Tokyo Diaries XIII

A mental travel preparation.




Artworks Roy Lichtenstein

Around 1996 something changed. Viewing the 'other' side abruptly infused 'another' kind of painting: ink-screen printing. Dotted brush strokes that turned American pop art Japanese.
/HORST

A Short History Of The Comic Strip In Popular Culture XV

1. Jamian Juliano-Villani Me,Myself And Jah-Jah, 2013
2. Marlie Mul Cigarette Ends Here (Do-Gooders), 2012
3. Tilt Alix Sofa, 2013
4. Roy Lichtenstein Atomic Landscape,1966

The cloud. The blow. The fart. While bubble and star shapes contain and visualize auditory events, the cloud represents the invisible and nonvocal. It is the most complex form, yet carries no meaning. Just air. The oral, anal and apocalyptic nothingness of meaningfulness.
/HORST

See also The Explosion Star and The Speech Bubble

Post Milan II

A 'False Encyclopaedia' double feature with Alex Fury, discussing:
Prada Spring/Summer 2014

Tropical prints, looser, loucher shapes, a twenty-first century re-imagining of a twentieth-century American vacation. It was the fantasy rather than the reality of a Hawaii holiday that Prada was articulating for summer, I reckon.

Toting those suitcases longingly with your office drone suiting, trousers loosened up, that forties feel. Burnt umber and burgundy and evergreen and slithery satin bomber-jackets, all all those carnation and hibiscus prints plastered over everything. There was something of the land-locked, Tikki-tourist, those mid-century, middle-class middle-Americans who never made it to the tropics, but dreamed ceaselessly about it nevertheless. The sweaters with sunset scenes intarsia-knit into them were postcards - 'wish we were there', rather than 'wish you were here'. Just like the cheesecake pin-ups they'll never have, and those good-looking girls they'll never get, flouncing after them in flirtatious, diamanté-strewn showgirl dresses.

Mrs Prada's kick was unattainable fantasy. Except, it was her fantasy of that unattainable fantasy. And you can have it, at a price.
/ALEX

At least the sleeve layering added a moment of abstraction within an über-literal collection that got stuck in 1940s nostalgia - when the exotic image of Polyn-Asia was Americanised in memorabilia and gas station postcard kitsch. Here, irony reveals itself as not 'pretending to pretend' but 'being what is': derisory, pathetic, mediocre (to quote Mehdi Belhaj Kacem). I'd like to burn those memories.
/HORST








1. Prada Spring/Summer 2014
2. Elvis Presley Blue Hawaii, 1961
3. Businessman 1950s
4. Rolf Armstrong Sunny Skies, 1953
5. Roy Lichtenstein Sunrise, 1984
6. Wassily Kandinsky Tension In Red, 1926
7. Ed Ruscha Burning Gas Station, 1966
8. Prada Spring/Summer 2014

All about Alex Fury

Parallel Genesis

1. Jean Cocteau Le Livre Blanc, 1930
2. Roy Lichtenstein Laocoon, 1988  

When I saw the Lichtenstein exhibition in London, I felt a moment of 'enlightment'. When an expressive brush stroke and a fine pencil line meet in mythological thunder and lightning, two genius' minds make love.
/HORST

Silicon Dioxyd

1. Gerhard Richter 8 Panels, 2012
2. Roy Lichtenstein Mirrors (Studies), 1970
3. Roy Lichtenstein Mirror (6 Panels), 1970
4. Robert Rauschenberg Gull (Jammer), 1976
5. Robert Rauschenberg Reef (Jammer), 1976

From mirror panels to mirror studies to mirrored sheets. Five works that destroyed contemporary art practice. Like the splintered fragment of glass stuck in the bleeding thumb of today's pseduo-artist and his 'fast food installation' corpus.
/HORST

A Short History Of The Comic Strip In Popular Culture II

1. David Salle Spanner, 2009
2. Balenciaga Fall/Winter 2001
3. Neo Rauch Handel, 1999
4. Roy Lichtenstein Masterpiece, 1962
5. Comme des Garçons Spring/Summer 2010
6. Disney Oswald The Lucky Rabbit, 1925
7. Viktor & Rolf Fall/Winter 2008

The elliptic speech bubble. First it appears empty. A cipher (of white letters on white ground) for a post-idealistic, neo-realistic world. An empty void for empty words of empty individuals (David Salle and Neo Rauch). And, when this bubble is filled, we are confronted with words like 'I don't want the world to end.' (Comme des Garçons) or 'Look out world! I'm coming back!' (Oswald, the Lucky Rabbit) and finally 'No'/'Dream' (Viktor & Rolf). Subsequently, we are tempted to assume that - either way - speech bubbles are place holders for cries for help (and rescue). To be continued...
/HORST

A Short History Of The Comic Strip In Popular Culture

1. Imi Knoebel Canapé, 1987 - 1991
2. Roy Lichtenstein Whaam!, 1963
3. Joe Brainard I Remember, 1970
4. Raf Simons Spring/Summer 2009
5. Miu Miu Spring/Summer 2011
6. Tom Ford Fall/Winter 2013

The onomatopoetic 'explosion' star. We encouter it in isolated form (in sculpture), as contextual placement (in painting and poetry), as well as random object (in fashion) - which, in turn, would lead us to a loss of meaning through its recycling in fashion and therefore speak for a reduced cultural value of the latter. But we will have to investigate further.
/HORST