Japanese designer, illustrator, painter Aquirax Uno’s work is characterized by fantastic visuals, capricious and sensuous line flow, flamboyant (and occasionally grotesque) eroticism, and frequent use of collage and bright colors. He was prominently involved with the Japanese underground art of 1960′s-1970′s, dabbling in theater, fashion, film and animation. His work reminds me of Aubrey Beardsley’s- morosely sensual women oozing and dripping with the promise of delightful death…I also found a really interesting interview designer Tara Sinn did with the artist himself on her blog.
August 28th, 2009
August 5th, 2009
Yusaku Kamekura (1915-1997) was one of the pioneers of Japanese graphic design who was at the forefront in promoting graphic design as an essential factor of modern society, culture and art, and whose achievements helped to establish the reputation of Japanese graphic design internationally.
The symbol and poster designs for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics were Kamekura’s best-known work. The Tokyo Olympic symbol is a powerful, concise design, while the posters capture the dynamism of athletes. The poster design also incorporated photos, marking the first time that a photograph was used in an Olympic poster. Other well-known poster designs include Hiroshima Appeals, a poetic image of falling, burning butterflies.
June 8th, 2009
FUNERAL PARTY - "DREAM OF EMBRYO", 1985.
The graphically sexual and violent nature of Suehiro Maruo’s illustrations has over the years catapulted him to stardom in the underbelly of Japanese art. There’s quite a few prominent blogs (Baby Art run by Trevor Brown, for example) that revolve around the genre which he is so big in: nightmarish manga (the Japanese term for comic books, meaning literally “whimsical pictures”) fall into the Japanese category of “erotic grotesque”. The stories often take place in the early years of Showa Era Japan. Maruo also has a fascination with human oddities, deformities, birth defects, and “circus freaks.”
Some of the images I’m posting here were from his collaborations with Japanese punk and hardcore records- many having to do with Fascist imagery that we at B/D in no way endorse! Nonetheless the artwork is beautiful. I especially love the line work and color juxtaposition in this cover he did for Funeral Party.
April 15th, 2009
Really clever and adorable (!!) stop motion video about a wolf who wants to eat a pig… the whole thing is constructed of photos in developed film, involving multiple mediums and layers of reality. Kind of meta-meta. Also, last I saw it was in the popular section of saved bookmarks on Delicious!
March 25th, 2009
The Video on a Man Calling Himself Bin Laden Staying in Japan
First saw this video with a couple other shorts at the Redcat in Los Angeles in an event dedicated to new Japanese video art (though the title escapes me). I thought all his work would be similar but it was kind of shocking to see that the rest of them were really different…
