Cuteness

This essay looks at Kusama's re-immersion in Japan in the 1970s when a mass culture of cuteness was developing there, the impact of "kawaii" on her work, and Kusama's subsequent role in the shaping of the culture that formed the "Superflat" generation.  It also considers the reason for the Modernist difficulty with notions of "cuteness."

Korean actor Ma Dong-seok shows two opposite personalities in his performance. One is hypermasculinity and the other is cuteness. They not only often coexist and make ironical humor, but also embody alternative masculinity which includes femininity. On one hand, when he plays a character with a hard body, his own cuteness eliminates the suspicion that he might have toxic masculinity, and increases emotional accessibility to him. On the other hand, when he plays a character with a soft body, his macho image eliminates the suspicion that he might have vulnerable masculinity and makes him more believable protector. First of all, by analyzing the various characters'body in Ma Dong-seok's universe, this article examines how his hypermasculinity and cuteness resonate avoiding a sexual object and an object of identification at the same time. And then, this article tries queer reading about his body to dissect how he constructs a care-oriented body articulating a hard body and a soft body. Finally, this article contends that Ma Dong-seok's alternative masculinity is based on caring emotion and includes queer intimacy focused on care against neoliberal heteronormativity.

Palazzo del Parlamento di Romania
Sala Espositiva “Constantin Brancusi”
Izvor nr. 3, Sector 5, Bucharest
Con il patrocinio:
Istituto di Cultura Italiano in Romania
Con il sostegno di :
Parlamento di Romania

18 marzo al 25 aprile 2016



Contaminazioni 016 – European Cuteness Art, è un progetto itinerante internazionale
che vede la presenza di oltre 30 artisti italiani, rumeni, bulgari, spagnoli e finlandesi
con più di 140 opere .
La mostra organizzata da Studio Soligo, storica associazione culturale con sede a
Roma, insieme alle gallerie di arte contemporanea Core (Roma), ArtYourself e 418,
(Bucarest), Arosita (Sofia), a cura del critico d' arte Giancarlo Carpi, si inaugurerà il 17
marzo 2016 presso la Sala Espositiva del Parlamento Romeno “Constantin Brancusi”
Tema principale della mostra è la rappresentazione dell'uomo nella società
contemporanea attraverso l'intreccio tra il feticismo delle merci e la
depersonalizzazione dell'essere umano, cioè l’estetica “CUTE” e le sue costanti
formali, morfologiche e tematiche.
Questa estetica si manifesta nell’arte contemporanea attraverso il legame tra l’oggetto
e una precisa morfologia, il Kindchenschema, che semplifica l’oggetto stesso fino a
renderlo un feticcio dell’umano, qualcosa che impersona l’essere umano, mutilandolo
o deformandolo e perciò negandolo.
Contaminazioni 016 – European Cuteness Art vuole evidenziare come nell’arte europea si
è diffuso questo schema morfologico (Kindchenschema) ma anche di come gli artisti
europei lo abbiano assorbito ed elaborato insieme all'influenza delle tendenze
artistiche più importanti che si sono diffuse a partire dagli anni '80/90 del XX secolo; il
Superflat giapponese e il Pop Surrealism americano.
In tale influenza e posteriorità storico-artistica dell’Europa rispetto all’America, al
Giappone e ai rispettivi movimenti neo-pop, influenza che pare
sradicare/deculturalizzare la produzione artistica continentale, sembra consistere
l’unica indubbia specificità di una “cuteness europea” nel campo delle Fine art. Mentre
sul piano diverso delle commercial art e del merchandising la cuteness sembra
esprimere equanimemente in tutto il mondo uno stato di capitalismo assoluto connesso
alla globalizzazione economica e culturale.
La mostra nella sua complessità ed eterogeneità si propone di evidenziare la presenza
del CUTE in Europa, e pone un quesito: se e fino a che punto il CUTE sia secondario
rispetto ad altre correnti artistiche più saldamente legate alla tradizione e alla storia
artistica europea.
La scelta artistica della mostra quindi scaturisce da un quesito che avrà la sua massima
espressione attraverso l'allestimento di oltre 140 tra dipinti, sculture, installazioni nel
prestigioso spazio espositivo di Bucarest. Un quesito che viene ad avere anche una
forma simbolica essendo questo luogo uno dei simboli della fine del comunismo e del
conseguente affermarsi di un capitalismo globale.
Contaminazioni 016 – European Cuteness Art è un evento internazionale rilevante per la
conoscenza e diffusione delle ultime tendenze dell'arte contemporanea che ha bisogno
della massima partecipazione del pubblico per essere compreso e sviscerato.

