| Description |
Many Westerners are already familiar with Takashi Murakami's brightly coloured cartoon-like characters, or with Junko Mizuno's "grotescute" Lolita-style girls. Equally striking are the absurd fighting machines of Kenji Yanobe, or the grotesque fairytale landscapes of Tomoko Konoike. This book features 40 of the most relevant contemporary Japanese artists, from painters and sculptors to photographers and performance artists. The author Yumi Yamaguchi -a Tokyo-based art critic- offers an insightful introduction to each artist, and builds up a fascinating portrait of a Japan that still bears the scars of atomic destruction, a Japan with a penchant for the cute and the childish, a Japan whose Manga and Anime industries dominate the world. 'Warriors of Art' takes its title from a phrase used to describe Taro Okamoto (1911-1996), perhaps the first truly influential contemporary artist to emerge in postwar Japan who fought to bring modern art to a wider audience. Following in Okamoto's footsteps, the artists featured here are a new generation of warriors, attacking our senses with a shocking mix of the cute, the grotesque, the sexy and the violent, forcing us to sit up and take notice of their vision of Japan. Contains over 200 colour plates. |