OTAKU HIVE. Acrylic. 107cm x 160cm
OTAKU HIVE
"The Containment of Mania"
"The Containment of Mania"
The word Otaku is perhaps difficult for Westerners to understand. It refers to a sub group of (usually male) people in Japan who become obsessed with a particular information subculture, often related to anime characters, but it can be any pop consumer product. Otaku superficially translates to Western meaning as Anorak, Nerd or Trekkie. However, this isn’t quite correct because the Otaku activity itself carries a rebellious subtext in Japan. Perhaps this is because the fixated introspection of Otaku suggests a separation quite different from the mainstream consumer fads where personal needs for individuality are ironically expressed in collective fads. Although one might argue that the “objects of desire” with Otaku are also fads, they are different in several regards.
Firstly, collective fads are held firmly in place by the size and homogeneity of a large secure group. It is this phenomenon that the writer Donald Richie describes in his book “The Image Factory”. Secondly, the fad objects of desire tend to be short lived fashions whereas Otaku may obsess on a singular singer or anime character for years. Thirdly, and most importantly, the vector of Otaku consumerism, although definitively collective by its “pop” nature is largely (as already implied) introspective.
It is this absence of social participation in herd "individualism" enjoyed by the fad that marks the Otaku as socially suspicious. Otaku style is almost the obsessive indifference and isolationism of autism. There appears to be pride in the niche pathos of it, embracing the opposite of the heathy consumer. This conscious separation from the both conservative attitudes and even stylised rebellion make Otaku particularly disliked. The connection between the Aum Shinrikyo cult that gassed the Toyo subway in 1995 and several mass murders were connected to Otaku interests in the press. The area of Akihabara in Tokyo, once famed for its electronic retail has largely become the new Otaku zone.
The painting Otaku Hive was from a fleeting photo taken by Andy of toy claw booths on the street. The figures in the painting are only 3 inches tall in real life, much smaller than represented in the painting. The enlargement gives a sense of strange intimacy. When painting the image, Andy was amazed at how much detail there was in each toy....not just from his painting of them but in their making. This revealed to me the obsessive demands of the Otaku consumer.
Andy says Ironically, in creating the painting, I felt myself descending like an Otaku into the peculiar devotion of this strange character world. Apparently these figures come from an anime called "One Piece", although that is for my reason, unimportant.
The hive idea came from the toys and reminding me of social insects. In a way, the boxes in the arcade are self-contained hives of a sort. Perhaps interests connect in strange ways, for I remember being captivated by a formicarium (homemade ant colony) I built as a boy. Like an insect colony, the painting has a dense and compulsive beauty that repulses at the same time. This feeling is extended by the toy figures being slightly sinister and odd in both scale and layering. There was a certain obsession in the making of the painting which perhaps matches the Otaku spirit.
As for my work's dialogue with art history, one is reminded of disparate yet strangely connected “all over” detailed painters who by various twists exhibited their own unique brands of obsession. I’m thinking of Bosch’s writhing figures, Richard Dadd’s Fairy paintings and even the abstract painter Jackson Pollock. All have this intense yet disturbing holism. Van Gogh might be a contender, considering his relentlessly overall stabbing brushwork.
Although careful in the making, Otaku Hive is no peaceful mandala or the soft veils of Robert Natkin, for it is agitated and doesn't allow the eye to rest and this feels odd in a painting that is not physically agitated. Perhaps, like Dadd and Bosch; the obsession is where the deeper madness lies, for unlike Pollock and Van Gough the exegesis of the disturbance is contained and not physically expressed. Maybe it’s this containment of emotion that makes it a truly Japanese inspired painting
Firstly, collective fads are held firmly in place by the size and homogeneity of a large secure group. It is this phenomenon that the writer Donald Richie describes in his book “The Image Factory”. Secondly, the fad objects of desire tend to be short lived fashions whereas Otaku may obsess on a singular singer or anime character for years. Thirdly, and most importantly, the vector of Otaku consumerism, although definitively collective by its “pop” nature is largely (as already implied) introspective.
It is this absence of social participation in herd "individualism" enjoyed by the fad that marks the Otaku as socially suspicious. Otaku style is almost the obsessive indifference and isolationism of autism. There appears to be pride in the niche pathos of it, embracing the opposite of the heathy consumer. This conscious separation from the both conservative attitudes and even stylised rebellion make Otaku particularly disliked. The connection between the Aum Shinrikyo cult that gassed the Toyo subway in 1995 and several mass murders were connected to Otaku interests in the press. The area of Akihabara in Tokyo, once famed for its electronic retail has largely become the new Otaku zone.
The painting Otaku Hive was from a fleeting photo taken by Andy of toy claw booths on the street. The figures in the painting are only 3 inches tall in real life, much smaller than represented in the painting. The enlargement gives a sense of strange intimacy. When painting the image, Andy was amazed at how much detail there was in each toy....not just from his painting of them but in their making. This revealed to me the obsessive demands of the Otaku consumer.
Andy says Ironically, in creating the painting, I felt myself descending like an Otaku into the peculiar devotion of this strange character world. Apparently these figures come from an anime called "One Piece", although that is for my reason, unimportant.
The hive idea came from the toys and reminding me of social insects. In a way, the boxes in the arcade are self-contained hives of a sort. Perhaps interests connect in strange ways, for I remember being captivated by a formicarium (homemade ant colony) I built as a boy. Like an insect colony, the painting has a dense and compulsive beauty that repulses at the same time. This feeling is extended by the toy figures being slightly sinister and odd in both scale and layering. There was a certain obsession in the making of the painting which perhaps matches the Otaku spirit.
As for my work's dialogue with art history, one is reminded of disparate yet strangely connected “all over” detailed painters who by various twists exhibited their own unique brands of obsession. I’m thinking of Bosch’s writhing figures, Richard Dadd’s Fairy paintings and even the abstract painter Jackson Pollock. All have this intense yet disturbing holism. Van Gogh might be a contender, considering his relentlessly overall stabbing brushwork.
Although careful in the making, Otaku Hive is no peaceful mandala or the soft veils of Robert Natkin, for it is agitated and doesn't allow the eye to rest and this feels odd in a painting that is not physically agitated. Perhaps, like Dadd and Bosch; the obsession is where the deeper madness lies, for unlike Pollock and Van Gough the exegesis of the disturbance is contained and not physically expressed. Maybe it’s this containment of emotion that makes it a truly Japanese inspired painting