Date: dal 18 marzo al 25 aprile 2016

Artisti:

Stefano Bolcato, Danilo Bucchi, Maria M. Bordeariu, Radu Carnariu, Laura
Covaci, Darie Dup, Luciano Fabale, Marianna Felicetti, Gerlanda di Francia, Max
Ferrigno, Gabriels, Kaloyan Iliev, Loreta Isac, Serena Leardini, Flavia Lupu,
Luisa Montalto, Dan Nica, Ileana Oancea, Omino 71, Daria Palotti, Jordan
Pancov, Laura Patacchia, Bogdan Pelmus, Elisa Pietrelli, Cristiano Petrucci,
Adrian Preda, Natascia Raffio, Adrian Sandu, Silvano Tessarollo, Katja
Tukiainen, Elio Varuna, Esteban Villalta Marzi, Deyan Yanev, Valentina Zummo.

"L'autore del saggio, partendo da un'analisi storica ed etimologica del termine "cute", intesse relazioni e addita parentele nella poesia del Novecento. Il "cute", categoria estetica mai prima d'ora utilizzata in studi letterari, corrisponde a tutte quelle immagini che evocano tenerezza, inferiorità, ma anche quotidianità e che può indicare inoltre realtà "di scarto". Tra il Kitsch e il "cute" Carpi si aggira tra i versi di Gozzano, il poeta della "buone cose di pessimo gusto" e di Valerio Magrelli.
Sintesi da http://www.italinemo.it/"

[AMAZON LINK BELOW TO BOOK ITSELF -- TOC and book summary in downloadable .doc]      Our instincts—for food, sex, or territorial protection— evolved for life on the savannah 10,000 years ago, not in today’s world of densely populated cities, technological innovations, and pollution. We now have access to a glut of larger-than-life objects, from candy to pornography to atomic weapons—that gratify these gut instincts with often-dangerous results. Animal biologists coined the term “supernormal stimuli” to describe imitations that appeal to primitive instincts and exert a stronger pull than real things, such as soccer balls that geese prefer over eggs. Evolutionary psychologist Deirdre Barrett applies this concept to the alarming disconnect between human instinct and our created environment, demonstrating how supernormal stimuli are a major cause of today’s most pressing problems, including obesity and war. However, Barrett does more than show how unfettered instincts fuel dangerous excesses. She also reminds us that by exercising self-control we can rein them in, potentially saving ourselves and civilization.

This paper aims to demonstrate the complex interrelations between the concepts of androgyny, neoliberalism, modernity, and idealism in relation to how youth is imagined in non-metropolitan regions of the world-regions where neoliberal economic processes need to negotiate with existing feudal power structures. For this purpose, I intend to focus on a particular form of androgyny which I shall designate by the term "cuteness", as deployed in certain youth films in Malayalam cinema, with special emphasis on the youth film Niram (dir. Kamal, 1999). I argue that the androgynous style designated as "cute" is derived precisely by feminising certain sartorial styles and terms of addressed otherwise coded as masculine, even culminating in feminising the male protagonist. Through the analysis of this film, I shall delineate how the modern, neoliberal aesthetic of "cuteness" and androgyny serves to re-legitimise the conservative social structure of the family and to give it a renewed social purpose.

