Blender--+Makoto+Aida


 * Blender: A Contemporary Painting by Makoto Aida**


 * Artwork Identification **
 * Title: Blender
 * Artist(s): Makoto Aida
 * Date: 2001
 * Period: Contemporary
 * Country of Origin: Japan
 * Cultural/Ethnic Affiliation: The Group 1965; Japanese
 * Medium: Acrylic on Canvas
 * Dimensions: 290 cm X 210.5 cm (9ft. 6in. X 6ft. 11in.)
 * Museum/Collection: TAKAHASHI Collection
 * Accession Number: Unknown
 * Current Location and Manner of Display: Unknown
 * Provenance: Artist

Makoto Aida (会田誠 Aida Makoto) was born on October 4th, 1965 in Niigata Prefecture, Japan and is a contemporary Japanese artist that works primarily in painting, video, photography, sculpture, and installation. He received his BFA in painting in 1989 from the Tokyo National University of Fine arts and Music, and in 1991 he received a MFA from the same university in painting.
 * Introduction **

Aida's works are known for being provocative and address political and societal concerns through systematic means. Throughout his works, he visually shows the relationship of a collective system versus the individual ranging from fatality (suicide and war), sex (pedophilia, sexual deviance, and tradition), and politics (cultural dynamic between Japan and the West.) His distinguishing style is the use of manga-like art to portray dismembered body parts and nudity of schoolgirls. Because of this, Aida’s works have been criticized for their hypersexual and violent depictions, underlying misogyny, and cannibalistic qualities.

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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Makoto Aida’s <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">//Blender// <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> is a large, rectangular acrylic painting that stands 9 1/2 feet tall and is almost 7 feet wide. The subject of the painting features a large glass blender in the center of the painting, mounted on a blender stand that mimics a pedestal. The blender appears to be mixing up a concoction of grainy peach, black and cranberry objects. Despite the white background, the piece appears to be complete. The color palette is minimal, with a dull cranberry red being the most prominent while the whites, grays, and flesh tones neutralize the rest of the painting, with little to no paint texture rising from the canvas. The brushstrokes are meticulous, yet done in a way that does not look completely realistic. As the viewer moves closer to the painting, the subject matter shifts from the large blender to the individual contents that are in the blender: human bodies. Thousands of naked young women with expressionless faces being cut up in the machine.
 * <span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Descriptive Analysis **

The surreal subject of the painting is a large blender containing hundreds of naked dark-haired little girls. The girls appear emotionless and practically unfazed by their future demise of being shredded by the blades of the blender. There is great motion, indicating that the blender is running, as the lower third of the contents in the blender contain red liquid that simulates blood, along with swirling motion; the girls appear to be moving in a swirling motion within the red bloody mixture. As the women appear unwilling to resist the forthcoming pain and brutality, the underlying <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #111111; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; vertical-align: baseline;">sadomasochistic (more commonly known as S&M) nature of the piece begins to reveal itself. The girls’ blank stares are merely the products of anticipation as they await the pleasureful infliction of pain and mutilation, netting them heightened ecstasy and sexual gratification.
 * <span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Formal & Contextual Analysis **



<span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Aida first envisioned Blender at around age 13-14 during his first year of junior high school, but held off rendering the image until 2 decades later. This was in part because a studio in New York invited him to showcase his work as a guest artist and he needed to create a large-scale vertical painting that would fit in the studio’s interior, and also because he wanted to create a piece that would not be easy to execute in Japan (Aida, 2007, p. 229). These factors, along with Aida’s continued desire to express what he called “ [|__original Japanese eroticism__] <span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">,” culminated into the work presented on this page.

<span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">As of most of his works, Blender is a piece that centered around Aida’s perception of Japanese society and of the world. Aida attributes his cynical worldview to his own difficulties and awkwardness toward women during his adolescent years, and as a result, harbored hostility towards them (Aida, 2007, p.6). This hostility is present in Blender, in which he pictured kind, smiling, nude young females being liquefied in a large blender. Of this work, Aida has said, “Blender is an image that came to me when I was 14, Originally, the image had all 1.8 billion women of the human race in the blender. If you are a delicate, shy, and young adolescent boy, I’m sure there are a number of people who’d imagine this sort of image without having orientation towards perversion or brutality. Men are such animals.” (Aida, 2007, p.6). According to Aida, Blender was also created with the intention of [|__psychologically testing the viewer__] <span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> and was achieved by confrontational components, such as the blood and the nudity, and stresses that his works require an audience for it to be complete. On elaborating the relationship between his work and the viewers, Aida has said, “For me, it is very important that there is an audience to see the work. I am not making art for ‘art’s sake’, or for my own satisfaction. I am creating it for an audience. I always have an audience in my mind when I am creating work, and what I would like to show them” [|__(Dickie and Shaw, 2015)__] <span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. Other influences that led to the creation of his body of work at the time, including this piece, consists of the underground [|__GARO__] <span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> magazines, a Japanese monthly manga anthology magazine that specialized in alternative and avant-garde manga; the manga artist Suehiro Maruo, whose grotesque and erotic depictions of young girls interested Aida; and [|the hysteria revolving around Tsutomu Miyazaki__] <span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, a serial killer, cannibal, and necrophile that targeted young girls and caused nationwide moral panic against Otakus during the late 1980s (Aida, 2007, p.6).

