Selling the art that sold the musicÅc
By Chelsea Szendi Schieder
The producer of the show, Shigeo Goto, specifically expressed his desire to reach out to young people with this exhibit and show them the spontaneity and artlessness of many rock images from the 1970s and 1980s. He asked rhetorically: "Shouldn’t music’s visuals be free (form)? I mean, it’s enough if the groove comes to life." He illustrated this concept with Pink Floyd’s use of flying pigs; while "they don’t really have a meaning," he pointed out, their use "created a new image."
Japanese graphic works from 1970s and 1980s, ranging from record jackets and posters to various odds and ends of fan memorabilia opens the show. Goto himself used many design examples from Western rock in his interview, and the trends one could trace in the record jackets seemed in keeping with those of similar eras in Europe and the U.S. It struck me that it was quite difficult to ascertain in retrospect which elements were imported and merely imitated, and which were imported and transformed. However, a large portion of the exhibit was devoted to the universally groundbreaking band Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO). In YMO’s case, it would be equally difficult to determine which elements of Japanese pop musical sensibility and design were exported back to the Western world in their unique sound for which the Japanese press invented the term "technopop."
A YMO concert video of the three young men within their geometric set looped as background for the show. Their quirky lyrics pulsated in accompaniment to the visual images: "…this must be the ugliest bread I’ve ever eaten: God, it’s so ugly…I wonder why…"
Indeed, these lyrics brought another common aspect of Japanese music and visual culture to mind: the way in which English is regularly incorporated into pop lyrics, band names and as a design technique, while it still remains a largely unspoken language. As French and Japanese do to the American ear, the audible English word still reverberates exotically in many Japanese ears; Japanese singers use it as a vehicle to express a concept that would sound terribly harsh and strong in Japanese. This theme continued into the other galleries, which housed the contemporary J-Pop display.
In keeping with the intense pace of Japan today, the focus was also on the moving visual. CD jackets hung on the walls, but the true draw was the music video viewing stations. The moving images gave a tremendous impression of speed. Especially when contrasted with the video of YMO: stationary musicians against a similarly stationary backdrop, these contemporary videos came across as accelerated. Also, while the earlier showcases featured the musical stars who were also musicians, in the J-Pop world, few of the hands that write the songs are also attached to the faces with whom the songs are associated
Other foreign tongues have entered the Japanese pop vocabulary as well, resulting in popular bands with the names "Dir en grey" and "L’Arc~en~Ciel". Still, English remains the most common language to cite in the realm of J-Pop. This allows a band to sing "fuck yeah" while maintaining a rather fuzzy demeanor.
Despite the crudity of some of the lyrics, sexuality in all the videos I saw was mostly defused or covertly coded. In some cases this took the form of humor: as in the image of a blonde woman shimmying and shaking in a skimpy bikini as her body was stretched and digitally manipulated (Shindo Mitsuo’s video for "Tribute to Terry Johnson: Pillow Talks"). In others, singers dawn a form of androgyny. The popular male singer Moriyama Naotarou was dressed in soft pastels, with flowing locks, flowing trousers and a bead necklace, while the female pop duo Halcali performed their hip-hop influenced dance routine in unison, donning identically ridiculous and also frumpy Christmas tree outfits in Tanaka Noriyuki’s whimsical video for "Strawberry Chips." Of course, sexuality probably undergoes a very different code in these visuals. Especially within a culture in which sexy can mean intimidating, cute often draws more attention, and all of these videos were indeed downright cute.
This last point was perhaps the one which divided the galleries most visibly. Or, as far as this display was concerned, it divided the old school "free form" rock imagery from the stylized designs created to promote not only the music, also but the groomed idol mouthpiece of the music
Whether the young people attracted to the exhibit made their own comparisons and conclusions along the same lines is uncertain, but they could certainly discuss it over a pint of the "groove" beer especially brewed by Kirin for the exhibit; and they could always buy the catalogue downstairs, further complicating the relationship between consumption and art.
