For a French audience, the work of Japanese artist Mr. is strangely familiar, as it draws on imagery that has become almost ubiquitous. Since the 1980s, anime films, video games, and manga have permeated youth culture almost as much as American productions. Their visual influence is reminiscent of the impact of ukiyo-e (« floating world ») in late 19th-century Europe and its decisive role in the advent of Modernism. Many contemporary Japanese artists combine and fuse these different visual styles, like the Superflat movement of the 1990s. According to Takashi Murakami, its theorist and foremost exponent, Superflat is not simply a Japanese « pop art » inspired by the entertainment industry. It rather affirms the legitimacy of youth culture aesthetics while embracing the legacy of traditional painting and Buddhist iconography, such as two-dimensionality.
Starting out as Murakami’s assistant, Mr. has become an ambassador for otaku, a Japanese term for people who are obsessively absorbed in video games and anime, primarily online. Roughly translated as « geek » or « nerd, » it has the same disparaging connotation. Mr. works in a wide range of media, including painting, watercolor, sculpture, installation, film, and photography – all of which reflect his passion for contemporary Japanese popular aesthetics.
Most of his works are portraits of teenage girls with the typical features of anime characters: large eyes highlighted in pink, slightly upturned noses that gradually disappear, mobile mouths, closed or gaping, and attractive outfits that range from school uniforms to colorful Kawaii fashion. The girls are often at the center of the works, surrounded by pixelated figures from video games, everyday objects, and Latin and Sino-Japanese typography. Despite their ambiguity – to which we’ll return later – for a European observer, these nymphets are symbols of Japanese soft power. They also evoke the sultry prints of the Edo period known as shunga, even though their eroticism is much more discreet, even latent.
Despite championing otaku, Mr. never completely locks himself away. His work is also influenced by Western urban subcultures, particularly graffiti, which shares many key characteristics with otaku. Both are associated with youth culture, « geekiness, » and male marginality and separateness, often facing incomprehension and rejection. Graffiti can also be understood as a form of pop art, as it freely combines North American mass culture, comics and cartoons, record sleeve and comic book typography, science fiction films, and TV series. Lastly, like otaku culture, graffiti has been revitalized by the internet in terms of form and reach. (…) Stéphanie Lemoine