//<span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Artist Comparison // <span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">As unconventional as Aida's works seem, he would not be the first to depict and publicize gruesomely mutilated schoolgirls. This piece pictured below, titled //Monster Brains (10)//, Suehiro Maruo was a well known Ero Guro (genre: Erotic and Grotesque) manga artist in the 1980s, actively submitting his work to underground magazine, GARO. His illustrations depict themes of sex and violence and has been cited as an influence to Aida Makoto (Aida, 2007, p.6). Suehiro Maruo himself was fascinated by themes such as human oddities, deformities, birth defects, and circus freaks and wanted to explore these interests through his work. In one of his prints from his //Monster Brains// series, it depicts a mutilated face of a young girl with her hand wrapped around the older man's neck, donning a horrified expression, while the man seems oblivious to her discomfort. He wears a romantic expression while engaging in carnivorous activities, licking her eyeball and caressing her with one hand, the other gouging into her face as her blood trickles over his hand and onto her schoolgirl uniform. The schoolgirl's disintegrating face suggests a loss of beauty and/or innocence as she is preyed upon. This illustration creates a tension that suggests sexual assault is in play and a loss of innocence, with the man as the dominating figure in the piece. <span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 0px; overflow: hidden; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">

<span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Technicality-wise, Aida showcases his craftsmanship and attentiveness to detail through the complex composition of twisted figures in various positions and his use of chiaroscuro throughout the piece. Because of the semi-realism, this piece is a departure from his other works, such as [|__Harakiri School Girls (2002)__] <span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> and [|__DOG (Moon)(1996)__] <span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, in which he utilized flat, ukiyo-e like line work, colors, and features females portrayed in the manga-style. Yet, Aida has also managed to incorporate elements of [|__traditional Japanese style__] <span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> within it. The muted, watercolor-like palettes and whitish color schemes echo the nihonga style that developed in Japan decades prior, reflecting [|__his belief__] <span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> that Japanese style works deserves more attention than it receives.

<span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">As Blender has been praised for its large scale, renderings of the thousands of figures in the painting, and its unconventional subject matter, it received criticism from art critics, feminists, advocacy groups, and the general public for its offensiveness pertaining to violence and death, its romanticism of sex and fantasy, and its [|__objectification of women__] <span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. In the midst of Aida’s 2012-2013 exhibition Monument for Nothing, a group of art patrons in Japan called the [|__People Against Pornography and Sexual Violence__] <span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> petitioned for the removal of several of Aida’s works, including Blender, from the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo. In multiple interviews, Aida has also been questioned about his continuous misogynistic themes in his works, but did not directly comment or confirm his stance. In his published catalog, Monument for Nothing, Aida recalls a memory where he was challenged by a group of feminists in London: “When I showed a slide of this work [Blender] in London, feminists asked me such questions such as “What is the intent of this picture?” and “Why are there so many women?,” but I could only answer that I did not remember because the image had been conceived of too long ago. However, in fact, when I set out to make this work, my intent was to make a contemporary version of an “inferno painting” with the brightness of the white color reforming the stereotypically dark-colored inferno painting. I guess feminists would not be satisfied with this explanation though. Moreover, what I tried to put into this work was my adoration of the western paintings typified by Rubens.” (Aida, 2007, p. 229).


 * <span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Personal Interpretations **

<span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Painting the same naked figures over and over on the same canvas, within the span of a year takes an enormous amount of willpower and discipline to be able to do. Besides its controversial content matter, Blender is an enticing piece because of its grandiosity of detail, but humbleness in subject matter. Aida painstakingly renders each figure stroke by stroke, yet they all bear similar features and wear the same detached expression.

<span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Given that many of the figures in the blender assume Asian features, have the body build of women, and are being sliced to death, an interpretation that fits the narrative of Blender would potentially address the fatality of Japanese women and even consumerism in their own society. The society is a blender, slicing up thousands of passive women until it churns out a cranberry product to be ingested by someone—but whom? Or since the concoction only consists of women, is it a form of genocide from another nation, or a commentary on the diminishing fertility rates in Japan?

<span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Perhaps the most alluring aspect of Blender is its juxtaposition of conventions of grotesqueness and subjective beauty. It’s interesting to note that many of Aida’s works highlight certain norms of Japanese society, only to subvert it completely into ways never imagined before. With Blender, he toys with our moral compasses in that he presents an unsavory idea of a bloody, fleshy concoction made from young girls, yet it is rendered in a way that looks disturbingly beautiful. Despite the violent imagery presented, there is a dream-like, erotic, and even spiritual/ritualistic quality to this piece that speaks to sacrifice. The muted color palette and the repetitive figures add to this illusion, in that it is able to make something unimaginably gruesome into a visual for people to be both in awe and in horror of.

