International Comparative Literature
300
VOL.3 NO.2 (2020): 289–
DOI: 10.19857/jki.ICL.2020325
Copyright © Shanghai Normal University
From Monroe to Mishima: Gender and Cultural Identity in Yasumasa Morimura’s Performance and Photography*
从玛丽莲·梦露到三岛由纪夫
——森村泰昌的表演和摄影艺术中的性别与文化身份
黄碧赫　海德堡大学
HUANG Bihe　Heidelberg University
***************************.de
Abstract:  Japanese contemporary artist Yasumasa Morimura is renowned for
his parodies of female characters in Western paintings and film stars in Western
mainstream movies through performance and photography. In this essay, through
an analysis of Morimura’s Marilyn Series (1996) and “Seasons of Passion”
(2006), the first chapter of his recent project, A Requiem, I will investigate
Morimura’s performance and photography from a gendered perspective. With
a comparison between Monroe’s image in the film still of The Seven Year Itch
(1955) and Morimura’s Self-Portrait (Actress) / White Marilyn and Self-Portrait
(Actress) / White Marilyn, this essay will also examine how Morimura challenges
the male gaze of the heterosexual male and fixed gender identity with his male
body. By contextualizing his works in the US-Japan relations in the postwar
period, I will also explore the connections between the two appropriated figures,
Marilyn Monroe and Yukio Mishima, and see how Morimura intersects gender
identity of the self with the cultural gender of a nation. By making comparisons
between the original images of Mishima in Eikoh Hosoe’s photo album Ordealleftist
by Roses and Morimura’s appropriations in “Seasons of Passion,” this essay
will show how Japan’s cultural gender identity is addressed in Morimura’s
appropriation practices.
Keywords:  Yasumasa Morimura; Yukio Mishima; Marilyn Monroe; gender;
cultural identity
Notes on Author: HUANG Bihe is currently a PhD candidate in the
Institute of East Asian Art History, Center for Asian and Transcultural Studies,
Heidelberg University, Germany, after she gained her BA and MA in art history
from China Central Academy of Fine Arts. Her research interest includes the
history of modern and contemporary art, art criticism, and transcultural visual
studies.
* Submitted Date: Jan. 12, 2020; Accepted Date: Apr. 10, 2020.

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