The Erotic Innocence of…
February 28, 2008
Audrey Kawasaki is my next featured artist…
Her delicate young women seem to play with and melt into the natural grain of the wood panels that she paints on.
Some of these are just mesmerizing…
I tried to find a song that flows with her art, so hopefully this selection does her justice. I have no idea who it’s by or what she’s saying, but I dig the vibe. The song is called “River Goddess.”
1. Octogirls
2. Touch Me
3. Ishiki
4. Two Girls
5. Birthday Kiss
6. Oyasumi
7. Nest Hair
8. Horn Girl
9. Komorebi
10. Annabelle
Obviously, I like Octogirls a lot, but my favorite is #9, Komorebi. It’s just so PURE. Her figure melts into the whites and the wood(s) and she becomes almost ghost-like, as if this is your last memory of her before she disappears…
I really dig the mushrooms, birds, and cat’s cradle action going on in #7, Nest Hair.
Oyasumi (#6) is beautiful for its simplicity. It shows how the wood accentuates Audrey’s style, flowing in and out of the unfinished bodies.
Two Girls (#4) is the first piece of hers that I saw. It was on a postcard that I picked up at some gallery. At the time, I had been creating a mini-collage of various art postcards around my computer monitor at work. I had the upper left corner filled up and it was looking pretty nice, so I chose Two Girls to be my “centerpiece” for the bottom right. Well, that didn’t happen because my boss asked me to take it down. I had no problem with that, because I understood that he could get in trouble if someone else had a problem with it.
So I’m curious to hear from men and women alike: How do you feel about Audrey’s art?
“Blue Room” by Audrey Kawasaki — “The Bedroom at Aries” by Van Gogh
It’s erotic!
Audrey has some serious talent! At 25 years of age, it seems like her career is just starting. I love her choice of medium and the way the oils appear to “float”. I gotta point out her painting “Blue Room” (bottom right of her paintings gallery)…there is something timeless about that piece…it bears some resemblance to one of my all-time favorites, Van Gogh’s “The Bedroom at Arles”
It’ll be interesting to see what her art work is like in 3-4 years (will she still be known for her erotically charged portrayals of young, adolescent girls?)
Re #10, I’ve never seen someone with a baby sloth as a pet….that’s pretty neat. If any of these young women were featured in an manga-style adaptation of the film “Beastmaster”, I would definitely watch it!
Good stuff Smusher. I added a side-by-side of “Blue Room” and “Bedroom.” That’s a good point about seeing how her art will evolve. I’ll definitely be watching…
You think that song fits pretty well?
ha! my favorite is #9 too. oh shit! it looks like my homegirl Vivian!!
jonny - do you remember that dude telling you about Audrey? It was when we were waiting in line for Pinks. I remember because it was right before I macked down that double bacon polish sausage chili cheeseburger hah.
I remember that night…i don’t remember talking to anybody in line.. Was is a stranger or a friend?
I still need to get the images for a show we’re having in april. Kind of similar..I’ll see if I can find some of the work.
Yeah, the song is perfect! Song Title: Rivergoddess, Artist: Maneesh De Moor, Album: Sadhana, Genre: World. It sounds like a young girl (over 18) is taking a gentle twilight bath in a creek…somewhere deep in a forest…and she’s teasing me with a foreign language. I listened to the song very carefully and I think I’ve figured it out. She’s saying “Baby, get me some soap! I need to be cleaned. Baby, hurry up, the soap!”
I downloaded another song from that same album called “Cosmic Flow”. It’s really nice: 8 minutes of soothing combinations of sounds from drums, chanting, strings, electronics, water fountains, flute, and many more. I was listening to that and musing about my feelings for the “Blue Room” and “The Bedroom at Aries” paintings. It was weird, “Blue Room” kept attracting me…I don’t know know if it was the view of the sun setting or the flying flower pedals or the half nude young girl (over 18) but I felt a lot more energized looking at that than “The Bedroom at Aries”. From the “Blue Room”, one can ask “Does beauty have boundaries?” and not be sure how to really answer because the girl, the flowers, and the sun, are all at different phases in life. This Cosmic Flow really works!
Jonny - It seemed like someone you hadn’t seen in several years…
Smusher - WOW. Not sure who you are, but glad to have you on board.
I only had that River Goddess song because it was on some promo CD that some yoga company sent me at my old job. I’d be down to hear “Cosmic Flow” if you want to upload it and post on the “Chill Out” page (or here).
Yeah, Van Gogh doesn’t let us see out his window, but Audrey does! A gentle twilight bath in a creek deep in a mysterious forest? Haha! I’m gonna go look for some soap now…
I bought Cosmic Flow from iTunes. I’m not sure if it’ll play on anyone else’s computer because there’s a stupid password on it. I tried sharing some of my purchased iTunes songs with other friends and they wouldn’t play.
I tried finding the song on LimeWire and BearShare but no luck.
Is there another way of uploading or sharing it?
I thought Apple started selling DRM-free songs awhile back…or does that only apply to select music?
