Bishōjo in Explosive Bloom: A Tenth-Anniversary Guide

Jihong Baek Bishōjo, "beautiful girls," embroidered lavishly across the canvas. Painted so cleanly that the trace of the brush is hard to make out unless you examine the surface up close, the picture looks almost like a digital image, and the highly saturated, varied colors give the work a bright mood. Yet that brightness soon turns into a measure of bewilderment. The girls' idealized bodies are not only presented nude, without a single thread, but sometimes strike poses that look "provocative." It does not stop there: in the *Torso* series a "violent" image appears, a cut surface from which blood spurts where arms and legs should be. These elements of sex and violence, close to adults-only imagery, contrast with the figures' expressions and colors and, above all, with the "brightness" of the comic drawing style, producing a peculiar sense of dissonance. The bewilderment comes from the fact that elements that seem as if they should never go together are harmonized within a single painting; the awkwardness, from encountering, under the bright lights of the white cube, an image that seems as if it should not be viewed in public. These "unexpected" or "unnatural" encounters have made Yunsung Lee's work something that those who meet it cannot easily forget, something that keeps nagging at them. The persuasiveness on the subjects of exposure and violence that he builds by drawing on the context of Western art history through titles and the arrangement of iconography; the richness of context tied to Japanese popular culture, which occupies a major axis of contemporary visual culture; and above all the painterly completeness achieved through composition, color and an immaculate finish have made a place for Lee's work within the context of contemporary art, and his bishōjo have steadily widened their range. Ten years have passed that way. Manga, Anime, and the Bishōjo The question about Yunsung Lee's work consists of one large question and another that follows from it. The first question: why bishōjo? The answer is fairly simple. The artist likes to draw and to look at bishōjo. And the fact that he has been able to keep making bishōjo work is evidence that many people besides the artist like pictures of bishōjo. Here "bishōjo" does not mean simply a drawing of a beautiful girl, but the product of a specific mode of expression within the tradition of Japanese popular culture, in manga, anime and video games.1) What is interesting is that "manga/anime" is a style so particular that it has become a proper noun in many countries, and that, consumed around the world, it has become an aesthetic so universal that even Korean public institutions use something like it.2) An amusing fact is that until the very end of the twentieth century this Japanese style was officially banned in Korea as "Japanese color" (waesaek). Owing to geographical proximity and an industrial structure in which Korea served as a subcontracting factory for Japan, Japanese popular culture was spreading beneath the surface, but even then it was often distributed with its Japanese origin concealed. Only after the "opening to Japanese popular culture" that began in 1998 was Japanese content officially imported, and as the internet spread in the same period, Japanese culture became closer than mere geography. This change had a great effect on Koreans born in the 1980s who grew up through the 1990s and 2000s. In a period when a gap still existed between Korean and Japanese culture, Japanese popular culture was alluring enough that the harmful effects of the opening were a matter of public concern. In that sense, Yunsung Lee is a representative artist of the generation that came after the opening to Japanese popular culture. Looking back, the artist says, it was not that he liked comics in particular; he liked pictures, and the high-quality images within reach happened to be Japanese manga and animation. Having gone to art school and spent his undergraduate years studying and painting in the traditional manner, he decided, just before his graduation exhibition, to present the pictures he loved most as his graduation work, and turned the direction of his practice. *The Last Judgment* (2010), born of digital work, recast the figures of Michelangelo's work of the same title, painted in the Sistine Chapel in 1533, as bishōjo. The figures of the original, painted half-naked or nude to emphasize the beauty of the body, lent plausibility to the nude bishōjo. With its enormous size of 380 × 290 cm, its manga/anime drawing style and its intense color scheme dominated by magenta, Lee's *The Last Judgment* drew an unusual amount of attention for a work shown in a graduation exhibition, and it became the foundation of the world Lee would go on to build. A Drawing Style for Bishōjo If we attend to the visual side, the core of the world Yunsung Lee has unfolded appears to be the realization of the charm of the manga/anime "bishōjo aesthetic." This may sound like