Details
MAKOTO AIDA
(B. 1965)
Louis Vuitton
signed in Japanese; dated '2007' (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
194 x 112 cm. (76 3/8 x 44 in.)
Painted in 2007
Provenance
Private Collection, Japan
Literature
The Ueno Royal Museum, Art de Sauro: Aida Makoto Yamaguchi Akira Exhibition, exh. cat., Tokyo, Japan, 2007 (illustrated, plate 10, p. 20).
Graphic-sha Publishing Co. Ltd., Monument for Nothing Makoto Aida, Tokyo, Japan, 2007 (illustrated, pp. 61 & 241).
Bijutsu Shuppansha, BT Magazine, Vol. 59, No. 896, Tokyo, Japan, July 2007 (illustrated, p. 113).
Exhibited
Tokyo, Japan, The Ueno Royal Museum, Art de Sauro: Aida Makoto Yamaguchi Akira Exhibition, 20 May-19 June 2007.
Sale Room Notice
Please note that the signature should be found on the reverse of the work and not in the upper left, as stated in the catalogue.

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Lot Essay

Vanity and excessive consumerism in contemporary society has proliferated a new generation of blind and aimless individuals. This type of emptiness has transformed products into objects of arbitrary value, and society into a cultural void that disregards and distorts fundamental logic and morality in Aida's world. He lucidly addresses this reality in Louis Vuitton (Lot 1554), a critical commentary on the blind commoditization of fashion items within the hedonic, materialistic culture of contemporary Japanese society.

Imbued with sardonic humour, "This year's harvest is also Louis Vuitton!" gives the double-edged message as to who is the true beneficiary of the consumerist drive. Depicted in the twisted aesthetics of popular commercial media and manga, the toothless Japanese farmer, fatigued from labour, is nonetheless overjoyed by the harvest of the popular French handbags from his field. Perhaps a visual parody channeling the socialist comment made in Jean-Francois Millet's painting of The Gleaners, Aida aims to trigger a new sense of national pride by transforming the image into a mockery of the global consumerist phenomenon, and to scorn the disgraceful assault on national soil, which now fuels the mass manufacturing of non-unique, foreign products. Prevalent issues of social disparities in age, class and gender within contemporary Japan are shrewdly compacted into this inquisitive and direct image that condones superfluous consumption and commodity fetish of the money-oriented generation and their abandonment of pride in self and nation altogether.

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