Playing with God III: Night 

In this work Morimura Yasumasa impersonates Mary and John the Apostle as they appeared in German Renaissance painter Lucas Cranach the Elder’s Crucifixion of Christ (1503). From late afternoon through dawn, the pair take on the guises of a samurai and a geisha, Hansel and Gretel-like characters, and also Licca-chan children’s dolls. The work is part of a series in which Morimura impersonates figures in masterpieces that began with Portrait (Van Gogh) in 1985. The artist’s assumption of these identities reveals the discrepancy between his own male, Japanese body and the figures who tend to populate Western paintings. It may also express the gap between his own body and the stereotypical images of “samurai” and “geisha” often held with respect to Japanese people. Morimura humorously expresses the perceived incongruity and precariousness of his own position within the history of art.
(MINAMISHIMA Ko)