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Seen from
Belgium, it would be tempting, - mutatis mutandis
-, to compare, at a distance of 100 years and
15.000km, ARAKI Nobuyoshi's art with that of
James Ensor and Filicien Rops for its sulphurous
undertones. But this would not do it justice.
Next, in search of deeper meaning in his artistic
expression, it would be quite relevant to link
Araki's Oeuvre of the last thirty years to the
art of Magritte and Alechinsky, and their
understanding of and feeling for Japanese shodo
(the art, or rather the path of calligraphy). But
that would still not do it justice. One has to
dig still deeper and lay hare the roots of
oriental thinking to grasp the millenary old
processes of acculturation based on the evolution
of ideographic deposits, so fundamentally
different from the western acculturation
processes which comprise the unfolding of
characters and symbols. Then, and only then can
the photographers "realism is reality"
be understood, where the camera is the fude and
the sumi, the brush and the ink, not for the
creation of masterpieces, but to document the
totality of the Japanese MA, the space-time
relationship of his most personal, most intimate,
most visceral feelings. Some of his pornographic
work is judged reprehensible even by the
Japanese, by whom female, - and often underage -'
shilari (bondage) is not in itself considered as
a perversion, but rather the object of curiosity,
sometimes elevated to highly regarded erotic art.
This work is well worth a close, dispassionate
look, by westerners who, in our time of confusion
and violence, seek for enlightenment, rather then
for excitement.
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