This essay investigates a number of Jeff Koons’ most recognizable works through the lens of cuteness.  While not all of  Koons work fits the classic Lorenzian schema of cuteness or indeed subsequent theoretical work on the topic, he significantly adapts criteria of the cute to powerful and persistent effect.  Especially his Balloon Dog (1994-2000), manufactured in a series of five different jewel-like colors on stainless steel (Blue, Magenta, Yellow, Orange, and Red), is a test case for the ways the cute marks its territory in the domain of high art.

By analysing 200 posts on a Japanese gay dating Bulletin Board System (deai-kei BBS), I investigate how users strategically deploy language to construct desirable identities and " sell themselves " online. Drawing upon both quantitative and qualitative analysis, I demonstrate that users of the BBS creatively manipulate stereotypical identity categories known as Types (taipu) to construct highly nuanced yet specific discourses of the Self and the desired Other. Through a discursive analysis of the strategies users employ to construct their own identities , and the identities of their desired partners, I argue that identity categories marked as masculine and hunky (sawayaka) are privileged as more desirable than feminine and cute (kawaii) identities. Through this analysis, I suggest that users of this particular forum appear to valorise heteronormative masculinity, which they link to being hunky. Furthermore, I argue that being cute is considered undesirable due to its perception as transgressing normative masculine gendered traits.

Today, Japanese popular culture (JPC) represents a valuable teaching resource that can serve as a didactic tool for the progressive lecturers of JPC worldwide. The core presumptions of this approach in global teaching is that a serious study of JPC should not only enhance the Japanese language-learning experience, but students should be trained to think critically about their favorite pop-cultural products.

When I teach JPC, I distinguish the three “functions” of culture in general: it is not only the classical notion of culture as "imitation" (mimesis, re-presentation), but also culture as "cultivation" (contemplation, propaganda), and finally culture as "play" (deconstruction, convergence). In this framework, I focus more closely on the Japanese “culture of cuteness” (kawaii bunka). This is important, because kawaii is one of the most culturally pervasive aesthetics of the new millennium, and a strong economic driver in manga, anime, fashion, television, magazines and pop-music.

By analyzing their favorite cute characters, students can learn 1) how does kawaii culture imitate and essentialize lived experience through new performances and artifacts, 2) how does kawaii culture contribute to a “cultivation of the soul” (both positively and negatively) and finally 3) how does kawaii culture operate within the postmodern discourse (which lies in a playful emancipation via deconstruction, media-mixing, and proactive participation). Such pedagogy enables students to approach the ongoing kawaii fever in Japan not only as a spontaneous cultural boom promoting things Japanese, but also as a political process that appropriates the unique, subtly countercultural appeal in order to pursue an ideological and commercial agenda.

The notion of “Cute” has been studied as a global aesthetic form in consumer and popular

culture. Aside from being a dominant aesthetic of mass culture, the cute also became a form

of expression with increasing virtual and visual communication. Oscillating between physical

world of commodity culture and digitalized media culture, cute’s visual, cultural and

economic meanings are expanded. The specific form of cute (and inevitable weird) culture

has paved its way to the top of the world economy: Japanese Kawaii Culture. The

proliferation of Kawaii aesthetic brought about revelations in art, fashion, and design even in

everyday life practices. Obsession with Kawaii culture opens the door to new distorted

visualities that create paradoxes between mundane reality of everyday life and surreal fantasy

life.

The focus of this paper is the exploration of the Japanese cute (and the weird) aesthetics

impact and its conceptual methodology in the popular visual culture and the contemporary art

scene. As a visual way of distorting everyday life, glitch aesthetics is experimented and used

by mostly video artists. In the complementary art work; experimental glitch and multilayered

video effects are used for the artistic expression and exploration of ‘distorting everyday life’

regarding ‘Japanese cute’s conceptual methodology; intensifications, hybrid visualization and

complicated imagery.

Kawaii and cute are increasingly prominent aesthetics in contemporary global culture. While Japan’s kawaii boom arguably began in the 1970s (Kinsella 1995: 220), it wasn’t until the late 20th/early 21st century that cuteness began to explode worldwide as the number of cute images, commodities, foods, fashions, and fandoms underwent rapid expansion (Dale 2017: 1). The new field of cuteness studies, formed to address this phenomenon, analyzes not only its history and development, but also the connection between cuteness and gender, race, ethnicity, age, nationality, politics, and interspecies affiliations. Its aim is to take seriously what is often dismissed as a facile commodity aesthetic because of its gendered association with femininity, childhood and the domestic sphere (Dale 2017: 2; Ngai 2012: 3).

