Infusing Japanese Ukiyo-e compositions with hip-hop styling, American painter Iona Rozeal Brown (born 1966) investigates in her electrifying narrative canvases the globalization and appropriation of ethnic cultures. Brown's hybridities, which she terms "Afro Asiatic allegories," draw on the many parallels between Ukiyo-e and hip-hop--their narrative content, graphic sophistication and broad popular appeal--ultimately revealing the fluidity of history, identity and fashion. For the exhibition which this monograph accompanies, MOCA Cleveland has commissioned a new series of paintings from Brown. In the resulting work, which is based in part on Japanese prints from the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College, Brown creates an epic visual tale in which the artist's heroine embodies the qualities that she hopes to inspire in young women and men--confidence, courage and sincerity.
"The Unnamed Aid is a calm, evenhanded, yet mysterious figure….Brown patterned her after the lone cowboy and traveling samurai personas. Measured, intelligent, and dignified, she is unaffected by the material concerns of humanity. As the title of the painting king kata #4: resist (after YoshiToshi's 'Fuwa Bansaku')(2007) suggests, she is able to withstand the superficial cravings of everyday life."
Megan Lykins Reich, excerpted from "Iona Rozeal Brown, from which the featured image is reproduced.
"In this body of work, Brown integrates hip-hop's stylistic motifs into the compositional framework of Japan's most illustrious artistic tradition: Ukiyo-e printmaking. She replicates Ukiyo-e's trademark flatness, using opaque forms and linear contours to define her compositions. Nearly all of the a3 paintings include two consistent visual tropes: the Ukiyo-e characters (geishas, samurais, and Kabuki actors) portrayed in the work wear hip hop fashions, and their white skin is partially covered with brown paint in a nontraditional blackface style that resembles geisha make-up."
Megan Lykins Reich, excerpted from The Path: Japan and Beyong with Iona Rozeal Brown in "Iona Rozeal Brown.
FORMAT: Hbk, 9.5 x 11.75 in. / 96 pgs / 43 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $45.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $55 ISBN: 9783775726016 PUBLISHER: Hatje Cantz AVAILABLE: 8/31/2010 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of print AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: NA LA
Published by Hatje Cantz. Text by Isolde Brielmaier, Megan Lykins Reich.
Infusing Japanese Ukiyo-e compositions with hip-hop styling, American painter Iona Rozeal Brown (born 1966) investigates in her electrifying narrative canvases the globalization and appropriation of ethnic cultures. Brown's hybridities, which she terms "Afro Asiatic allegories," draw on the many parallels between Ukiyo-e and hip-hop--their narrative content, graphic sophistication and broad popular appeal--ultimately revealing the fluidity of history, identity and fashion. For the exhibition which this monograph accompanies, MOCA Cleveland has commissioned a new series of paintings from Brown. In the resulting work, which is based in part on Japanese prints from the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College, Brown creates an epic visual tale in which the artist's heroine embodies the qualities that she hopes to inspire in young women and men--confidence, courage and sincerity.
