NOH TO GANGURO Acrylic 170cm x 107cm
Text from the book
"Behind the Kimono"
"Behind the Kimono"
Noh to Ganguro is a painting of opposites-positive and negative, old and new, clear and obscure – but is collectively concerned with the concept of identity and the Japanese conflict between tradition and modernity. By combining expressive and narrative painting and considering the history of the past and present, Noh to Ganguro is set against a backdrop to the artist’s personal time-line.
The painting started its life after Andy went to see an exhibition of ancient Noh theatre masks in Tokyo. Noh is a major form of classical Japanese musical drama performed since the 14th century. A typical performance centres itself very much on ritual and tradition rather than innovation in both content and appearance.
It wasn’t until Andy was back in England and reflecting on a souvenir postcard from the exhibition that the idea for the painting came to him. Whilst doing some research, he had by his desk a picture of a Ganguro girl, a transient modern style of fashion that typically dominates then changes every year amongst the young of Japan. Andy’s interest in Ganguro was that the look connection to Japanese folklore of ghosts and demons whose darkened skin and wild hair forges a similar appearance to those in Kabuki and Noh costumes. This connection is further underlined by the off-shoot style Yamanba, named after a mountain witch in Japanese folklore.
The Ganguro look deliberately intends to be a negative of the Japanese male ideal of female beauty. The Ganguro have dark tanned skin, white eyeliner and lipstick with wild blond hair and loud coloured accessories. The look seeks to invert social norms, forming a rebellious subtext (within ironically the comfort of a huge shared collective). Set against the stiff conformity of the average crowd, the Ganguro take on a synthetic mask, carving a modern folklore from their Noh antecedents.
The central figure is holding both a Noh and Ganguro mask. Intriguingly, the makeup of this impassive geisha is unapplied; a symbol of her ambiguity in dwelling in the present yet being informed so much by the past. Her Kimono patterns reinstate a continuous synergy between the machine and the flower, the race to a future forever harnessed to ancestral aesthetics.
Noh to Ganguro also incorporates a rather more sensitive autobiographical narrative. Andy had flown to Tokyo just 2 weeks after the 2011 Fukashima Tsunami. Armed with Potassium Iodide tablets from the Embassy as a consulate condition of travel, the palpable threat of nuclear catastrophe hung in the air. He describes the general atmosphere as eerie as power cuts meant there was no air-conditioning, no functioning subway elevators and streets normally bathed in neon, pitch black.
“With numerous aftershocks, Tokyo resembled some “steam punk” futuristic anime noir. None of this narrative appeared until Andy was hallway through the painting. He had been experimenting with various ideas for the background when he recalled a trip to Matsuyama Castle a few years previously. He felt the solid stones of history offered a suitable contrast to the unbridled modernity of the Geishas Kimono. It wasn’t until he completed the wall that he discovered an unresolved band of white across the middle distance which became the theatre for the Tsunami and ensuing debris.
The aesthetic of this area is deliberately painted in an ethereal and more expressive manner with the intention to provide a contrast between the real and the corporeal. Patterns and people from past to present are moving through and around the central figure who expression remains impassive.
The blue area of the painting, which runs from the horizon upwards becomes inverted to be the sea. This deliberate disorientation combines with falling figures that in turn suggest “spirits” of past and present, of clarity and vagueness of form, of the focused present talking to a misty past.
The idea originated from the Tsunami, but the figures were inspired by the unusual silhouettes cast by people against the large tanks of Osaka aquarium.
“The aquarium has a topsy-turvy space as see-through tanks and people’s silhouettes move past sub-mariner spaces in an alluring blue and turquoise gloom. In essence Noh to Ganguro is a picture of counterparts, the past talking to the present, the modern to the old and the flat versus illusionistic .
The painting started its life after Andy went to see an exhibition of ancient Noh theatre masks in Tokyo. Noh is a major form of classical Japanese musical drama performed since the 14th century. A typical performance centres itself very much on ritual and tradition rather than innovation in both content and appearance.
It wasn’t until Andy was back in England and reflecting on a souvenir postcard from the exhibition that the idea for the painting came to him. Whilst doing some research, he had by his desk a picture of a Ganguro girl, a transient modern style of fashion that typically dominates then changes every year amongst the young of Japan. Andy’s interest in Ganguro was that the look connection to Japanese folklore of ghosts and demons whose darkened skin and wild hair forges a similar appearance to those in Kabuki and Noh costumes. This connection is further underlined by the off-shoot style Yamanba, named after a mountain witch in Japanese folklore.
The Ganguro look deliberately intends to be a negative of the Japanese male ideal of female beauty. The Ganguro have dark tanned skin, white eyeliner and lipstick with wild blond hair and loud coloured accessories. The look seeks to invert social norms, forming a rebellious subtext (within ironically the comfort of a huge shared collective). Set against the stiff conformity of the average crowd, the Ganguro take on a synthetic mask, carving a modern folklore from their Noh antecedents.
The central figure is holding both a Noh and Ganguro mask. Intriguingly, the makeup of this impassive geisha is unapplied; a symbol of her ambiguity in dwelling in the present yet being informed so much by the past. Her Kimono patterns reinstate a continuous synergy between the machine and the flower, the race to a future forever harnessed to ancestral aesthetics.
Noh to Ganguro also incorporates a rather more sensitive autobiographical narrative. Andy had flown to Tokyo just 2 weeks after the 2011 Fukashima Tsunami. Armed with Potassium Iodide tablets from the Embassy as a consulate condition of travel, the palpable threat of nuclear catastrophe hung in the air. He describes the general atmosphere as eerie as power cuts meant there was no air-conditioning, no functioning subway elevators and streets normally bathed in neon, pitch black.
“With numerous aftershocks, Tokyo resembled some “steam punk” futuristic anime noir. None of this narrative appeared until Andy was hallway through the painting. He had been experimenting with various ideas for the background when he recalled a trip to Matsuyama Castle a few years previously. He felt the solid stones of history offered a suitable contrast to the unbridled modernity of the Geishas Kimono. It wasn’t until he completed the wall that he discovered an unresolved band of white across the middle distance which became the theatre for the Tsunami and ensuing debris.
The aesthetic of this area is deliberately painted in an ethereal and more expressive manner with the intention to provide a contrast between the real and the corporeal. Patterns and people from past to present are moving through and around the central figure who expression remains impassive.
The blue area of the painting, which runs from the horizon upwards becomes inverted to be the sea. This deliberate disorientation combines with falling figures that in turn suggest “spirits” of past and present, of clarity and vagueness of form, of the focused present talking to a misty past.
The idea originated from the Tsunami, but the figures were inspired by the unusual silhouettes cast by people against the large tanks of Osaka aquarium.
“The aquarium has a topsy-turvy space as see-through tanks and people’s silhouettes move past sub-mariner spaces in an alluring blue and turquoise gloom. In essence Noh to Ganguro is a picture of counterparts, the past talking to the present, the modern to the old and the flat versus illusionistic .
DETAIL ON SLIDE FEATURE
COLLAGED FILM ON GANGURO GIRLS FOR LECTURE
The Ganguro look deliberately intends to be a negative of the Japanese male ideal of female beauty, a synthetic mask, carving a new modern folklore from their Noh antecedents and in many ways exhibiting as fashion past ghoulish archetypes past and present fears.