The Body- Case Study

Morimura
Artist
Yasumasa Morimura is a Japanese appropriation artist, born in 1951, Osaka. His
artworks are inspired and derived from art history, pop culture and mass media.
He bonds self-portraits in photography, performance and video with the use of
props, costumes, make-up and digital manipulation. His large scale self-portraits
are superimposed in art-historical images or on pictures of iconic individuals. He
is famous for his re-creation of masterworks of Western art using computer
technology.

Artwork
Morimuras Portrait, Futago is a recreation of Manets painting, Olympia. Morimuras tool
of appropriation helps to incorporate the meanings attached to the original and the new
artwork. He explores many aspects of identity, gender and ethnicity in his artwork. . The
darker tones of Morimuras skin, produces an overall dimmer image, compared to
Manets artwork. Morimuras photograph is life-size, measuring 210 cm x 300 cm, a

Yasumasa Morimura, Portrait (Futago), 1988, Chromogenic print with acrylic paint and
gel medium,
210.19
x 299.72
cm, Artstor, photograph
Yasumasa
Morimura,
Selfcm
Portrait,
Photograph

chromogenic print with acrylic paint and gel

medium.

Audience
The international, more specifically, Western and Asian world are represented as the
audience for Morimuras works. His artworks confuse and shock audiences, as they are
unsure of how to react. International critics become puzzled by the self-portraits and
wondered whether they were simply humorous imitations and others see them as the
work of reinterpreting and parodying western subjects from an Asian point of view.

World

Morimura aims to explore how Japan interacts with the world through the perspective of
the artist and how the artist creates an identity within his culture and the global
community. He uses past artworks to displace social currents in Japanese culture, which
is influenced by the mass media and pop culture of the present world.