the simple idea of transferring to canvas an aesthetic that took shape over decades in popular culture, but Lee's painting is, unexpectedly, a relatively early instance of the manga/anime aesthetic being successfully carried onto canvas. This seems rather surprising when one considers that his work dates from 2010, counting from the graduation piece, or from 2012 onward, counting from his first solo exhibition. Artists such as Dongi Lee, Charles Jang and Artnom had presented the forms of comics before Lee, but in their work the influence of the "cartoon," which developed chiefly in the United States, is prominent. The influence of American Pop art, the root of Pop, and the fact that they belonged to the generation before the opening to Japanese popular culture can be cited as the reasons for the difference. What also distinguishes Lee is that he has built his territory through a "drawing style" that runs through a variety of characters. Whereas many Pop artists have developed their worlds around a signature character, Lee, like manga and anime artists, has made the "drawing style" that carries the bishōjo into his character. His drawing style is made by following the manga/anime grammar of the bishōjo, idealizing the figure through exaggeration and omission into a form somewhat removed from the actual female body, while blending in his own individuality. He follows the conventions of the body established after Osamu Tezuka (1928–1989), the father of Japanese manga, varied the American comic style and countless successors refined it (a round forehead, large eyes, a small upturned nose, a narrow chin, a slim figure, exaggerated breasts), and the characteristic conventions of coloring (shading in two tones, for the convenience of cel animation, which is produced by coloring many drawings; brightly colored hair to distinguish characters drawn in a similar style), while showing his individuality in the proportions of the features and the combinations of color, and so arrives at a drawing style of his own. In other words, Lee set out to present, filtered through his own interpretation, the essence of the bishōjo beauty that had captivated him.3) In this he differs from the Japanese artists Takashi Murakami and Makoto Aida, who won fame with manga/anime subjects before him. Though they too placed the mode of representing the bishōjo within Japanese subculture at the center of their work, they focused not on its generally accepted "beauty" but on the symptoms of Japanese society lodged inside it, such as its sexualization and violence. What is interesting is that, as noted above, Lee's bishōjo are not unrelated to that sexualization and violence either. Desire is contained in the representation of the bishōjo. High-Stimulus Bishōjo, Sexy Desire. Let us unfold in more detail the answer to the second question about Yunsung Lee's work: "Why are the images of bishōjo sexualized and violent?" It is natural that a body modified for commercial purposes should be objectified, that is, that the desires of artist and viewer, creator and consumer, should be projected onto it; and capital actively nourishes the seeds of this possibility. The anecdote is well known: the makers of the television anime *Mobile Suit Gundam* (1979–1980), which, broadcast from 1979, came to exert enormous influence not only on contemporary Japanese culture but on comics, animation and games worldwide, learned of the commercial potential of animation for adults when they saw how many people went back to the theatrical *Mobile Suit Gundam* (1981) to watch a scene added for the film, the shower scene of the female character Sayla Mass. The use of sexual codes in popular culture is not a case peculiar to Japan. In *Star Wars: Return of the Jedi* (1983), the second sequel to *Star Wars* (1977), which greatly influenced *Mobile Suit Gundam*, there is a scene, with little bearing on the story, in which Princess Leia is held captive wearing a metal bikini. This tendency is a common phenomenon in commercially driven popular culture, especially in content aimed at adolescent boys, just as the "heroes" who represent American popular culture still wear skin-tight costumes to show off their idealized physiques. Under the Japanese popular-culture system, in which manga/anime for boys and for girls separated into distinct genres and developed, sexual codes developed continuously. In shōnen manga, even where no direct sexual expression appears, the so-called panchira scene, in which a female character's underwear is exposed because she falls over, and the bath or shower scene appeared as "fan service" and became codified in the grammar of the genre. Within manga/anime culture, sexual codes have been presented as needed, sometimes explicitly, sometimes with sophistication. This gaze, too, has been absorbed into the development of the idealized bishōjo body that Yunsung Lee presents. Takashi Murakami, who calls himself an anime devotee and an "otaku artist," pushed the exaggerated anime-style rendering of male