I finally visited The Contemporary Museum here in Honolulu over Spring Break, back in March. A large canvas with a striking blue background and wonderful cartoonish but ferocious-looking pandas painted on it stood in the main entrance foyer and caught my attention immediately. It’s hard to describe without getting in trouble over assumptions about “what is art” and such, but I really cannot help but be drawn to pieces which combine “low art” cartoon styles and subjects inspired by anime with the “high art” mode or context of quote-unquote “genuine art objects.” Murakami, of course, is a different story, and I’m kind of tired of him, only because he’s so goddamned everpresent and overwhelming, hogging the spotlight and pushing others into the wings. But that’s neither here nor there.
Another work by the same artist, featuring the same ferocious cartoon pandas, was downstairs, in the form of a wall mural outside the museum’s Contemporary Cafe.
Who is this artist, I wondered. I soon found out. Aaron Martin, or “Angry Woebots” as he chooses to be called as an art-name, was born in Hawaii in 1977, and is currently based in LA. Along with a handful of other artists who collectively go by “Pocket Full of Monsters,” he has apparently been traveling the country, participating in a variety of types of art shows & exhibitions, live art events, and other activities. On his blog, http://www.armyofsnipers.blogspot.com/, he discusses his work, shows and events he’s taking part in, and art figurines (read: expensive, not mass produced) and such he’s offering for sale.
I am tempted to read into it meanings and intentions possibly not present. I quite like art that isn’t pretentious, that doesn’t aim to speak to some complex or philosophical message that doesn’t really come through in the work… If an artwork like this were to be genuinely lacking in meaning, genuinely the result of play and experiment, of snark and aesthetics, I would really like that too. But, I also appreciate art that speaks to real, direct, concrete cultural issues. From what little I have read, Martin does not seem to be saying it, but if he were to talk about the pandas representing a fighting back, a striking back, against some idea of East Asians as being less tough than whites, or something like that… I’m not sure that such a stereotype exists, but nevertheless, I would appreciate that message or meaning in the images. Aaron Martin is not Japanese, and neither are pandas, but if he were to take his anime-inspired style as a reference to Japan, and to speak about how even the Japanese government itself is actively promoting Japanese culture as cute, as kawaii, and how he wants to show that Japanese culture still has teeth, or that one shouldn’t let down one’s guard around the cute, or something like that, I could really appreciate that too. The juxtaposition of cute and dangerous is, of course, a wonderfully titillating and intriguing one in general, and one that Japanese anime and pop culture more generally plays with all the time.
Perhaps it has none of those meanings. After all, Martin’s not Chinese or Japanese. He’s from Honolulu, and from LA, and from what I gather from his blog, he’s living in a whole different cultural/artistic discursive environment from what I’m drawing from it, what I’m looking for, what I enjoy. I’m really not a fan of graffiti art and hip hop, after all, or “street” culture more generally, but I simply cannot deny that I love these pandas.
上り口説 Nubui Kuduchi 