When I first walked into Yasumasa Morimura’s Ego Obsession gallery, I wanted to leave immediately. I felt creeped out of his self-portraits and once I walked into his documentary showing, I was sold to leave ASAP. I don’t like horror or gory genres in movies or TV shows, and I saw this one picture of Yasumasa beheaded (I did NOT want to take a picture of this for my blog post…). Rest assured, I got up and left the screening room like a wild chicken!
Continuing the pain of this required, creepy trip, I saw even more weird pictures with Yasumasa’s face plastered all over it.
Take the picture of Yasumassa’s picture of the Mona Lisa for example (above): his eyes follow you as you move 180 degrees, from left to right. She also becomes naked as you move from left to right. Putting aside this creepiness of this, I can see he’s trying to show that the Mona Lisa, the painting itself, has a lot of ego to it. By showing right through her dress to her naked body, you can see how Yasumassa is trying to emphasize that he can see right through her arrogance. I’m calling this painting arrogant because it’s one of the most famous paintings in the world. It gives Leonardo da Vinci a sort-of genius ego label to him. Yasumassa strips down the artist’s ego through literally stripping down the Mona Lisa. But the trick is that you have to submit yourself into a different perspective, a different angle from the rest of society, by seeing the da Vinci’s ego. I mean if you think about it, no regular person would admire a picture from its side!
I would also like to note that we only see through Mona Lisa’s dress. Yasumassa could have changed the Mona Lisa’s face when the viewer moves left to right, but he didn’t. I think this is because he’s trying to emphasize that no matter how hard we try to break down and see the artist’s ego, the ego will still always be there. This is shown through Mona Lisa’s still head; the head represents the mind of a genius’ ego! Thus showing, only the artist him/herself could change their ego, not us.
Overall, I enjoyed analyzing Yasumassa’s pictures, but I am still VERY freaked out by his work and documentary.
