THREE ARTISTS FROM
JAPAN'S BUBBLE ECONOMY
JAPAN'S BUBBLE ECONOMY
HAWAII - FRANCE - OZ
ALOHA
Chrisian Riese Lassen
The Artful Warrior
Chrisian Riese Lassen
The Artful Warrior
The Japanese bubble economy (baburu keiki "bubble condition") was the culmination of an illusionary economic miracle that lasted from from 1986 to 1991. During this time real estate and stock market prices were greatly inflated by monetary easing, excessive credit and above all overconfidence. In early 1992, this price bubble collapsed. During this economic bonanza, the public consumed voraciously on cheap loans backed by the belief that art, real estate and stocks would forever rise in value.
The popularity of three artists in this essay represented distinct values that typified not only the mania of the period but the sentiments that characterised the mood of many ordinary Japanese at the time. Our first was a young and rather kitsch marine painter of undoubted skill. He came from Hawaii and his name was Christian Riese Lassen. Lassen’s joyous blend of coral reefs, dappled turtles and leaping porpoises at sunset were everywhere during Japan’s bubble economy. Lassen was also an amigo of the Hawaiian Air Force, the flying sailboarders of the big rollers. At the time, over 2 million Japanese visited Hawaii every year, so it was easy to see how he had a ready market for his sentimental marine paintings. The Japanese often like bright detailed art, so Lassen’s piscatorial patterns fitted the bill perfectly.
Lassen lived near a beach in Maui, Hawaii. His image of personal freedom, love of nature and effortless athleticism not only appealed to the historical sensitivity of the Samurai but also to the present constrained industrial man and woman alike. As Freud would say, “he accessed their pleasure- yield to help lift the oppression”. During these years, this self-taught artist developed an almost rock star status in Japan. A mythology exists that when Lassen’s plane landed in Tokyo, he was met by a crowd of screaming fans!
An old promotional YouTube video from that time shows Lassen being chauffeured down to the Hawaiian shore, the artist's blond locks poking through his Limousine sunroof like an eager dog sniffing the wind. To the fore and aft are assorted vehicles with, I quote, “an entourage to serve his every need”.
Lassen looks like a tanned Baywatch beach bum with Status-Quo inflexions. We also see in promotional photos, Lassen at busy art openings, his plunging white shirt over muscular arms, a clear brand of relaxed manhood.
Back onscreen, two scantily suited babes rush out of a van to set up his sailboard rig. We then cut to the driver opening the rear limo door as his female guard double up to welcome him with almost open chests. They then escort Christian down to the shoreline (no doubt leggy and dizzy from the over oxygenisation of shooting the breeze through his sun roof). We now witness this stroll as a romantic prologue to the coming nautical performance of Lassen breaking over huge rollers that mysteriously quadruple in size, presumably knowing that he’s coming out to play. The video then cuts again to the costume-deficient lovelies gushing him away for some deeply impressive surf hopping. As a rock ensemble thrashes to his sailboarding, the narrator tells us “he spends more time hanging in the air than most birds” (except perhaps the adoring arms of....well, you get the drift). We are left wondering if the film’s purpose was innocent cliché or clever design, a feeling that almost defines his art and world. To help your uncertainty it’s probably both, since Japanese TV has an almost slapstick quality quite at odds with their sophisticated social traditions.
This video implies that after his cool aquatic displays, Lassen returns to his “zen” studio to airbrush designs on supercars or stand “en-garde” at his easel in black leather trousers and sleeveless smock. We see the horizon split between underwater scenes and celestial planets bathed in myriad depositions of water from the jolly tails of various frolicking cetaceous mammals in moon-glow. One can say without irony that his art is full of flukes. One senses in his psychedelic imagery a sophisticated hippy, low on drugs, high on commerce. His modesty (I quote) “to become one of the greatest artists in history” reminds me of a man struggling to work out where fiction begins and reality ends.