At the turn of the millennium, international youth culture is dominated by mainly two types of aesthetics: the African American cool, which, propelled by Hip-Hop music, has become the world’s favorite youth culture; and the Japanese aesthetics of kawaii or cute, that is distributed internationally by Japan’s powerful anime industry.

- kawaii is one of the most frequently used words by Japanese today
- kawaii is one of the most culturally pervasive aesthetics of the new millennium
- the popularity of kawaii culture can be traced to the cornerstones of Japanese culture and society (cf. Japan as "Kingdom of Cute")
- kawaii became a significant economic driver in manga, anime, fashion, television, magazines, pop-music, etc.
- Japanese consumers are apt to ignore political messages and advertisements without kawaii characters

Approaching the cute object as a metaphor for the lovable, this article provides a survey of the different approaches to the study of cuteness and uses their intersections to map out a three-domain approach that incorporates the dimensions of affect, language and design. When considered in isolation, these domains highlight specific facets of cuteness, but their intersection underscores an important etymological tension that continuously transforms the metaphors of cuteness. These changes do not compromise the primary meaning of cuteness, but lead to a reinvention of the lovable, whereby the cute object continues to represent an abstraction of a particularly affectionate connection to the other. Therefore, the arguments presented will demonstrate that the notion of cuteness emerges through a particular etymological tension embedded in the idea of 'cuteness' that reifies aesthetic concepts through the relationship between the individual's affective experience and the operation of language through culture.

This experimental study examines how framing an animal species as endangered affects its perceived attractiveness and how an animal’s perceived attractiveness affects support for its conservation.  Undergraduate students saw a flyer from a fictitious environmental organization pleading for the protection of either a bat or an ape. The flyer contained either no picture, a picture of an attractive member of its species, or a picture of an unattractive one. For both species, an animal’s attractiveness substantially increased support for its protection. There was also more support for saving the species that was larger in size and more resembled humans. In a second experiment participants rated an unattractive animal as more attractive if it was framed as endangered. There was no such effect for an animal originally perceived as attractive. The implications of the results for environmental policy and conservation support are discussed.

The notion of “Cute” has been studied as a global aesthetic form in consumer and
popular culture. Aside from being a dominant aesthetic of mass culture, the cute also
became a form of expression with increasing virtual and visual communication.
Oscillating between physical world of commodity culture and virtual media culture;
cute’s visual, cultural and economic meanings are expanded. The specific form of
cute (and inevitably weird) culture has paved its way to the top of the world
economy: J apanese Kawaii Culture . The proliferation of Kawaii aesthetic brought
about revelations in art, fashion, and design even in the everyday life practices.
Obsession with Kawaii culture opens the door to new distorted visualities that create
paradoxes between mundane reality of everyday life and surreal fantasy life.
The focus of this paper is the exploration of the Japanese cute (and the weird)
aesthetics impact and its conceptual methodology in the popular visual culture and
iii
the contemporary art scene. As a visual way of distorting everyday life, glitch
aesthetics are experimented and used by mostly video artists. In the complementary
art work; experimental glitch and multilayered video effects are used for the artistic
expression and exploration of ‘distorting everyday life’ regarding Japanese cute’s
conceptual methodology; intensification, hybrid visualization and complicated
imagery.
Key Words: Kawaii, Cute, Aestheticization, Everyday Life, Japanese Cute, Hybrid
Aesthetics, Visual Distortion.