//<span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Printed Sources // <span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Aida, Makoto. Monument for Nothing. Japan: Graphic-sha Publishing Co., Ltd. 2007. //<span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">-- A book that gives an overview on Makoto Aida’s works and themes. //
 * <span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">References **

//<span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Online Sources // <span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Brooks, Katherine. “Aida Makoto's Art Exhibit Sparks Protests In Japan Over Cannibalism Paintings.” 31 Jan. 2013, <www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/31/aida-makoto-sparks-protests-in-japan-cannabalism-mori-museum_n_2591048.html> (October 2017). //<span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--A brief article about the backlash against Aida’s “Monument for Nothing” exhibition from the People Against Pornography and Sexual Violence group. //

<span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Dickie, Anna, and Catherine Shaw. “A conversation with Makoto Aida.” 9 January, 2015, <@https://ocula.com/magazine/conversations/makoto-aida/> (November 2017). //<span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--An interview with Aida about his artistic process and works relating to social commentary on Japanese culture, language, nationality, and misogyny. //

<span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Hennequin, Tom. “NSFW: Suehiro Maruo’s Ero Guro Art.” 8, June, 2015, < [] <span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">> (November 2017). //<span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--An article about Suehiro Maruo’s work and his impact in the Ero Guro art genre. //

<span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Jones, Tracy. “Exclusive Interview with Makoto Aida.” 19 December, 2012, < [|__http://hifructose.com/2012/12/19/exclusive-interview-with-makoto-aida/__] <span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">> (October 2017). //<span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--In this interview Aida discusses his past and how he combines his experiences with his art to tell a larger story. //

<span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Jones, Tracy. “Monuments to Misanthropy.” 4 December, 2012, <www.tokyoartbeat.com/tablog/entries.en/2012/12/monuments-to-misanthropy.html> (October 2017). //<span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--An introduction to Aida as an artist in Japan and the criticism his work receives. //

<span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">McNeill, David. “Study of a bad boy of Japanese art.” 3 March, 2013, <span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><@http://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1166294/study-bad-boy-japanese-art> (October 2017). //<span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--An analysis of Aida’s political statements within his body of work from the 1980s to 2012. //

<span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Mizuma Art Gallery. <@http://mizuma-art.co.jp/gallery_info/index_e.html> //<span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--This is the Mizuma Art Gallery’s official website, where they post information about represented artists and their works. //

<span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Mizuma Art Gallery. “Blender by Makoto Aida.” <ocula.com/art-galleries/mizuma-art-gallery/artworks/makoto-aida/blender/> (October 2017). //<span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Ocula’s website acts as a database for artists, artworks, and galleries worldwide. This site is useful for finding useful information on whereabouts of specific art pieces and locations where artists are exhibiting. //

<span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Simone, Gianni. “Building a Monument to Nothing: A Fantastic Interview with Makoto Aida.” 29 September, 2014, <sfaq.us/2014/09/building-a-monument-to-nothing-a-fantastic-interview-with-makoto-aida/> (October 2017). //<span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--An interview with Aida about language, cultural differences, the generation gap, and war paintings. //

//<span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Video Links: // <span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">"Aida Makoto: Monument for Nothing" Audio Guide: [|__https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ktr6OlHkR0g__] //<span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Produced by Mori Art Museum, this audio guide is informative about Aida’s works in the 1990s. //

<span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">TEKITÔ: Makoto Aida at TEDxTokyo (English): [|__https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f7esFzxuQbI__] //<span style="background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Aida talking more about his works and his identity as a Japanese contemporary artist. // <span style="display: block; height: 1px; left: -40px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; top: 2251.5px; width: 1px;"> Makoto Aida’s //Blender// is a large, rectangular acrylic painting that stands at 9 1/2 feet tall and is almost 7 feet wide. The subject of the painting features a large glass blender in the center of the painting, mounted on a blender stand that mimics a pedestal. The blender appears to be mixing up a concoction of grainy peach, black and cranberry objects. Despite the white background, the piece appears to be complete. The color palette is minimal, with a dull cranberry red being the most prominent while the whites, grays, and flesh tones neutralize the rest of the painting, with little to no paint texture rising from the canvas. The brushstrokes are meticulous, yet done in a way that does not look completely realistic. As the viewer moves closer to the painting, the subject matter shifts from the large blender to the individual contents that are in the blender: human bodies. Thousands of naked young women wearing complacent faces as they are cut up in the machine. Yet, despite the violent imagery, there is a dreamlike, erotic quality to this piece. <span style="display: block; height: 1px; left: -40px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; top: 2378.5px; width: 1px;"> Technicality-wise, Aida has incorporated [|traditional Japanese style] into this piece. The watercolor-like palettes and whitish color schemes echo the nihonga style that developed in Japan decades prior, reflecting his belief that Japanese style works deserves more attention than it receives. There are many interpretations of //Blender// //that garnered both praise and backlash from art critics both in Japan and worldwide////.// As Blender has been praised for its large scale and renderings of the thousands of figures in the painting, it has also received backlash for being [|misogynistic], objectifying women in the piece. Back in March 2013, a group of art patrons in Japan called the People Against Pornography and Sexual Violence held a [|protest], demanding the removal of Makoto’s current retrospective from the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo.