Can Cute Cut It?
“…a sneaky global kawaii conspiracy is in full swing, led by an omniscient and omnipresent Sanrio”
– Christine Yano
Somerset House’s show “CUTE” opened last January inviting visitors into a sonic, sensory, and nostalgic trip down memory lane: a compilation of all things adorable. The word cute is the English translation of the Japanese kawaii, the aesthetic movement to which the exhibition pays tribute. Childish, charming, crowded, cluttered, and at times chaotic, “CUTE” is an homage to the “pink globalization” ignited by kawaii in post-war era Japan. Kittens, puppies, stuffed animals, furry friends. Sonny Angels, My Little Pony, Tamagotchis, Hello Kitty accessories and disco balls are the core of kawaii and the stars of the show. Although the ‘cute’ predates and extends far beyond Somerset’s walls, the exhibition’s timing raises questions surrounding art and artists’ place within this aesthetic. Kawaii is rapidly raising eyebrows of art historians, critics and scholars in a shared preoccupation Jannice Brown describes as “the anxiety of the cute” [1].
Cute Exhibition, Somerset House, 2024. Source: Somerset House.
Somerset House sits at the heart of London within a courtyard of illustrious decor, yet what is displayed within is very far removed from its exterior. Crowning itself as the “home of cultural innovators,” the institution is pushing the boundaries of the museum-going experience, promoting trends and young artistic currents. The show welcomes audiences of all age ranges, kids, teens, and adults, millennials and Gen Zers alike roam around the space in childlike wonder. It is a sentimental reunion with a forgotten and all-too familiar childhood.
“CUTE” sits at the edge of art, media, and entertainment. Borrowing from the widely popular “instagrammable museums,” it is an immersive experience of sorts. Each room is distinctly lit, with walls brightly colored in tones of purple, pink, and red, fluorescent lights, loud music, walkways in the forms of fictional characters, Hello Kitty ears and fuzzy monsters. Following the chronology of kawaii history, the show begins with anime and manga, followed by an homage to Hello Kitty, leading up to a hallway filled with collectibles, memorabilia, toys, accessories, posters and shelves stocked with knick knacks from decades past. The exhibition concludes with a gift shop and a cafe (with a 1.5 hr waiting time!) with the same theme.
Cute, Somerset House, Hello Kitty Installation, 2024. Photo Courtesy: David Parry, PA Wire & TimeOut
It cannot go unacknowledged that Somerset sits adjacent to the Courtauld Gallery. Placed side by side with its serious, overachieving next door neighbor, one can’t help but empathize with art critics’ hesitation in classifying “cute” as a form of art. The disinclination of scholars to use “cute” in a serious art criticism discourse opens up a debate that demands a closer look into the history of kawaii and its complex sociopolitical and cultural origins.
“Kawaii (cute), kirei (pretty, clean) and omoshiroi (interesting and fun) are the three worst adjectives for art. When those three words are used, no intellectual discussion can continue”
– Alexandra Munroe, Senior curator of Asian art at the Guggenheim [2]
Kawaii is situated within a history of geopolitical and cultural conversations in and between the West, Europe and Asia. The West’s collective fascination with the cute is due to its appropriation through a simplistic, eurocentric, or otherwise “essentialist discourse” [3]. This in turn offers a narrow and superficial framework through which to understand and posit trends in Japanese art as separate from Japanese culture, obscuring the history that lies underneath its furry and fluffy surface. By re-contextualizing kawaii within its birthplace, Japan, tracing its history and that of its artists, the cute gains autonomy as a foreign ‘art movement.’
Kawaii dates back to the Second World War, reaching its apex in the 1980s and making its way into North America by the 90s. In the post-war era, kawaii iconography occupied the hearts and minds of the Japanese people with manga and anime saturating visual culture. Art critic Nao Sawaragi explains that the emergence of kawaii coincided with the war’s aftermath, when Western hegemony and aggression belittled Japan to subservience [4]. Weakened in morale, it was in this cultural reimagination that the Japanese people found community, solace, and security. Male qualities were replaced with hyperfemininity and sensitivity, aggression with vulnerability and innocence, traditional values with pop culture icons. Japan underwent what Oana Maria Birlea describes as a “transition from hard to soft power,” from high culture to pink globalization [5]. In times of crisis, it is not uncommon to look to icons and images as sources of comfort and expression. The Japanese found in these images a way to reclaim a lost sense of self on a personal and national level. These childish icons were docile, light, soft, and free of malice, qualities that resonated in disturbed times. The movement soon infiltrated the digital world, fashion, social media, etc. Kawaii became much more than an ideology, it was an expression of style. But how and why was it so appealing to the West?
Like the Egyptomania that flooded the cinematic universe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the “craze of japonisme” captivated the attention of European and American audiences [6]. The appeal for the exotic, traditional and understated elegance of Japan were now denied to the West, offering instead infantile, flattened icons with rounded, soft features. In its own way, this ignited a rebranding of Japanese cultural perception. These comical and cartoonish characters and images did not measure up to Western standards of “high art,” thus reducing kawaii to commodified icons that fed a consumerist appetite. According to Brown, kawaii was then mislabeled as “kitsch” or “camp,” begging the question of where pop culture ends and art begins [7].