and female bodies into the realm of the repellent in figure-like sculptures such as *Hiropon* and *My Lonesome Cowboy* (1997), expressing not the beauty of the bishōjo but the paraphilic element contained within it. Murakami's work, which emphasizes the unbeautiful side of the anime aesthetic to cast a critical eye on his own culture, and Lee's work, which through nude bishōjo turns around to criticize, satirize and parody the way Western art history has looked at the body while capturing the beauty of manga/anime, may look alike, but one could say they are headed in opposite directions. High-Stimulus Bishōjo, Violent What is somewhat disconcerting is that the *Torso* series, which Lee, who had not given up on the beauty of the bishōjo, presented in his first solo exhibition *NU-TYPE*, consisted of sadistic images in which the limbs of idealized bodies were damaged and blood was spattered about. Why damage beautiful bodies made with such care? Another attraction of manga/anime lies in its sensuous action scenes, or its violence, as evidenced by the fact that the most loved comic in the world is the action manga *Dragon Ball*, and that similar works remain popular today. On the basis of the particularities of Japanese culture, among them the commercial fact that in every age and culture the best-selling genre, together with erotica, is the action spectacular; vivid memories of the Second World War, which Japan itself had started; samurai culture; and the emergence of artists of exceptional expressive power,4)5) action staging accompanied by violence and destruction developed in Japanese popular culture.6) What bears directly on the *Torso* series is Mamoru Oshii's *Ghost in the Shell* (1995). Set in a society where cyborg technology that replaces the body with machinery has become widespread, the film's climactic scene is the one in which the protagonist, Motoko Kusanagi, tries to force open the hatch of a tank and her mechanical body gives way, both arms tearing off.7) When I saw Lee's *Torso* series, the movement of the characters brought *Ghost in the Shell* to mind, and the artist acknowledged the influence of that work.8) In this way the aesthetic achievements of manga and anime become the pieces that make up Lee's world. The central idea of *Torso*, like that of the earlier *The Last Judgment* (2010), begins at a strange point in Western art history that is nonetheless generally accepted. The torso, Italian for "trunk," took its place in art history through the discovery of beauty in those ancient Greek and Roman statues from which the arms and legs, the parts most easily damaged, had broken away, leaving only the body. To anyone interested in art the torso is a familiar form, but to accept the absence of limbs as beautiful or natural is a learned way of seeing. By cutting the limbs from his bishōjo to make torsos, Lee reawakens the unnaturalness. The "exaggeration," which can look all the more wicked because of the body idealized in the manga/anime manner and the expressions that seem unconnected to the pain of amputation, in fact works to reduce the revulsion the subject of bodily mutilation provokes. From the points where arms and legs should be, a magenta-violet liquid of exaggerated color and form spurts out; being so unrealistic, it does not look like a depiction of actual blood, and can look instead like some energy gushing out of the canvas. It would not be a stretch to say that this is not blood from severed limbs but, in the manner of comics, a scene in which the limbs are regenerating, or a transformation beginning from the limbs. This contrasts with Makoto Aida's *Dog*, which, in the service of a message about social issues, depicts the image of a girl with amputated limbs in earnest, and provokes disgust. Even so, *Torso* is uncomfortable. Even if the limbs are being transformed or regenerated, the work unsettles the viewer because it renders the cut surface explicitly. And this discomfort, presented in the first solo exhibition, drew more attention than the graduation piece *The Last Judgment* had received. Since violent images such as bodily amputation do not appear in the new works made after the *Torso* series, one could say that the magenta liquid spattered through *Torso* was an exceptional scene. Nevertheless, *Torso*, as Lee's signature work, continues to be made to this day, its form shifting little by little. Whether or not the artist intended it, the shock treatment of the first solo exhibition was highly effective. *Torso* is also important as the real starting point of the artist's world, in that the motifs of cutting/division and transformation that run through his work to this day made their first appearance there.9) Let us now look at the major works one by one. *Torso*, *The Annunciation* *NU-TYPE*, the first solo exhibition, held at Makeshop Art Space in 2014, was the show in which the artist presented his pictures as a new type.10) What was unveiled there was the *Torso* series. And at the center of the gallery stood *The Annunciation*, composed in the form of a triptych. On the central canvas, which holds the scene in which the archangel Gabriel announces to the Virgin Mary that she will conceive Jesus Christ, lilies, the symbol of the Virgin's purity, swirl through the air. The small wings on the back of the cheerful-looking woman at lower right let us infer that she is Gabriel, and the slightly startled expression of the woman at upper right that she is the Virgin. The women on the left and right canvases are angels who have come to offer their congratulations. Among the classical subjects Lee has transformed, *The Annunciation* can be called the most provocative, in that it has no direct connection to the nude and in that the bodies of its religious figures are not painted whole. At the same time, the Annunciation, a scene announcing that a change in the world is about to begin, lends weight to the claim that what the *Torso* series depicts is the same as a magical girl's transformation scene, beginning from the limbs. The fantastic, lavishly decorated backgrounds, which catch the eye even before the nude figures, look like the backdrop of a transformation scene. These background scenes later came into being as independent works, and the *Torso* series took the leading role once more in the exhibition of the same name, *Torso*, held at YK Presents in 2019. *Danae* *Danae*, the main work shown at *NU-FRAME* (Doosan Gallery Seoul, 2015) and *NU* (Doosan Gallery New York, 2016), takes as its protagonist the woman from Greek mythology who, imprisoned in a tower by a father seeking to evade a prophecy, conceived Perseus, the child of Zeus, who came to her in the form of golden rain. In depicting Danaë, whom so many artists have portrayed sensually, Lee rendered the various emotions she would have felt during her long solitary confinement as three different characters. This division follows the tradition of the magical-girl genre, in which, as in *Sailor Moon*, *Wedding Peach* and *PreCure*, each character is expressed by a representative color according to her personality. As the exhibition title "Nu-Frame" suggests, the 2015 exhibition brought into the gallery the problem of the frame/panel, which may be called the defining feature of the comics medium: the canvases were installed to reflect the "panel division" of a comic book, and the whole gallery was staged as if divided into frames.11) It is interesting that "Danaë," a character defined by "being confined," was made the protagonist of an exhibition about frames. *Zodiac*, *Helios*, *Medusa* The characteristics of the magical-girl genre seen in *Danae* become even clearer in *Zodiac*, which turns the twelve signs of the zodiac into bishōjo. These works, which, as actual magical-girl stories do, give each character a backstory and then transfer it to canvas, convey the power to fill the picture with nothing but dazzling characters. Having shown *Helios*, representing the sun, at *sub-frame* at Lee Eugean Gallery in 2018, Lee presented *Zodiac* (2019), which holds thirteen characters (including Helios) on a large 330 × 330 cm canvas, at *Inside of Light* at UARTSPACE in 2019. At *Nu Collection*, held in the same space in 2021, he showed portraits of the twelve characters representing the signs, and at *SD ZODIAC* at EDIT HANNAM in 2022 he showed works in which the zodiac characters were transformed into child-like proportions (super deformed).12) At *ZODIAC*, held at Gallery Joyana the same year, he showed portraits of the same zodiac characters first presented in 2019, in a more pared-down drawing style. *Zodiac* deserves attention as the series among Lee's work that has produced the most variations in the shortest time. This abundance stems from the fertility of the soil of the "magical girl" within manga/anime culture, in which *Zodiac* is rooted. The magical girl appeared by revolutionarily breaking the traditional configuration in which an active male displays his power through action and wins the charms of a woman as his reward. To enlarge the role of popular female characters, active and attractive magical girls appeared who transform through magical power and carry out the action themselves.13) *Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon*, which takes the planets of the solar system as its motif and became a national comic in Korea as well, is the representative example, and something like the direct ancestor of *Zodiac*. *Medusa*, exhibited alongside the *Zodiac* portraits at *Nu Collection*, carries a context different from the zodiac portraits, the story from Greek mythology of Medusa's "severed head," yet shows a strong resemblance in presenting only the face. It is probably no accident that the face of *Medusa*, the first of Lee's works to be shown as a painting together with a 3D model and a sculpture printed from it, looks like a "Sailor Moon" character; only the snakes' heads drawn in place of hair reveal the subject to be not a magical girl but Medusa. *Laocoön* The body entwined