Art in Japan>Contemporary Art 1930-2004>Today's Man

Original articles on art, artists, architecture, exhibitions, galleries, museums and cultural institutions around Tokyo, Japan.

Today's Man

by John McGee

Matthew Cerletty, Birthday Boy, 2003, oil on panel, 18x18in (Photos: John McGee)

You may be dating one and not even know it. Is he urban, well-groomed and stylish? Does he preen in front of the mirror? And yet, he's straight? He's probably a metrosexual (or just Japanese). 

For all guys, looking at yourself—and considering your look—has become accepted and cool. But men looking at men? Sounds gay. Except straight guys do it all the time—Go Real Madrid (and crown prince of metrosexuality, David Beckham)! 

"Today's Man" takes these contemporary complications of masculinity as its theme, with depictions of men by 55 different male artists. Some, like Alex Katz and A.A. Bronson (of General Idea) are well established, but most are emerging American artists (with one Japanese, Kentaro Kobuke). 

James Gobel, Hunt, 2003, felt, yarn,
acrylic and enamel on wood, 17x19in 

New York gallery John Connelly Presents first held the exhibition—named for a bankrupt clothing store—this summer. Connelly says that he chose small works because his gallery is small, and as a counterpoint to the stereotype of men making big gestural paintings. Also, he says, "I wanted intimacy between the viewer and the works." 

Tokyo gallerist Hiromi Yoshii says that when he saw the exhibition in New York, he thought "this is really now," something different than what's offered at Japanese museums. "I wanted to show it to young artists and young collectors [in Japan]," he says. 

One thing the show offers is a great diversity of styles, from conceptualist text on paper to a plaster death-mask to a collage of garbage (Connelly added five artists for the Tokyo show). Most works, however, are drawings or paintings of men, predominantly young and white. And yes, a number of them have gay overtones. A pencil sketch by Hernan Bas has a young dandy straddling a railing along a waterfront, recalling "Death in Venice." More overt is Matthew Cerletty's portrait of a young man lying on a striped pillow, his puffy red eyes locked open from the asphyxiating red ribbons lacing his throat in a Christmas corset. 

And there is gay by association. Alex Katz's painted portrait of three men seems fairly straightforward. In their businessmen-on-holiday outfits, they look like golf buddies. But that becomes a euphemism when Katz's work is hung next to Everest Hall's trio of tiny head shots of gay icons—Puerto Rican, Clone, Leather—pulled straight off a porn video box.

"Today's Man" exhibition view

Sexual tones can be subtle, and non-denominational, as in Erik Hanson's recreation of the album "These Foolish Things" by Bryan Ferry in white pencil on black paper. Or they can be writ large, as in A.A. Bronson's A4-sized stamina log, Orgasm Renewal Project, from 1972. 

Much of the time, however, a man is just a man. Or, rather, a man is the starting point for other abstractions—a blurred photo of Donald Sutherland from the film "Klute," a bronze bust of a man with a very large nose, and assorted cartoons, scribblings and portraits. Anyway, America's male identity politics are largely different from Japan's. The show's lasting effect here will likely be the freedom of representation it records and transmits, something like fashion mag Men's Egg but directed at aspiring artists rather than Shibuya fashionistas. As if to confirm that, Hiromi Yoshii Gallery will be coming out with a catalog of the exhibition by the end of the year.

This exhibition was held Oct-Nov 2003 at Hiromi Yoshii Gallery in Roppongi, Tokyo, Japan.

©2006 John McGee

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