The Superflat Art Movement

To understand Superstroke the viewer must first understand Superflat.

Age of Superflat. To mark the first major exhibition outside Japan of the sensibility / style originated by artist Takashi Murakami, a show at MOCA in Los Angeles opening on January 14th called Super Flat, we present a little taste of the bilingual book 'Superflat'. Here is the Superflat Manifesto.

The Super Flat Manifesto

The world of the future might be like Japan is today -- super flat.

Society, customs, art, culture: all are extremely two-dimensional. It is particularily apparent in the arts that this sensibility has been flowing steadily beneath the surface of Japanese history. Today, the sensibility is most present in Japanese games and anime, which have become powerful parts of world culture. One way to imagine super flatness is to think of the moment when, in creating a desktop graphic for your computer, you merge a number of distinct layers into one. Though it is not a terribly clear example, the feeling I get is a sense of reality that is very nearly a physical sensation. The reason that I have lined up both the high and the low of Japanese art in this book is to convey this feeling. I would like you, the reader, to experience the moment when the layers of Japanese culture, such as pop, erotic pop, otaku, and H.I.S.ism, fuse into one. [H.I.S. is a discount ticket agency in Japan. By lowering the price of travel abroad, the company is having a profound effect on the relationship between Japan and the West.]

Where is our reality?

This book hopes to reconsider 'super flatness', the sensibility that has contributed to and continues to contribute to the construction of Japanese culture as a worldview, and show that it is an original concept that links the past with the present and the future. During the modern period, as Japan has been Westernised, how has this 'super flat' sensibility metamorphosed? If that can be grasped clearly, then our stance today will come into focus.

In this quest, the current progressive of the real in Japan runs throughout. We might be able to find an answer to our search for a concept about our lives. 'Super flatness' is an original concept of Japanese who have been completely Westernized.

Within this concept seeds for the future have been sown. Let's search the future to find them. 'Super flatness' is the stage to the future.

The 4 Elements of Superstroke

The 4 Elements of Superstroke

As most people who has been following the Superstroke Art Movement knows is that the manifesto written for Superstroke is as follows:

1. Paintings should be executed using expressive even violent brushstrokes on at least some part of the picture.

2. Should a photograph be used for a figurative painting, the objection should not be Photorealism, but Expressionism.

3. If mediums such as pen, pencil, etc are used, the pen and pencil strokes must at least be overly expressive for it to be considered a Superstroke picture.

4. Paintings can be executed in both the abstract and figurative.

5. Subject matters such as Africa, light, dark, life and death are encouraged.

6. Collage, Stencil and Calligraphy may be used for impact.

7. The concept, Art for the sake of art, does not apply in Superstroke. In Superstroke it is art for the sake of Superstroke, as the artist must always strive for paintings rich in texture, or excessive brush or pencil strokes.

Superstroke consists out of 4 elements, namely The Stylized Image, Non Representative Abstraction, Realism and Combination. All of these elements are of equal importance, and make out the total collection of images in Superstroke. There has been a notion Superstroke should consolidate and focus on only one of the four elements, instead embracing all of them. Several discussions later and it was decided although it means more work, The Superstroke Movement will still embrace all four of these elements. Superstroke is extremely complex, and it seems that it will become even more so as time goes on.

In order to achieve the goals of Superstroke, namely to produce paintings to take art forward, it is important for the Superstroke Art Movement to incorporate all the elements of modern art.
Superflat started what will be a key point in a lot of Art Movements going forward, and that is to incorporate texture as a key element of the movement.

In Superstoke texture or the illusion of texture is always very important, but when you work with pencil for instance it is difficult to add texture in comparison with what you can do in oil or acrylic paint. Then it is important to go for the expressive line. You have to use incoherent type of lines to stay within the spirit of Superstroke as described in the Manifesto.

Superstroke