In 2017, the New South Wales Police Force in Australia embarked on a bold new social media strategy, harnessing humorous Internet memes and cute images of police animals to increase 'user engagement' with their posts. Provoked by changes to Facebook's News Feed Algorithm, this self-described 'meme-strategy' generated a surge of new followers for the organisations' social media accounts, with NSW Police's Facebook page reaching one million followers in August 2017-a record for an official police Facebook page. This article examines the social media logics underpinning NSW Police's 'meme strategy' and similar police PR strategies that have employed humour and cute content to increase social media engagement. Through analysing the content and 'active' engagement metrics of NSW Police's 'meme strategy', in this article I critically examine this approach to police public relations, focusing in particular on its weaponization of cute content to generate engagement. NSW Police's meme strategy, I argue, exemplifies what we might term social media 'engagement work': strategies intended to increase the reach of police messaging on social media and promote horizontal engagement spillover and vertical legitimacy spillover.

Available as open access here:
http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/63265

This thesis considers how kawaii fashion practitioners use clothing as a means to explore the self and to express their desire to be adored and admired. Associated with practices of femininity in Japan, ‘kawaii’ is Japanese for cute or adorable. Current studies of kawaii fashion have overlooked the significance of the subjective experience of the wearer when considering the meaning behind this mode of dress. This thesis investigates the personal significance of kawaii fashion to practitioners and the creative process behind their mode of dress. My argument begins with the observation that kawaii fashion practitioners have an affective experience of cute objects, and proceeds to show that they seek to take on the properties of these objects so as they might be affirmed by others. This thesis draws upon qualitative interviews conducted in Harajuku, Japan in 2013 and 2014 with participants of kawaii fashion communities who identify with style categories such as Lolita fashion, Fairy kei, Decora fashion and Hime Deko. In order to explore how clothing enables participants to explore the self, the thesis uses Donald Winnicott’s ideas about play to show that participants try to adopt the properties of the cute object in order to resolve their underlying feelings of lack and thereby creating new potential for the self. Dorothy Smith’s writings on the active text demonstrate that kawaii fashion practitioners play with feminine texts as active subjects through this exploration and performance of the self. Kawaii fashion practitioners perform this new self for others so this new self might be affirmed, a process which is illuminated by Erving Goffman’s theories of self and performativity. Johan Huizinga’s theorisation of play is used to argue that rules of interaction and ‘social worlds’, which non-participants are not privy to, are formed when practitioners come together. Ultimately, this thesis finds that affect and affirmation play a key role in creative the practices of kawaii fashion communities.

on the link between Depero's personification and advertising art and Peter Halley's abstraction. 
Published for Giancarlo Carpi and Graziano Menolascina, "Scaccomatto, Fortunato Depero - Peter Halley", Galleria In Arco, Torino, 2014 (catalogue of the exhibiton Scaccomatto, Fortunato Depero - Peter Halley, Galleria In Arco, Torino, 2014).

This short essay presents some preliminary materials for a discussion of the social circulation of contemporary Chinese vernacular terms among digital media users. In particular, I present the word meng (萌, literally "sprout", recently adopted as a slang term for "cute") as a case in point for a contextual analysis of elements of digital folklore in their transcultural flows, local appropriations, and social practices of signification. One among many other neologisms that enter Mandarin Chinese from seemingly nowhere and gain a widespread popularity in everyday online and offline linguistic practices, meng belongs to a specific genealogy of Japanese animation fansubbing communities, and owes its rapid popularisation to its adaptation to local contexts in different syntactic forms. The resulting inclusion of meng in the changing repertoire of wangluo liuxing ciyu ("words popular on the Internet")—the online vernacular common among Chinese Internet users which is often the target of semantic or structural analyses—is in fact just the last step of processes of networked production and social signification happening across digital media and online platforms.

