Guruprasad Nagarajan's Blog - Posts Tagged "japan"
My 15 minutes with Warhol.
As I went around the exhibition halls at the Mori Art Museum in the confusingly sprawling Roppongi Hills, Tokyo, featuring the creative output of the 15-minute man, I wondered where Andy Warhol would be without Campbell soup cans and screen-printing? Really. You take away those two from him, and it’s like taking away the cape and the weird-arm flying posture from Superman. They’re just not the same without their trademark symbols.
Most of his work featured Campbell cans and celebrity images souped up (ha!) with screen-printing technology. Apparently, he would copy a picture from a pop art magazine over and over using screen-printing, paste them on a canvas and put them up.
The exhibit had a section with his time capsules containing several of his everyday collections of things like magazines, doctor’s prescriptions, scrap papers and such.
The walls were printed with some of his sayings which were quite interesting. Here are a few:
“I never wanted to be a painter, I’ve always wanted to be a tap dancer instead.”
“I think everyone should be a machine”
“I had a job looking through fashion magazines in a department store at fifty cents an hour to look for ideas. I don’t ever remember finding one or getting one.”
“I used to work for these magazines, I thought I was being original and they wouldn’t want it, that’s’ when I stopped being imaginative.”
“My instinct says if I don’t think about it, it’s right. As soon as you have to decide and choose, it’s wrong.”
“I don’t think people die, they just go to department stores”.
And there were times when he was literally taking the piss. He used to urinate on canvas with a copper based paint and the resulting p(ee)aintings were sold as oxidation artworks. You should read the critics gushing about it. One compares it to the ancient art of alchemy and says Warhol alchemically was converting his own urine into art. It’s amazing what you can do when you have more than 15 minutes of fame and to what groveling lengths your critics would go to justify and rationalize everything that comes out of you. Literally.
That said, it was half a day well spent, although it left me wondering where he is now. Probably at a department store, you know, the aisle where the soup cans are?
Most of his work featured Campbell cans and celebrity images souped up (ha!) with screen-printing technology. Apparently, he would copy a picture from a pop art magazine over and over using screen-printing, paste them on a canvas and put them up.
The exhibit had a section with his time capsules containing several of his everyday collections of things like magazines, doctor’s prescriptions, scrap papers and such.
The walls were printed with some of his sayings which were quite interesting. Here are a few:
“I never wanted to be a painter, I’ve always wanted to be a tap dancer instead.”
“I think everyone should be a machine”
“I had a job looking through fashion magazines in a department store at fifty cents an hour to look for ideas. I don’t ever remember finding one or getting one.”
“I used to work for these magazines, I thought I was being original and they wouldn’t want it, that’s’ when I stopped being imaginative.”
“My instinct says if I don’t think about it, it’s right. As soon as you have to decide and choose, it’s wrong.”
“I don’t think people die, they just go to department stores”.
And there were times when he was literally taking the piss. He used to urinate on canvas with a copper based paint and the resulting p(ee)aintings were sold as oxidation artworks. You should read the critics gushing about it. One compares it to the ancient art of alchemy and says Warhol alchemically was converting his own urine into art. It’s amazing what you can do when you have more than 15 minutes of fame and to what groveling lengths your critics would go to justify and rationalize everything that comes out of you. Literally.
That said, it was half a day well spent, although it left me wondering where he is now. Probably at a department store, you know, the aisle where the soup cans are?
Screw clarity
Studying in Tamil medium until 10th standard, I used to be in awe of students from English medium classes when they rattled off in that foreign language so fluently. It was fascinating to hear the words roll off their tongues in an incomprehensible cadence. Incomprehensible because it made no sense at all to me. It was the speed with which the words tumbled off that was impressive.
It was then I decided that I would one day learn to speak English as fluently and effortlessly as these gifted students. And fast, of course faster. Much faster.
Because I was led to believe that the faster you spoke, the better you were at it, and if clarity was compromised, so be it. This unwritten rule was lauded every time a relative, a friend or a famous personality was caught spewing torrents of words in English.
For instance, people used to narrate the example of a famous politician from Tamil Nadu who went to the US and asked a random guy for 'Ten ton tin', and they were extremely impressed when the newspaper (allegedly) reported that the American dude did not understand a word of what the politician said (even though there were just three, if you think about it). A similar sort of veneration to speed over clarity was extended to a quiz guy on TV. Even though no one had a clue to what he was rattling off, they were suitably impressed all the same (reminds me of Catch 22 line, 'If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit).
This made me wonder: Why would you go to a foreign country and speak the native language so fast that even three words were hard to understand? If confusing the other guy was the agenda, then he might as well have spoken in Swahili (the guy might have understood him, probably), I felt.
Isn't the point of communication clarity? That when I say something, you understand what I'm saying? Apparently not.
Which brings me to Japan. I've been there quite a few times over the years, and my wife and I get by beautifully with a point and speak book. It's a wonderful little book that has pictures of food, vegetables, buses and trains,beverages and dishes, names of cities and destination. And the descriptions are in Japanese and English so we are on the same page, so to speak. If I want to go to a particular place, I point to the page that says, 'Please take me to ...' and fill in the blank orally and he takes me there. I order food by pointing to the pictures. I can 'talk' to anyone. They don't know English and I don't know Japanese. It works brilliantly. And it does away with not only speed, but whole sentences. I say 'no fish, no meat', they scratch their heads and say, 'shrimpu?' I say no, they say 'gomennasai' and I walk to the next shop. Simple. The way it should be, eh?
It was then I decided that I would one day learn to speak English as fluently and effortlessly as these gifted students. And fast, of course faster. Much faster.
Because I was led to believe that the faster you spoke, the better you were at it, and if clarity was compromised, so be it. This unwritten rule was lauded every time a relative, a friend or a famous personality was caught spewing torrents of words in English.
For instance, people used to narrate the example of a famous politician from Tamil Nadu who went to the US and asked a random guy for 'Ten ton tin', and they were extremely impressed when the newspaper (allegedly) reported that the American dude did not understand a word of what the politician said (even though there were just three, if you think about it). A similar sort of veneration to speed over clarity was extended to a quiz guy on TV. Even though no one had a clue to what he was rattling off, they were suitably impressed all the same (reminds me of Catch 22 line, 'If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit).
This made me wonder: Why would you go to a foreign country and speak the native language so fast that even three words were hard to understand? If confusing the other guy was the agenda, then he might as well have spoken in Swahili (the guy might have understood him, probably), I felt.
Isn't the point of communication clarity? That when I say something, you understand what I'm saying? Apparently not.
Which brings me to Japan. I've been there quite a few times over the years, and my wife and I get by beautifully with a point and speak book. It's a wonderful little book that has pictures of food, vegetables, buses and trains,beverages and dishes, names of cities and destination. And the descriptions are in Japanese and English so we are on the same page, so to speak. If I want to go to a particular place, I point to the page that says, 'Please take me to ...' and fill in the blank orally and he takes me there. I order food by pointing to the pictures. I can 'talk' to anyone. They don't know English and I don't know Japanese. It works brilliantly. And it does away with not only speed, but whole sentences. I say 'no fish, no meat', they scratch their heads and say, 'shrimpu?' I say no, they say 'gomennasai' and I walk to the next shop. Simple. The way it should be, eh?