Unfortunately, this song is protected. I think the songs which you refer to are only from EMI (same company that Apple Records — label group representing the Beatles — filed a suit against)
Source: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/04/02itunes.html
Not to despair. I went on another search and found these sites:
http://magnatune.com/
http://www.creativecommons.org
There’s one song that I felt was as relaxing as Cosmic Flow. It’s called “Crossing Over”. You can listen to it at:
http://magnatune.com/artists/albums/hanschristian-cinema/
I’m glad you asked that question about DRM-free songs. I wouldn’t have enjoyed this moment of serendipity
#2 because it’s so unabashedly sexual, and because I can’t figure out why she has her panties on (while she presumably masturbates).
#7 is my favorite, and also (though these things don’t often couple), I think, the best. But I don’t understand why I would say I think it’s the best. It’s just, whenever I see art in front of me, I try to guess which one people will still be looking at in 20 years, or if the artist was forgotten, I try to guess which one they would like. I don’t think those two things are necessarily the same, either. It seems to me like a lot of “great” art is shown to us and we’re left trying to figure out why.
It seems trivial and anal, but I’m always grappling with this question of how “great” art becomes that way. It doesn’t seem fair a lot of the time. I remember one session in my art history course at NYU, we ended with a lecture by our grad student. Well, she shows us this “great” painting by some dude whose name I promptly forgot and will probably spontaneously projectile-vomit upon hearing again. This “great” painting was a square canvas with a line down the center, vertically, dividing the right and left sides of the canvas into equal halves. The left half was red. The right half was yellow.
That was it. Apparently, that constitutes a contemporary masterpiece.
Our lecturer says, “I know what you’re all thinking- that you could have done that. But you didn’t.”
Actually, I’m pretty sure I did. Seventeen times or so, I drew that one. Sometime between my nap and recess, if I recall correctly. It was my favorite pattern. But, who fucking knows, maybe I’m a genius.
Bottom line: it disturbed me. It angered me. And it continues; It haunts me.
I’ve played this game since the end of high school, and I don’t know if any of my current conclusions is true or substantial. But one of my lit professors once gave me something much more useful. He said, “When you find the part that is strange, that’s the part you write about. When you find the part that you don’t understand when everything else makes sense, that’s the part you write about. It is a mistake to avoid it.”
Those things I still like today. Those are the strange parts; those are the mysterious parts encased in sound reason. #7 seems the strangest. Because everything seems like it’s in its proper place. There is an equilibrium. Nothing looks out of order.
So why’s she growing mushrooms in her hair?
Magnatune = “We Are Not Evil”
Lol. I’ve definitely heard of Magnatune and Creative Commons before, but I hadn’t looked at their sites until now. They seem like great concepts, and from what little I’ve gathered, are working very well.
Apple Records is going to do whatever it takes until their dying breath to make as much money as they can off the Beatles. You think maybe they’d be satisfied by now…
this is the woman we will be showing in April. Audreys art reminded me of her. http://carriejardine.com/
I see the similarities, but I’m not feeling hers as much. I guess the women aren’t supposed to have faces, but that makes them a lot more generic to me.
I’m still waiting for a woman’s perspective on Audrey’s art. I know a few of you are out there…
AK - Does the “greatness” of art really matter?
I mean, I don’t know my art history, but if you showed me 100 “masterpieces,” I probably wouldn’t even care about half of them. I suppose it’s important to consider why others consider something to be “great,” but if I’m not feeling something, I’m not going to go out of my way to try and understand why others like it so much. I’d rather find something else that calls out to me and appreciate the greatness in THAT.
There’s an artist named Fumiko Amano whom I met thru Jonny. She’s really passionate about films and beat poetry and is an overall friendly and interesting person. Anyway, she says that “sound” is the inspiration for most of her art. As a result, her stuff seems very abstract to me. Once I asked her how many people she had met whom she thought really understood her art. I’m not sure what I was expecting her to say, but I wasn’t prepared for her answer. THREE!
This is coming from a woman who is well-known and well-respected in the art community. That shocked me. Now, I imagine those 3 people mean a lot more to her than everyone else attempting to understand, and I think she would be ok with someone saying “I don’t understand this, I’m moving on.” I say this because her art feels genuine.
A lot of abstract art (extending to movies and music as well now) doesn’t seem genuine to me. It feels like some people seem to think that they’re supposed to be “deep” so they purposely write lyrics that don’t make sense, or do whatever they can to make you scratch your head. People who ATTEMPT to be abstract are posers…the weirdness should come naturally.
In this scenario, the joke is on the person trying to critique and understand the pseudo-abstraction. Perhaps that was the case with your guest lecturer? Or maybe I just don’t understand “great” art…
Yeah, I’ve considered the possibility that his painting is ironic, and he’s actually as pissed as I am that this super-abstract crappola is being taken seriously. Problem is: doesn’t matter what his painting says in the western dialogue, he’s now contributed another crappola super-abstract art piece to the canon…or, rather, the canon has embraced another crappola piece of art.
In any case, I also think that weirdness should come naturally. That’s what I love about Picasso. You don’t even have to think about his art, you can just look at it, and go, “Wow. That’s weird. I don’t understand it, but it speaks to me.”
As much as I hate most abstract art, Jackson Pollock is my all-time favorite artist.
I don’t think a work of art should be considered great unless it can be assessed that without some exterior context. The greatness of the art should be in the artwork itself; it should be silent; it should be in the relationship between the painting and viewer, in that electric distance between the canvas and consciousness…not in context and conversation.
Conversation is where you relate meaning that you have interpreted, not where you create it.