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Yasumasa Morimura / Japan b.1951 / Blinded by the light 1991 / Type C photograph with surface varnish on paper on plywood in gold frame, ed. 3/3 / Triptych: 200 x 121cm (each panel) / Purchased 1996 with proceeds from the Brisbane BMW Renaissance Ball through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation. Celebrating the Queensland Art Gallery’s Centenary 1895–1995 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Yasumasa Morimura
Yasumasa MorimuraBlinded by the light 1991
On Display: QAG, Gallery 4
In this large landscape photograph, Yasumasa Morimura adopts various roles within a single composition. While the work could be read as an ironic view of 1980s consumer excess, closer inspection reveals the artist’s layers of meaning against a background lifted from Pieter Bruegel’s painting Parable of the blind 1568 (Collection: Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Naples).
Each of the protagonists in Blinded by the light (played by the artist himself) is blinded or masked by an element of his or her own personal paraphernalia: a baby is covered in heavy lacy clothing, an artist is weighed down by his tools of trade, a soldier wears a pair of hand grenades in lieu of field glasses, and, most conspicuously, a flamboyant parody of a Ginza shopper is outfitted in designer garb, groaning under an abundance of jewellery and shopping bags. One of these bags is labelled ‘Morimura’, suggesting a self-referential critique of the commodification of art and of the successful artist as an identifiable ‘brand’.
Yasumasa Morimura’s use of photography is heavily influenced by the instruction of Ernest Sato, a former Life magazine photographer, at Kyoto City University of Art. From these beginnings, steeped in the tradition of documentary photography, Morimura adapted his imagery to post-modernist concerns.
By 1985 he was reconstructing well-known paintings from Western art history in photographic tableaux vivants in which he placed his own image in a central, or ‘starring’ role. In doing so, the artist not only critically examined the Western visual arts canon, but also the notion of the ‘truth’ of photographs. His images invite critical and informed intellectual responses while beguiling the casual viewer with their technical virtuosity.