with serpents reaches its maximum in *Laocoon*, shown at the recent solo exhibition *FRAGMENTARY* (YK Presents, March 7–April 3, 2024). Translating into black-and-white painting the *Laocoön*, called the supreme masterpiece of Hellenistic sculpture, this work gathers together the artist's previous concerns, beginning with the concept of "cutting" that has persisted since *Torso*, while also offering a glimpse of a shift to a new phase. On entering the gallery the first thing one sees is three women, painted in place of the Laocoön and two sons of the sculpture, writhing. Unlike the sculpture, the three figures are painted as equals, without hierarchy, as if the artist intended them to look like *The Three Graces*, the 300 × 480 cm large-scale work he made in 2022, also in black and white. The figures' bodies, wrapped in serpents rendered in black line without detailed description save for the eyes, strike dynamic poses, and their flushed faces evoke not simple pain but a sexual atmosphere. Here the artist makes the classics his excuse (or his satire), for the *Laocoön* sculpture itself, praised for its "quiet grandeur" and "noble simplicity," shows a nude male in a pose that seems to flaunt swollen muscles, and Laocoön's expression, more dazed than grimacing, likewise gives off a strange air. For that reason one could even say that among the classics Lee has borrowed so far, *Laocoön* is the least distorted. The serpents, rendered only in black line, look like a kind of tentacle, and here again the artist shows his wit, linking the serpents of ancient Greece to the tentacles that, beginning with Katsushika Hokusai's ukiyo-e *The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife* (1814), have stimulated the bodies of female characters in countless pieces of Japanese adult content. What the serpents signify is not only the sexual. The sight of black lines, rendered as serpents, passing over the black-and-white characters looks like a marble sculpture shattered to pieces. Might the exhibition title, "Fragmentary," refer to this condition in which the whole cannot be seen, obscured by black lines? The black and white that the artist chose, forgoing the vivid color that had been one of his strengths, also serves to breathe into the gallery "the feeling of a printed comic."14) Where the earlier works resembled stills from an animated scene, the works shown at *FRAGMENTARY* and the panel division applied to their arrangement plainly imitate the page of a printed comic. The speech balloons are the finishing touch. The attempt made at *NU-FRAME* unfolds here with a higher degree of completion. A group of Korean artists born in the 1980s, of whom Yunsung Lee is representative, show an interest in popular culture, and in particular in the characteristics of sub-genres such as manga, anime and video games, or in the culture of enjoying those genres itself. The various contexts surrounding Lee's work examined so far show his affection and attention for the genre he focuses on. Such work may present a slight barrier, since it requires some understanding of the environment around it, but it finds a firm place of its own within contemporary culture. It is all the more attractive in that, unlike work that uses a subculture as a means of exposing the society and culture around it, it carries aesthetic value within itself. At the same time it differs from the work of a new group of artists who emerged around the 2020s and who borrow the surface beauty of the manga/anime style: while their works, on themes such as youth, summer, adventure and first love, are easily accepted, they struggle to argue their difference from illustration and to find their place within contemporary art. By placing at the center of his work sexuality and violence, elements that developed particular modes of expression in manga/anime but are the most universal elements in every culture, Yunsung Lee secured a decidedly advantageous position both for attracting attention early and for working over the long term through deepening, expansion and variation. His painterly skill, which makes works of aesthetic completeness rather than mere stimulation, and his wit in finding persuasive accounts of his own work are also exceptional. Above all, Lee sincerely loves the "bishōjo" he creates. When the aim of making an artwork comes first and the elements of another cultural genre are "studied" and borrowed, even if results are achieved they do not last long, and such artists sometimes vanish in the absurd posture of being ashamed of their own work. Lee seems to run no such risk, and one can see his sincere wish to move forward. That is a great asset for a creator. Looking forward to the next ten years, I hope to be able to write the twentieth-anniversary guide as well. 1) Japanese comics and animation are commonly called manga and anime, after the Japanese pronunciation, to distinguish them from European and American cartoons and animation. Korean comics are often written manhwa. In this essay, too, manga/anime is used to mean Japanese comics and animation. 