November 30, 2014

ART: Shintaro Kago (駕籠 真太郎) - Funny Girls

Shintaro Kago (駕籠 真太郎)
Funny Girls or Brutality thy name is Man
Web   -   YouTube   -   Blog

Original 'Funny Girl' drawings for sale @ Akatako.net
Shintaro Kago (駕籠 真太郎) - http://www1.odn.ne.jp/~adc52520/

HAIKU Art Review: Shintaro Kago (駕籠 真太郎)
Schoolgirls dissected

Endless self mutilations

Brutal vanity

Shintaro Kago (駕籠 真太郎) - http://www1.odn.ne.jp/~adc52520/
   Self-proclaimed 'bizarre manga artist' Shintaro Kago (駕籠 真太郎)'s 'Funny Girl' series. He has been drawing grotesque portraits of mostly young schoolgirls for about a decade. He also does commissions for fans, dissecting or mutilating them on paper, as they desire.



Shintaro Kago (駕籠 真太郎) - http://www1.odn.ne.jp/~adc52520/
   This is an example of the custom portraits Shintaro will do for fans,
   Shintaro Kago (駕籠 真太郎) at a comic convention (Photo source ??)
Shintaro Kago (駕籠 真太郎) - http://www1.odn.ne.jp/~adc52520/
    Here's a VICE video of Shintaro doing one of his special portraits for photographer Keiichi Nitta in a cafe.
   I find Shintaro's manga very complex & clever. He approaches his 'guro' stories from an Absurdist, self-aware perspective. His work often deals with the very structure of the comic book layout & the fact that you, the reader have a book in your hands.
Shintaro Kago (駕籠 真太郎) - http://www1.odn.ne.jp/~adc52520/
   These 'Funny Girls' are more just for fun, however they do speak to the way girls feel about themselves, especially their bodies or more precisely, how a man thinks girls view their bodies.
Shintaro Kago (駕籠 真太郎) - http://www1.odn.ne.jp/~adc52520/
   There is always the element of duality, pulling apart, tearing away, coming out of an inner conflict manifesting in a violent doppelganger.
Shintaro Kago (駕籠 真太郎) - http://www1.odn.ne.jp/~adc52520/
   At the same time, I feel bad for liking these images because they seem to be glorifying violence & torture of young women the way 80s direct to video did. Without a moral, the art revels in gruesome depictions of graphic violence against women, almost exclusively.
Shintaro Kago (駕籠 真太郎) - http://www1.odn.ne.jp/~adc52520/
   Kago tries to balance the violent, misogynistic tone with quirky, absurd humor & the lack of an antagonist. There is no one victimizing these girls (except for the artist creating these pictures), it is usually some kind of self-mutilation.
Shintaro Kago (駕籠 真太郎) - http://www1.odn.ne.jp/~adc52520/
  "I believe that it’s the viewer who decides whether your work is art or if you’re an artist, not the creator."
    - Shintaro Kago interviewed by Tomokazu Kosuga for VICE 
Shintaro Kago (駕籠 真太郎) - http://www1.odn.ne.jp/~adc52520/
   "If you’re 100 percent free then I feel that it hinders creative expression in a weird way. Your expressive range becomes richer when you have certain boundaries and restrictions."
     - Shintaro Kago interviewed by Tomokazu Kosuga for VICE 
Shintaro Kago (駕籠 真太郎) - http://www1.odn.ne.jp/~adc52520/
   "The sex scenes take up a lot of space too, so they’re handy when you’re running low on ideas. I often insert meaningless sex scenes in the middle of a story when I have to fill up a few pages and can’t think of anything else."
  - Shintaro Kago interviewed by Tomokazu Kosuga for VICE
Shintaro Kago (駕籠 真太郎) - http://www1.odn.ne.jp/~adc52520/
   "My parents died when I was one, and the first time I stole I was five years old. I lost my virginity at six and was briefly into bestiality but got over it when I was around seven. Horses were the toughest, man. They’re so damn big."
   This is one perplexing quote. At first, it's so shocking you want to pass it off a as a joke. He's just messing with the interviewer. But is that the veil? Use the blunt truth as smoke screen.

   Surely, he threw in the line about the horse to discredit the entire story... hmm.
Shintaro Kago (駕籠 真太郎) - http://www1.odn.ne.jp/~adc52520/
Shintaro Kago (駕籠 真太郎) - http://www1.odn.ne.jp/~adc52520/
Original 'Funny Girl' drawings for sale Akatako.net
Shintaro Kago (駕籠 真太郎) - http://www1.odn.ne.jp/~adc52520/
Shintaro Kago (駕籠 真太郎)
Web   -   YouTube   -   Blog


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