Daughter of art history. Morimura

Daughter of Art History is an elaborate deception; a fake art-history in which Rembrandt, Jesus Christ, Van Gogh, the Mona Lisa, Frida Kahlo, and Cindy Sherman have all been hijacked and replaced. Where once the viewer’s gaze met the eyes of a reclining female nude, a European master painter, or a Western religious icon, that gaze is now returned by the hauntingly photo-realistic eyes of a Japanese man. Since the early eighties, Yasumasa Morimura has been invading the established canon of Western art—offering both wry commentary and loving tribute—by replacing the figures and faces of its well-known masterpieces with his own. After painstakingly recreating the surroundings of some of art-history’s most iconic paintings, like a chameleon, Morimura assumes their subjects’ identities through elaborate makeup and costume, and inserts himself into the scene. To view the resulting photographs is an uncanny experience.