Is cute beautiful? How is beauty inscribed or translated into cuteness, particularly in the context of contemporary consumer culture? In this paper, I question beauty within the aesthetic of cuteness by way of the emotional experience or affect shared between humans and the objects they consume. These include but are not restricted to digital pets, virtual partners and animated characters. The relationship between beauty and cuteness is not a given, but is rendered ambiguous in this inquiry. On one hand, to claim an object is 'cute' is to perceive it as lovable, a positive quality that fosters the 'nurturing consumer', according to product developers. On the other hand, cuteness is also an anthropomorphic project that humanises not by faithfully replicating a human form, but by selectively augmenting it. Cuteness is an aesthetic primarily concerned with smallness, which differs from glamour, majesty or other pompous figurations of beauty but, at the same time, simulates a deformity subjected to consumer preferences. By examining beauty through the technology of cuteness, I propose a playful aesthetics, or a dysfunctional beauty, that affects and compels one to act, to represent beauty and make it tangible, personable and claim it for oneself. In other words, cuteness speaks for beauty as transformation: a movement between forms and singularities, as opposed to a passive appreciation of a universal aesthetic in stasis.

What is kitsch? The varieties of phenomena which can fall under the name are bewildering. Here, I focus on what has been called “traditional kitsch,” and argue that it often turns on the emotional effect specifically captured by Edmund Burke’s concept of “beauty” from his 1757 'A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful.' Burkean beauty also serves to distinguish “traditional kitsch” from other phenomena also often called “kitsch”—namely, entertainment. Although I argue that Burkean beauty in domestic decoration allows for us to see “traditional kitsch” as resting on natural and even healthy impulses, I also argue that an all-too-common political function of traditional kitsch directs it to dangerous ends.

Cool and cute have some things in common. Both are social expressions that invite interaction and involve the spectator’s imagination. Both “hold back,” are potentially sexually fecund, and operate within the realm of possibilities rather than appearing as openly threatening and aggressive behaviors.

This chapter considers the trends that have shaped the design of machine bodies, and analyses the compatibility of cute design with social robotics. It argues that cuteness, by making objects approachable, retains an engagement with the uncanny as a site of difference, even if it is directed towards a standardised form of affection.

As a subspecies of ideologically loaded picturebooks, this chapter focuses on military picturebooks. This term encompasses picturebooks dealing with war and the roles of soldiers. In the first part, a taxonomy of military picturebooks is created which is exemplified by telling examples. The second part focuses on a particular narrative problem of military picturebooks that is of interest to a cognitive theory of picturebooks (as pursued by Kümmerling-Meibauer & Meibauer 2013). On the one hand, it is not possible to represent war as a good thing across the board; on the other hand, war is depicted with respect to certain scenarios of self-defence. The narrative solution seems to be that " cute " characters (that is, anthropomorphic animals and vehicles) are introduced who serve as positive military protagonists that have to fight against aggressive characters representing the enemy. In military picturebooks, there is a contrast between cuteness and aggression that is astonishing when regarding the typical pedagogical demands on the accommodation of picturebooks to the child's cognitive abilities.

"The concluding chapter, penned by C. E. Emmer, both revisits and greatly expands upon disputations within the contested territory of kitsch as term and tool in cultural turf-war arsenals. Focusing on debates surrounding two visual responses to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Dennis Madalone's 2003 music video for the patriotic anthem 'America We Stand As One' and Jenny Ryan's 'plushie' sculpture, 'Soft 9/11,' Emmer utilizes these debates to reveal the coexisting and competing attitudes towards ostensibly kitschy objects and the contentiousness of deploying kitsch as a term in these debates. The buzzing activity of the internet provides much of the raw material for his arguments. Through his close reading of both the works themselves and the public response to them, Emmer once more focuses attention on the competing and overlapping attitudes towards kitsch and the way in which it and its semantic cousins remain a viable and valuable resource with which to police the borders that surround the artworld. Ultimately, his contribution further grounds a wider premise operative in this collection--namely, that a simple and rigid dichotomy of kitsch and (high) art does not and indeed cannot capture the elusive and mercurial nature of kitsch." --from the editor's introduction.

Saggio sulle donne futuriste nell'arte e nella letteratura. In "Futurist Women in Art and Literature", catalogo della mostra Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò at New York University . 2019, a cura di Giancarlo Carpi, Maria Ida Gaeta, Stefano Albertini.

Essay on Futurist women in art and literature. In Futurist Women in Art and Literature, catalog of the exhibition Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò at New York University. 2009, curated by Giancarlo Carpi, Maria Ida Gaeta, Stefano Albertini.