Yu and Gutai

[imomus]

This image of Yu Aoi is by far the most popular of the thirty or so new images I've posted to my Flickr photostream in the last week. It's from a Beams Boy ad supplement stapled into the new edition of Ku:nel, my favourite Japanese Slow Life magazine. Yu Aoi features in about twenty photos in this supplement, and in many of them she's wearing these beautiful glasses and a preppy bow tie.

I've written about Yu Aoi before on Click Opera, enjoying (but at the same time doubting) her depiction as an artist: "If you follow Yu Aoi through Japanese popular culture, you find that, over and over again, she's cast as an advanced, soft being, a quirky, childlike, expressive, kind-hearted fairy, modestly unaware of her own beauty and unwilling to use it in power games. In her many TV commercials -- for Canon, for the Aeon bank card, for Shuiesha -- Yu is self-expressive yet socially harmonious. She's a water nymph, sharing a bath with Aoi Miyazaki. If she's not a painter, she's holding a light meter, part of the creative team on a photo shoot, dressing up in a kimono, heading out to the seaside in a cute yellow Fiat 500, or weeping as she reads sentimental books in refreshing candy-striped wrappers. Now, it's unlikely that so perfectly lovely a person could ever be a good artist. And, indeed, the paintings Yu's character creates in Honey and Clover are truly dreadful daubings, underscored on the soundtrack with appalling emo songs..."

The fantasy in the Beams Boy shoot is that Yu is an intellectual. It's not that she hasn't worn glasses in fashion shoots before -- she has, it's just that they've never been good ones:



I find Yu as an intellectual just as compelling as Yu as an art student in Honey and Clover. I imagine long evenings in her company, discussing the pioneering actions of the Gutai Bijutsu Kyokai between 1966 and 1972, and the avant garde group's belief that beauty arises when things become damaged or decayed. I can imagine Yu giving an enthusiastic exposition of this concept, completely oblivious to the fact that her face is completely refuting it as she speaks.

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Someone who might confirm that Gutai belief, though, are Ku:nel's cover stars this month, two old Dutch ladies who dress up in remarkable traditional costumes for various civic festivities in their hometown. I must say, I think it's rather unjust that, although they're on my Flickr photostream right next to Yu, these amazing ladies only get 29 views to Yu's 109. Not only do they do their own hair and make-up (in most amazing styles), these ladies also embody the Gutai ideal.



Here's the Gutai Manifesto:

"This is described as the beauty of decay, but is it not perhaps that beauty which material assumes when it is freed from artificial make-up and reveals its original characteristics? The fact that the ruins receive us warmly and kindly after all, and that they attract us with their cracks and flaking surfaces, could this not really be a sign of the material taking revenge, having recaptured its original life?"

I think to agree too wholeheartedly to this "revenge of the material" would be to miss the point, though: the ladies on Ku:nel's cover are weatherworn, sure, but they're also investing a lot in make-up and self-transformation, and it's the tension between the two that makes them look really interesting. And although Yu Aoi is wearing little make-up in the Beams Boy shoot (we can see her beautiful moles, regrettably covered up in her Shiseido campaign), she's been carefully styled. It's the dynamic tension between her "original life" and the projection of an unlikely fantasy Yu that gives this image its power. I can see her now, sipping port as she sits in the button-back library chair, nodding sagely in her glasses, cradling a dusty book between her thighs.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

cradling a dusty cock between her thighs

Wishful thinking, Momus.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Your Freudian slip is showing, Anon!

[(Anonymous)]

I would cradle Momus's dusty cock between my thighs any day of the week! I have seen photos of it and the man is hung like a mastodon.

Not much going on there!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Re: Not much going on there!

[(Anonymous)]

Do you guys with monster cocks ever get in the situation where it's just too big for the available... er, how shall I put it... fente féminine? Or is that an urban myth?

Re: Not much going on there!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

You haven't heard my song Tragedy and Farce (http://vagalume.uol.com.br/momus/tragedy-and-farce.html), have you? It's about exactly that situation.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

I noticed those Dutch ladies a few weeks back on the ku:nel website, I'm glad they got a blog entry from you. I think what I love about ku:nel's choice of imagery is it so often borders on an almost Ruritanian vision of slow life.

Those old ladies reminded me of an artist I stumbled upon a few months ago:



I wrote down the name of the artist who created this piece (this is one of set I think) but I lost the piece of paper and now all I have is this one image. If anyone recognises it, let me know. I think the artist had an exhibit in Germany recently.

Yu Aoi -- she got the most hits because she's attractive. She's a model. "Yu the intellectual" isn't an intellectual beyond the glasses or compelling beyond the fact you find her attractive. It's very easy to project desirable personality traits on beautiful people in an act of wishful thinking, in fact, it's what the advertising industry thrives on, and that's exactly what BEAMS BOY were aiming for.

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

I'm failing at determining the town of the right lady. However, from the red coral necklace and flat irons I am guessing the left one is from Zeeland/Zuid Holland, possibly Scheveningen judging from the round additions she has at the front.

Though why she has a coloured plain cap is a mystery. That would usually be for poorer women, who couldn't afford gold head-irons at all.

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

Ah, she's from Walcheren, and the lady on the right is from Zuid Beveland. My mother would scold me for not knowing this by heart.

The hair-styles are a part of the traditional dress, sry2say.

bad movie, great penis

[count-vronsky.livejournal.com]

"hung like a mastodon" is an insult! Momus's cock is an Shai' hulud (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ld2DMsyy0go) -- a thing of eternity!


(or maybe one of these (http://www.soodlesclown.com/Balloon%20Twisting.htm)?)

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Do you ever dress up like that, Electric?

Do you think the Japanese interest in Dutch costumes is in some way patronising, or reductive, or stereotyping? Or is it nice and broadminded and anti-ageist?

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

It's the direction fashion needs to go. I'm tired of fashion being dominated by 20 somethings, I'm tierd of so much fashion revolving around making people look sexy or trendy.

less ageism, less body fascism, less "sexy and trendy", more quirkiness! More expression of individual personality!

stars in your eyes

[(Anonymous)]

I have never had my eyes tested (i am 22) but tomorrow i am going to go get some - Yu sold me glasses.

Totally unrelated - close your eyes and listen to Bowie in this video - do let me know what you think...
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=T86nZNUcTJE

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

Oh no, I can't because my family is patrichian. This is only for the traditional working classes, fishermen, farmers, stall owners etc. You can tell their job/status by the hats (quality and quality of lace and the metal/extent of head-irons).

I think it's nice, as few people here know/care about it. I would like to make sure they realise the symbolism inherent in it, though. I find that incredibly intriguing, because Holland is supposed to be so classless, but the traditional costumes are almost fetishistic of class. You can pinpoint their exact position in society by their hats.

[loveishappiness.livejournal.com]

which one are you?

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

Gay chef.

Re: Not much going on there!

[beverlyhillscop.livejournal.com]

This is so weird. When I woke up this morning I was thinking about when you posted that naked Momus photo. The world is strange.

Re: stars in your eyes

[(Anonymous)]

He sounds more like him on the "Little Drummer Boy". Hilarious on some.