (http://www.nendo.jp/en/works/detail.php?y=2006&t=77)
"
Tokyo
2006.07

for Lipton

This event was held at Ozone Living Design Center in Shinjuku, Tokyo, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of English tea brand Lipton’s presence in Japan. We designed a cafe based on the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party in Alice in Wonderland. We radically distorted the size of the long table and rows of chairs to heighten the room’s sense of receding depth, and did the same thing with the silhouettes of characters from the novel used as the pattern for the wallpaper. These details let us create a space that felt long and narrow, as though it was pulling in visitors. The scale of the installation changed just like Alice after eating the cake. We shrank some of the chairs so that visitors could barely squeeze into them, and enlarged others until visitors’ feet couldn’t touch the ground.
"

I have to say, am I the only one who despises the ubiquitous self-promotion enabled by so-called broadband or internet innovation. Speed and flim-flam versus thought and substance...what's so great about a world of endless fashion trend permutations?

i'm not sure i understand all the disgruntled anonymous criticism here. everyone has different aesthetic appeals, and sometimes horrible things are endearing. but what is so bad about expressing one's likes? this is livejournal after all.

i dont find anything disturbing in anastase's copying of images from fashion spreads.i do dat alot as well.
p.s. i love your blog.

I received 17 messages on my space telling me I HAD to go to momus journal and check this biography.

I am totally surprised to discover my secret drawing "I love mother and cigarette"?????
Where did you find that???

Maybe people shouldn't care that much sometimes. But hopefully my english is so bad, I don't get everything.

Thanks to Momus using the word 'drawings' and not 'illustration' (i hate THIS FUCKING WORD)

aND YES I come straight from the Fashion Hell world. And I am happy like that.
every models in my drawings are close friends and YES they are wearing amazing designer clothes because that's the way we like it.

And unfortunatly for the 'cliche'
-I am better known in my country france ( where I sold millions of clothes and drawings)
-I was kind of 'trendy' something with my cat 5 years ago in Japan . Definitly not this year
- And My clothes are not more readily available in Japan than in the West.
Unfortunatly the japanese market is very difficult with me and it's only 20% of my world sales.

Paris, London, Milan, New York, St Barthelemy, and Monaco are my best clients

Chic isn't it?

I go back to work old sausages

best
Charles

PS: And to all the dick heads telling bullshits about my work just FUCK OFF! Tssss...Bloody Mother fuckers

Hello Charles! Nice to see you!

"I Love Mother and Cigarette" is on your gallery's website, Galerie Baumet Sultana (http://www.galeriebaumetsultana.com/__Pages_Artistes/charles_anastase.htm).

I will model clothes for you if you need a skinny Scotsman!

I'm curious about what happened with that Beck sleeve.

so much fun!
scottish long legs
come to my show
friday the 6th october
I try to convince my Sushi Fumiko to come but...
Far away

What's your adress? email at info@charlesanastase1979.com

Best
Charles

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Anastasia

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you are blessed

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Hmmm..

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Disgruntled as usual

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smashing my face in a clear glass window

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