Ambiguous Beauty (Aimai no bi), Morimura Yasumasa

Episode 260 May-2008, re-recorded May-2012 I’m David Cateforis with another Art Minute from the Spencer Museum of Art. In his “Actress” series of photographs from the mid-1990s, Japanese artist Morimura Yasumasa takes on the roles of glamorous Western movie stars, crossing boundaries of race, gender, and culture to impersonate such famous sex symbols as Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe, and Catherine Deneuve. Morimura’s expert crossing-over from male to female appearance relates to the Western tradition of drag and also to the Japanese kabuki theater, in which female roles are played by male actors. Morimura completely inhabits the “Actress” roles he stages for the camera, testifying to their iconic power in our media-saturated age while at the same time emphasizing their artificiality. This is particularly true of Morimura’s impersonation of Marilyn Monroe in her famous nude pin-up on red velvet, seen in the Spencer collection in the format of a Japanese fan with the apt title Ambiguous Beauty. Here, Morimura sports obviously fake breasts, a blonde wig, and overly-red lipstick, to remind us that beauty is not a natural given but a cultural construct, and ultimately the product of performance. From the Spencer Museum of Art, I’m David Cateforis.