The popularity of three artists in this essay represented distinct values that typified not only the mania of the period but the sentiments that characterised the mood of many ordinary Japanese at the time. Our first was a young and rather kitsch marine painter of undoubted skill. He came from Hawaii and his name was Christian Riese Lassen. Lassen’s joyous blend of coral reefs, dappled turtles and leaping porpoises at sunset were everywhere during Japan’s bubble economy. Lassen was also an amigo of the Hawaiian Air Force, the flying sailboarders of the big rollers. At the time, over 2 million Japanese visited Hawaii every year, so it was easy to see how he had a ready market for his sentimental marine paintings. The Japanese often like bright detailed art, so Lassen’s piscatorial patterns fitted the bill perfectly.
Lassen lived near a beach in Maui, Hawaii. His image of personal freedom, love of nature and effortless athleticism not only appealed to the historical sensitivity of the Samurai but also to the present constrained industrial man and woman alike. As Freud would say, “he accessed their pleasure- yield to help lift the oppression”. During these years, this self-taught artist developed an almost rock star status in Japan. A mythology exists that when Lassen’s plane landed in Tokyo, he was met by a crowd of screaming fans!
An old promotional YouTube video from that time shows Lassen being chauffeured down to the Hawaiian shore, the artist's blond locks poking through his Limousine sunroof like an eager dog sniffing the wind. To the fore and aft are assorted vehicles with, I quote, “an entourage to serve his every need”.
Lassen looks like a tanned Baywatch beach bum with Status-Quo inflexions. We also see in promotional photos, Lassen at busy art openings, his plunging white shirt over muscular arms, a clear brand of relaxed manhood.
Back onscreen, two scantily suited babes rush out of a van to set up his sailboard rig. We then cut to the driver opening the rear limo door as his female guard double up to welcome him with almost open chests. They then escort Christian down to the shoreline (no doubt leggy and dizzy from the over oxygenisation of shooting the breeze through his sun roof). We now witness this stroll as a romantic prologue to the coming nautical performance of Lassen breaking over huge rollers that mysteriously quadruple in size, presumably knowing that he’s coming out to play. The video then cuts again to the costume-deficient lovelies gushing him away for some deeply impressive surf hopping. As a rock ensemble thrashes to his sailboarding, the narrator tells us “he spends more time hanging in the air than most birds” (except perhaps the adoring arms of....well, you get the drift). We are left wondering if the film’s purpose was innocent cliché or clever design, a feeling that almost defines his art and world. To help your uncertainty it’s probably both, since Japanese TV has an almost slapstick quality quite at odds with their sophisticated social traditions.
This video implies that after his cool aquatic displays, Lassen returns to his “zen” studio to airbrush designs on supercars or stand “en-garde” at his easel in black leather trousers and sleeveless smock. We see the horizon split between underwater scenes and celestial planets bathed in myriad depositions of water from the jolly tails of various frolicking cetaceous mammals in moon-glow. One can say without irony that his art is full of flukes. One senses in his psychedelic imagery a sophisticated hippy, low on drugs, high on commerce. His modesty (I quote) “to become one of the greatest artists in history” reminds me of a man struggling to work out where fiction begins and reality ends.
Christian's inspiration includes getting very close to the odd porpoise. We know this because he has a CD of Porpoise songs dedicated to him. On the cover we see the long haired Christian in a bright red (belted) boiler suit tucked into high heeled leather Cuban boots; nice! He is hefting a dry looking 60kg Porpoise over his shoulder (“quick towel down, and hold your breath for the shoot Flipper”). For anyone still crazy enough to doubt his masculinity, this looks as effortless as carrying a brace of “full” suitcases onto a Miss Marple train. One pictures urgent cameras clicking, racing to beat the collapse of his pose. Through the hernia smile, there seems a pensive urgency to toss Flipper back into the off-screen pool whence Dandy Brush and Curry Comb are urgently applied to Christian's moist and ruffled mane.
What the porpoise thought about this Fireman’s Lift or what songs Flipper attributed to Christian on the CD are not known to the general public: one can only guess.
And the merchandise! You couldn’t go into an average Japanese house without seeing Lassen cheque books, umbrellas, jigsaws, shower curtains, mugs, t-shirts, the works. Lassen also produced a rather “innovative” art form called Art Grage, pronounced Ahh-Grage (with a French soft G). The quasi French nature of the Japanese commercial art world is dealt with in the next section. Up to this point you have probably been lucky enough to move in circles that would escape knowing about A-Grage. Like unknown and unpleasant sexual practises told by a friend in jest on the golf course who image can never be erased, A-Grage involves silk-screening luminous paint onto a print that then glows in the dark. An apartment dimmer switch is a must as, with coming darkness, we see stars come out and the setting suns glowing behind silhouetted palms etc.
With all this "pizazz" Lassen’s life exactly matched the aspirations of the bubble economy. He was the personification of the Bushido Samurai, the tough warrior who also mastered the arts, did battle with nature yet still had time to pick a flower for a Geisha.
You have to hand it to Lassen, his work and life were/are in every sense, “unbelievable”! Selected in 1998 by the United Nations as Goodwill Ambassador for the International Year of the Ocean, he cuts an impressive figure whatever you think of his art. Even today his jigsaws occupy generous shelf spaces within the main Tokyo toy stores.
To conclude, Lassen’s heyday represented a Japanese nostalgia for the clean ocean at a time when major pollution scandals such as Minamata and Itai-itai diseases were still fresh in the collective memory. With the Japanese coast lined in concrete tetrapods and the whales being “traditionally” slaughtered for their restaurants, the sight of a Lassen satisfies the Japanese obsession with simulation, a comfort blanket that declares all is well in the deep. In this sense Lassen’s art never confronts the real ecological truths, but prefers a well stocked cartoon paradise that would make Bambi’s woodland pals seem like a minimal troupe. And yet at the same time, perhaps Lassen reaches many who one hopes are not simply seeking compensation for a paradise lost but dream of a world that could still be saved.
Lassen’s art, flowing with manic euphoria and self-delusion, was the perfect alter-image of the bubble economy, for what could be more opposite to a regimented Japanese worker clothed in smog, than the life-force of a creative child of nature on an eternal beach holiday.
Lassen’s art, flowing with manic euphoria and self-delusion, was the perfect alter-image of the bubble economy, for what could be more opposite to a regimented Japanese worker clothed in smog, than the life-force of a creative child of nature on an eternal beach holiday.
Bonjour...
Jean-Pierre Cassigneul
King of the Floppy Bonnet
Jean-Pierre Cassigneul
King of the Floppy Bonnet
Having touched on the liking for French cuisine, a wider trend exists in Japan for French culture in general, especially for “French Art”. At the time of the bubble economy, the average Japanese thought the best European art came only from France. They had not as yet entered the global arena of “Contemporary Art”, preferring their own liking for tradition, painterly skill and historical provenance. These values largely persist to this day, similar to other emerging Asian nations much to the frustration of the major Western auctioneers who would (like the oil states and emerging 3rd world parvenus) have the same architect designed galleries and 100 global contemporary millionaire brand artists on a largely pre-destined inflation quotient (but that’s another tale).
Back in the Japanese bubble years “French” commercial art was everywhere. One saw scenes of Notre Dame in the savage expressive blacks of Bernard Buffet. New French coffee shops showed images of Picassoesque Harlequins, lurid chateaus and languid Parisian ladies along the Seine.
To the Japanese, France is compressed into 3 locations, Central Paris, Giverny and the seafront at Nice. For this, we have to thank the popularity of Monet, Raoul Dufy, and the rise of mass tourism. Audrey Hepburn’s enormously poplar film Paris When it Sizzles further fuelled these sentiments as well as the branded fashion shops of Channel, Gautier, Pierre Cardin and Christian Dior. Beyond this popular Nihon-Françoise map, there exists nothing save rumours of flat fields, unhygienic locals and some depressed British in search of a better life.
Back in the Japanese bubble years “French” commercial art was everywhere. One saw scenes of Notre Dame in the savage expressive blacks of Bernard Buffet. New French coffee shops showed images of Picassoesque Harlequins, lurid chateaus and languid Parisian ladies along the Seine.
To the Japanese, France is compressed into 3 locations, Central Paris, Giverny and the seafront at Nice. For this, we have to thank the popularity of Monet, Raoul Dufy, and the rise of mass tourism. Audrey Hepburn’s enormously poplar film Paris When it Sizzles further fuelled these sentiments as well as the branded fashion shops of Channel, Gautier, Pierre Cardin and Christian Dior. Beyond this popular Nihon-Françoise map, there exists nothing save rumours of flat fields, unhygienic locals and some depressed British in search of a better life.
Many of the galleries sprouted French names such as A Vingt Et Unieme (21), Le Monde des Arts (the World of Art) and Salon de Flamme (Flame Room). My favourite was La Souris Verte (The Green Mouse).
Japan’s love of “French Art” was also due to a reflected flattery that Japanese prints influenced Monet, who was attracted by their flattened perspectives and the bright centrist compositions of Hiroshige and Hokusai.
Also during the bubble years, the public could not ignore the recent impressionist and early modern auction records such as Van Gogh’s Sunflowers for $39.9 million purchased by insurance magnate Yasuo Goto. For some reason, the ordinary Japanese salaryman also aspired to this inflationary zeal by believing that lesser French artists in street galleries would hold the same provenance as high art and appreciate with the same gusto as a Monet or Renoir. This cultural Ponzi fever was not lost on the galleries themselves who spun urgent tales of Gallic works leaping in value month on month which in the main they did, though of course like most asset manias, this was driven by easy credit backed by fictitious capital inflation.
King of the commercial French craze for Nihon-Françoise was Jean-Pierre Cassigneul, the master of the pensive beau in a floppy bonnet. The hats on Cassigneul‘s ladies were of Mexican proportions thus guaranteeing their delicate porcelain faces never saw the sun or bare shoulders a drop of rain. In "Cassigneul-Land" there was no agitation, no skipping, or dashing into a taxi, or pecks on the cheek.
Japan’s love of “French Art” was also due to a reflected flattery that Japanese prints influenced Monet, who was attracted by their flattened perspectives and the bright centrist compositions of Hiroshige and Hokusai.
Also during the bubble years, the public could not ignore the recent impressionist and early modern auction records such as Van Gogh’s Sunflowers for $39.9 million purchased by insurance magnate Yasuo Goto. For some reason, the ordinary Japanese salaryman also aspired to this inflationary zeal by believing that lesser French artists in street galleries would hold the same provenance as high art and appreciate with the same gusto as a Monet or Renoir. This cultural Ponzi fever was not lost on the galleries themselves who spun urgent tales of Gallic works leaping in value month on month which in the main they did, though of course like most asset manias, this was driven by easy credit backed by fictitious capital inflation.
King of the commercial French craze for Nihon-Françoise was Jean-Pierre Cassigneul, the master of the pensive beau in a floppy bonnet. The hats on Cassigneul‘s ladies were of Mexican proportions thus guaranteeing their delicate porcelain faces never saw the sun or bare shoulders a drop of rain. In "Cassigneul-Land" there was no agitation, no skipping, or dashing into a taxi, or pecks on the cheek.
In his art we hear the clink of porcelain cups and the rustle of silk on warm but sweat free flesh. Many of the pale women are looking sideways, providing an angular periscope from downtown Tokyo to a scented Parisian garden, a nearby boating party or boule in the Tuileries gardens. Cassigneul’s women seem aloof, making us imagine she suffers some unwanted chaperone or an unloved beau. This distance merely re-enforces their mystique, the impossible muse for whom only a suitor of great wealth and power could possess; enter customer stage left; there to whisk her away from her gilded cage to Japan’s commuter land for only 5 million yen!
Cassigneul’s work exudes quiet independence and the brand aspiring life. Jean-Pierre -time is not a busy Shinjuku schedule but an ocean of eternal money and stress free contemplation.
Maybe Cassigneul’s women were no more than the ideal passive and undemanding partner for the Japanese man, and for the wife, a mirror to an emancipated self. His art then was “couples art”. Like the fake foreign theme parks going up all across the Japanese countryside at the time, his work offered a clear and tidy taste of Parisian chic without having to brush fag ash off a cane chair in some Champs-Élysées clip joint.
Cassigneul’s style was early modern and angular like Max Beckman on a polite day. Whether by luck or design, his was a world painted in emeralds, blacks and soft yellows which exactly matched the palette of the ancient Japanese screens. These collective traits gave his art great acceptance in Japan, a reputation that lingers to this day, albeit much diminished.
Cassigneul’s work exudes quiet independence and the brand aspiring life. Jean-Pierre -time is not a busy Shinjuku schedule but an ocean of eternal money and stress free contemplation.
Maybe Cassigneul’s women were no more than the ideal passive and undemanding partner for the Japanese man, and for the wife, a mirror to an emancipated self. His art then was “couples art”. Like the fake foreign theme parks going up all across the Japanese countryside at the time, his work offered a clear and tidy taste of Parisian chic without having to brush fag ash off a cane chair in some Champs-Élysées clip joint.
Cassigneul’s style was early modern and angular like Max Beckman on a polite day. Whether by luck or design, his was a world painted in emeralds, blacks and soft yellows which exactly matched the palette of the ancient Japanese screens. These collective traits gave his art great acceptance in Japan, a reputation that lingers to this day, albeit much diminished.
Between 1987 and 1991, the prices for his prints were rising fast and being sold almost as bankable assets like top golf club memberships. When finally the bubble burst there were over 3 MILLION unsold French prints on Japanese gallery shelves, a situation largely unchanged today.
Defeated customers returned to their galleries naively expecting to cash in their “inflated beau”. They soon discovered the hard lesson that their “investment lady” had walked off frame to a better suitor leaving only a cold coffee of dissapointment and the tutting divorce apology from the embarrassed and soon-to-be bankrupt gallery owner. To the mature economies of the world we had already discovered the honey traps of the impossible beautiful affair that is an asset boom economy even though we seems condemned ourselves to repeat it (though not in the lower ends of the art market). It was now the time for Japan to realize the shock and disappointment of their fiscal naivety. This was a trauma so deep and bitter they buried that loss of confidence deep into their psyche and a state of stagnation has existed for over 20 years. It seems now that through an eternal recession of unresolved debt, they are waiting for a day when another “foreign beau” will once again (like the opening of Japan by Admiral Perry in 1853 or Douglas MacArthur in 1945) sit down at the table of their deflated aspirations and force open their forever closing door to the world.
Defeated customers returned to their galleries naively expecting to cash in their “inflated beau”. They soon discovered the hard lesson that their “investment lady” had walked off frame to a better suitor leaving only a cold coffee of dissapointment and the tutting divorce apology from the embarrassed and soon-to-be bankrupt gallery owner. To the mature economies of the world we had already discovered the honey traps of the impossible beautiful affair that is an asset boom economy even though we seems condemned ourselves to repeat it (though not in the lower ends of the art market). It was now the time for Japan to realize the shock and disappointment of their fiscal naivety. This was a trauma so deep and bitter they buried that loss of confidence deep into their psyche and a state of stagnation has existed for over 20 years. It seems now that through an eternal recession of unresolved debt, they are waiting for a day when another “foreign beau” will once again (like the opening of Japan by Admiral Perry in 1853 or Douglas MacArthur in 1945) sit down at the table of their deflated aspirations and force open their forever closing door to the world.
G’Day
Ken Done
Brand Oz
Ken Done
Brand Oz
If Lassen’s image represented the archetypal eco-hippy, and Cassigneul, old world sophistication then Ken Done was the playful pal we meet on holiday.
Done lives in Sydney. Older than Lassen, his beach-life is more sedate but no less vital. In fact the expressive immediacy and his breadth of colour conveys a youthful vibrancy that so appealed to the Japanese in the bubble years, dreaming of their own fresh economic miracle.
