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Yasumasa Morimura

Ambiguous Beauty (Aimai-no-bi), 1995

Description

Maker

  • Yasumasa Morimura, b. 1951, Japanese

Title

Ambiguous Beauty (Aimai-no-bi)

Year

1995

Medium

Color offset photolithograph

Dimensions

32.4 x 6.4 x 4.8 cm (12 3/4 x 2 1/2 x 1 7/8 inches) (box)

Type

  • Works on Paper,
  • Photographs

Credit

Anonymous gift in honor of the Peter Norton Family

Object Number

1995.091

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Presence Through Process

January 15 - June 20, 2010

To question and disrupt long-established gender and cultural boundaries, Yasumasa Morimura photographs himself in the guise of iconic figures from the history of art. Here he quotes Tom Kelley’s 1949 calendar pin-up of Marilyn Monroe, first published in the inaugural issue of Playboy in December 1953. By presenting the image within the format of a traditional Japanese fan, Morimura highlights the tension between Western and Asian ideals of beauty. Meanwhile, the obvious artificiality of the make-up and prosthetic breasts keep the artist’s own male body visually present, thereby subverting the appeal of the original image and Monroe’s celebrity persona to a heterosexual audience.

Recent Acquisitions

June 20 - September 7, 1997

Use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in Copyright. This object is Ambiguous Beauty (Aimai-no-bi) with the accession number of 1995.091. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.

Feedback

We view our online collection as a living documents, and our records are frequently revised and enhanced. If you have additional information or have spotted an error, please send feedback to curatorial@risd.edu.

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