Matt Alt on the Little Boy program...
Patrick,
Just caught your latest blog-post and thought I'd chime in, as I was
about to drop you a line about this hefty tome anyway. I was surprised
to find a copy of it in my mailbox yesterday (and was even more
surprised to see my own name listed in the back, apparently for the
tiny bit of help I gave in troubleshooting terminology in a couple of
sections.) I haven't had a chance to read it thoroughly just yet, but
I've generally been impressed with what I've seen.
I've always shrugged off and tuned out the more half-baked aspects of
the Superflat philosophy, some of which were mentioned by Carl in your
blog; I figure it's just par for the course for being taken seriously
in the fine-art world. If I have any issue with the book's
presentation, it's the relentless (although by this point expected)
shoehorning in of work from Superflat artists like Yoshimoto Nara and
Aya Takano between images from famous Japanese films, anime, comics,
and woodblock prints. Yeah, yeah, I understand that they're trying to
provide context for the foreign crowd, but no matter how you slice it
it comes across as pretentious and self-congratulatory at best and
borderline desperate at worst. (I wonder how Fujiko-Fujio feel about
seeing a still of Doraemon and Nobita on a seesaw juxtaposed with a
full-page color drawing of a naked man playing with a little girl?)
On that note, I think it's telling that the front and back covers of
the book sport images from Evangelion and Doraemon and not the
Superflat artists. In fact I've been drawn to the "context" chapters --
many of which feature beautiful full-page color reproductions of old
model box-art and stills from films like Matango -- more than the
navel-gazing discussions of the Superflat crew's assorted work. This
was the first I'd heard of forgotten geniuses like artist Shigeru
Komatsuzaki, who painted hard-boiled WWII battle scenes for model kit
packages, and Shoji Otomo, who pioneered the whole "kaiju biology"
phenomenon, so I have this book to thank for that if nothing else.
Regardless of what you feel about Superflat as a whole, these parts
alone make it worthwhile to beg/borrow/steal a copy -- you're welcome
to take a gander at mine when you're out here.
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