Picasso once said it took him his whole life to learn how to paint like a child. What he should have said was like Ken Done. Former ad-man Ken Done’s simple naive images have become over the years, “Brand OZ”. Done’s work has deceptively sophisticated colour and composition. His is the world of eternal sunshine, of the great outdoors, the fauvist rapture of Matisse or Dufy rainbowed into a chunky no-nonsense antipodean sandwich. Just as one suspects Mills and Boone writers are born and not made, so it is with Ken on images born for T shirts, posters or towels. Most of Done’s art is Logo Art, centrist, beautiful, powerful and meaningless. It is no co-incidence to see his images becoming synonymous with Australia’s youthful vigour. Some artworks dream of being merchandise, but all the white mugs in the world dream of being a Ken Done. Looking around downtown Shinjuku in 1990 it looked as if their hopes had succeeded.
Done should erect a shrine to the architect Jørn Utzon and Sir Ralf Freeman and kiss it every morning since they designed the Sydney Opera House and Harbour bridge respectively. Done must have painted these in every colour, shape and guise. These two notes make an endless symphony. He could teach Phillip Glass a thing or two about expansive reductionism.
The Harbour Bridge, The Opera House, The Harbour Bridge, The Opera House, numerous franchise shops of Done merchandise; we get your drift Ken.
Done lives in Sydney. Older than Lassen, his beach-life is more sedate but no less vital. In fact the expressive immediacy and his breadth of colour conveys a youthful vibrancy that so appealed to the Japanese in the bubble years, dreaming of their own fresh economic miracle.
Picasso once said it took him his whole life to learn how to paint like a child. What he should have said was like Ken Done. Former ad-man Ken Done’s simple naive images have become over the years, “Brand OZ”. Done’s work has deceptively sophisticated colour and composition. His is the world of eternal sunshine, of the great outdoors, the fauvist rapture of Matisse or Dufy rainbowed into a chunky no-nonsense antipodean sandwich. Just as one suspects Mills and Boone writers are born and not made, so it is with Ken on images born for T shirts, posters or towels. Most of Done’s art is Logo Art, centrist, beautiful, powerful and meaningless. It is no co-incidence to see his images becoming synonymous with Australia’s youthful vigour. Some artworks dream of being merchandise, but all the white mugs in the world dream of being a Ken Done. Looking around downtown Shinjuku in 1990 it looked as if their hopes had succeeded.
Done should erect a shrine to the architect Jørn Utzon and Sir Ralf Freeman and kiss it every morning since they designed the Sydney Opera House and Harbour bridge respectively. Done must have painted these in every colour, shape and guise. These two notes make an endless symphony. He could teach Phillip Glass a thing or two about expansive reductionism.
The Harbour Bridge, The Opera House, The Harbour Bridge, The Opera House, numerous franchise shops of Done merchandise; we get your drift Ken.
In artistic terms, as already implied, Done is re-branded Matisse and Dufy with a sprinkling of Bonnard. There’s also something of Hockney and late Patrick Heron to his brushing, hardly surprising since they both have similar influences. With these roll models, Done has a serious pedigree. The incredulity that unfettered naiveté is in some way profound is as true now as it was in Picasso’s day. One wonders if Picasso and Matisse’s exploration of form and colour respectively were meant to pave the way for a public to embrace Done’s formal simplicity.
Yet Done is more complex than he at first appears. He has recently made an impressive series of paintings that tell the story of the submarine attack on Sydney Harbour 70 years ago, which saw the deaths of 21 Australian and English sailors on board the torpedoed HMAS Kuttabul. Six young Japanese submariners were also killed during the attack. The temptations of King Midas rarely translate to gravitas in mid-career but Done somehow succeeds, unlike the many other comfortable artists whose “concept albums” litter the world with ghastly egotisms from the successfully bored.
As with all the bubble economy artists mentioned, one doesn’t struggle to see meaning. There is no “unpacking” Lassen, Cassigneul or Done...it's essentially............
ALOHA
BONJOUR
G'DAY MATE..
EASY AS PIE !
BONJOUR
G'DAY MATE..
EASY AS PIE !