2) "Semi," the mathematician-wizard character of the Korean educational broadcaster EBS, can be called a representative case of the manga/anime style Koreanized. The Korean comics and character market itself took shape under strong Japanese influence, blending in elements of its own. 3) Although the bishōjo stands at the center of Yunsung Lee's work, surprisingly few discussions of the artist have placed the bishōjo at their center. An early essay on the artist, Geunjun Lim's "A Critical Note on the Paintings of Yunsung Lee" (2014), is important in that its discussion centered on moe (萌え), the term in Japanese otaku culture for the appeal of anime characters. 4) Go Nagai (b. 1945), credited together with Osamu Tezuka with laying the foundations of Japanese manga through works such as *Devilman* (1972–1973) and *Mazinger Z* (1972), aimed at an older readership and used sex and violence effectively both as devices to drive the drama and as themes. *Mazinger Z* occupies an important place in the history of children's comics as "the origin of the giant piloted-robot manga," while developing the theme of "a power that can make one either a god or a devil." 5) *Akira*, the manga by the Japanese comic artist and animation director Katsuhiro Otomo, and *Akira* (1988), the theatrical feature animation he made from it himself, are representative works of the "aesthetics of destruction," and continue to inspire and be paid homage to by creators around the world. 6) Sexualization and violence long served as the grounds for the argument that Japanese popular culture, bearing "Japanese color," ought to be banned. 7) *Ghost in the Shell* (1995) is based on Masamune Shirow's manga *Ghost in the Shell* (1989–1996); in Shirow's manga, including *Ghost in the Shell*, the sexual codes are far more pronounced than in the theatrical film. In the cyberpunk genre, which depicts a dystopia in which technology has advanced while human life has been ravaged, the mechanical body has served to express the loss of humanity, but in works such as *Ghost in the Shell* and *Battle Angel Alita* it serves to make the staging of bodily destruction in action scenes more flexible. This influenced a wide range of content, from comics and animation to games and film, and *Ghost in the Shell* and *Battle Angel Alita* were both made into live-action films in Hollywood. 8) Interview with the author, April 9, 2024. 9) Yuki Konno's "Painting on the Cut Surface: Yunsung Lee's Gaze on Sculpture" (2023) examines the work around the motif of "cutting" that recurs in Lee's painting. 10) The exhibition title "Nu type" is presumably a variation on "new type." In Japanese subculture, "Newtype" is widely used in the sense given it by *Mobile Suit Gundam*: a new kind of human who, as humanity advances into space, gains new abilities of communication and sensing. In *Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack* (1988), the last appearance of the protagonists of the original series, the robot piloted by the hero Amuro Ray was named the Nu Gundam, following the convention of naming in the order of the Greek alphabet (alpha, beta, gamma…), but its English spelling was given as "ν Gundam," read "New Gundam," lending it a double meaning. If the titles of the works point to the legend or myth or the major work of Western art history that served as their motif, the exhibition title can be read as pointing to the Japanese popular culture that is the root of the overall concept. 11) Hyun Jung's "The Cross Section of Structure" (2015) examined *NU-FRAME* with a focus on its spatial composition. 12) SD (super deformed), commonly used in manga/anime, is a term derived from "SD Gundam," a product line by Bandai, the company that makes *Mobile Suit Gundam* models, in which the robots were transformed into child-like forms with large heads and short limbs. 13) The magical girl has both aspects: she became a kind of role model for girls by letting them imagine a realm that was impossible under the existing patriarchal order, and she is also an objectified figure whose unrealistically beautiful looks and physical charms are emphasized. Tamaki Saitō's *Beautiful Fighting Girl*, whose Korean edition carries Yunsung Lee's *Helios* as its cover illustration, is a book that attempts a psychoanalysis of the so-called otaku who are captivated by magical girls. For a discussion of magical girls, I recommend *Why Couldn't the Magical Girl Save the World?* by Seolhee Baek and Sumin Hong, which looks from a contemporary Korean perspective at the various debates surrounding female characters, from magical girls to K-pop idols, who appear autonomous and are commercialized at the same time. 14) Early in his career, in 2011, Yunsung Lee made a *Laocoon* as a full-color digital painting. In later work the artist tried to realize various aesthetics related to manga/anime, rendering in oil the look of pencil drawing or of the "pixel" art common in games of the 1980s and 1990s.