Kawaii is a movement that encompasses much more than graphics of kittens, plastic dolls and Hello Kitty lunch boxes displayed in Somerset’s CUTE. To best explain this, let now look at the works of two pioneers of the movement: Yoshitomo Nara and Takashi Murakami. Nara creates characters of little girls and boys with exaggerated features, often depicted holding knives. Murakami is most famously known for his rainbow flowers which then were anthropomorphized into Mr. DOB, the sharp-toothed, big-eyed, distant cousin of Mickey Mouse [8]. Neither are aggressively confrontational but both are essentially kawaii.
Epistemologically, cute is acute abbreviated, two words that bear no relation. Yet kawaii is dual in nature in more ways than one [9]. In the words of Sianne Ngai, cute and aggressive are two sides of one coin. The characters created by Nara and Murakami use kawaii’s vulnerability to reinstate its power. These cute monsters and innocent children are simultaneously the weapon, victim and aggressor; their weakness is projected onto the viewer, thus allowing them to reclaim their symbolic power. Crossing the line of cuteness, some kawaii artists buy into the hyper-sexualization of their figures, presenting again a duality of cuteness and objectification. When understood in this way, kawaii is much more than just stuffed animals in a gift shop.
Art Critic Christine Yano advocates for elevating the kawaii aesthetic, claiming that kawaii icons live in the shadows of its American counterparts, namely, Walt Disney’s iconic talking animals. And while Disneymania knows no rival, Yano concludes that the power of kawaii is unstoppable: “the global kawaii conspiracy is in full swing, led by an omniscient and omnipresent Sanrio,” the sponsor of Somerset’s show [10]. Kawaii continues to be ‘othered’, but its incorporation into the art has allowed artists like Nara and Murakami to shake the market at home and abroad. Is it the fetishization and otherness that makes kawaii popular, or can cute cut it?
Ayako Rokkaku, Untitled, 2019. Acrylic on canvas, 121 x 190 cm. Photo Courtesy: Phillips.
“CUTE” is living proof of this so-called conspiracy. Oana Maria Birlea introduces a new field of research titled “cute studies” led by JP Dale. In May 2021, Sotheby’s held a sale titled “Kawai Pop, The Cult of Cute,”featuring works by Kusama, Katherine Bernhardt and En Iwamura. Last month, ArtTactic released a report on Women Artists which placed Ayako Rokkaku, a 42-year old Japanese artist that closely embraces kawaii, in the the top 10 young ultra contemporary female artists. Mike Kelley, whose work is also featured in the exhibition, will be holding a solo show titled “Ghost and Spirit” at Tate Modern this coming October 2024. Other artists like Javier Calleja and Aya Takano continue to adapt and incorporate the kawaii aesthetic into their own artistic practice.
Sadly, “CUTE” validates critics’ fear of kawaii’s consumerist agenda because it offers little to no artistic depth to its audiences. Many artists who are frontlining the kawaii aesthetic are excluded from the show and the exhibition does not lend for substantial critical analysis of the movement at hand. The show is best understood as an experience of fun, designed for children to run around looking for their favorite toys and for adults to reconnect with their inner child. The show, however, is a testament to the power of kawaii and invites viewers to partake in a re-understanding of a movement that is slowly finding its place within the art historical canon.
CUTE was on view at Somerset House until April 14, 2024.
Footnotes
Janice Brown, “Re-Framing “Kawaii:” Interrogating Global Anxieties Surrounding the Aesthetic of ‘Cute’ in Japanese Art and Consumer Products,” The International Journal of the Image 1, no. 2 (2011): 2. https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/re-framing-kawaii-interrogating-global-anxieties/docview/2792972330/se-2?accountid=13958
Janice Brown, “Re-Framing “Kawaii,” 1.
Janice Brown, “Re-Framing “Kawaii,” 8.
Sianne Ngai, “The Cuteness of the Avant-Garde,” Critical Inquiry 31, no. 4 (2005): PAGE, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/444516; Janice Brown, “Re-Framing “Kawaii,” 6.
Oana-Maria Birlea, “Cute Studies,” Kawaii (“Cuteness”) – A New Research Field.” Philobiblon (Cluj, Romania) 26, no. 1 (2021): 87. https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/cute-studies-kawaii-cuteness-new-research-field/docview/2547656992/se-2?accountid=13958
Janice Brown, “Re-Framing “Kawaii,” 8.
Janice Brown, “Re-Framing “Kawaii,” 8.
Sianne Ngai, “The Cuteness of the Avant-Garde,” Critical Inquiry 31, no. 4 (2005): 811-847. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/444516
Sianne Ngai, “The Cuteness of the Avant-Garde” 826; Oana-Maria Birlea, “Cute Studies,” 90.
Janice Brown, “Re-Framing “Kawaii,” 9.
Francisca Gomez
Agents of Change Co-Editor, MADE IN BED