For his second exhibition in Paris at the Yôsô gallery-studio, Japanese artist Rockin Jelly Bean talks about his outrageous and obscene art, a huge mass celebrating women, rock’n’roll, the 60’s and 70’s American culture Amen !
When looking at your work, it is difficult to imagine that you grew up in a very strict environment.
My father was a pastor and he was extremely severe. I couldn’t do what I wanted to, I couldn’t affirm my wishes nor my desire. My family was very ordinary and I hated being an ordinary boy. I wanted something different that would allow me to stand out. When, after I started drawing portraits of comrades at school, realized that I wanted to follow my way and become a painter. My father never agreed. He never appreciated what I was doing too. He has always been a sort of an obstacle for my development. When he died from illness, I was 19, I felt much more free.
When did you start drawing women ?
I’ve always liked naked women, since a very young age. When I was a little kid, I was attracted by the curves of their bodies. I think it started with my mother’s. The naked body of women is much more beautiful than men’s. I especially like the butt. I like in my artworks to draw attention to the flexibility of their body by using tight underwears. Women come in numbers for dedication sessions, to the shop. I like to think that my representations of women can be inspiring for them. I have a lot of respect for women.
Your work is inspired by American counterculture of the 60’s and the 70’s, how did you encounter it ?
Thanks to the music and the movies. When I was young I was listening to the Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, etc., all the bands from the Woodstock generation ; I liked watching films like Easy Rider too. I’ve been inspired by all the aspects of this movement and more particularly the very close link between music and image. All the posters were very interesting and stimulating, as the covers from the Greatful Dead’s records done by Rick Griffin, they were really good. Among the artists who influenced me too, I would say that Gô Nagai (a very popular mangaka in Japan), Robert Crumb and Robert Williams, who started the low-brow movement.
From Japan, what image did you have of America ?
I had more specifically an image of California, inherited from the 70’s : a state inhabited by blond girls with big boobs roller-skating while listening to music on their walkman or dressed in aerobic outfits with very short pants. For me, America was a free country, sophisticated and beautiful, where blond girls were blooming under a permanent sun.
Finally you leave Japan for Los Angeles in 1995.
In my painter’s life I wanted to live in the United States. When I was a high-school student I watched the movie « Grease » and I told to myself that it must have been great to be a teenager there. I felt I was locked in Japan. When we did our first tour with my band (Rockin Jelly Bean is playing bass in the rock band Jackie & the Cedrics) in 1992, I relaised I wanted to live in Los Angeles. A short time later my girlfriend kicked me out and I thought it was the perfect occasion to go. I stayed 7 years there.
Did California met your expectations ?
Los Angeles was very different from the picture drawn by the medias and the movies. On a sexual level, I thought that the mentalities were much more free but it was not the case. There were a lot of restrictions related to the influence of religion, of the feminists movements ; a lot of restrictions regarding the age, wether it was for drinking or for assisting to live shows. I was really preoccupied.
Was American puritanism an obstacle for the diffusion of your art ?
Yes, and it was totally unexpected. I have had for example a project about making lighters for the Zippo brand on which girls I had drawn were supposed to be printed. But the factory workers refused to do it ! My artworks were too explicitly sexual for these women, mainly latinos, catholics and very religious. The t-shirts I was producing in the States didn’t get the authorisation for being worn in public… I was very shocked to realise I wasn’t free. At the same time, it made me look in a different way the positive sides of Japan.
Japan is a particularly tolerant country regarding sex.
I think that our country is free and maybe be the freest of all countries. We are very lucky to have the possibility to develop an important sexually explicit artistic creation. There is an extremely sharp sensibility here and especially in the worlds of the manga and the otakus. In Japan, sex exists in a sort of grey zone too. There are for example explicit pages in the common magazines read by salarymen (office workers in Japan) while in the public transports. In the States it doesn’t exist. One day, when I was discussing with french musicians, they told me they liked also that kind of eroticism. I think Europeans, because they have a longer history, are keener to better understand my work and humour I put in.
How important is humour in your work ?
Some people consider my work pornographic but I personally consider important the the comic aspect of it. I consider it as a kind of joke. I especially like the posters I do about fake movies. For example, « Super Foxy » refers to Blaxploitation movies ; « Platoon of the big tits » is a comic and erotic version of Vietnam war films. I hope you will appreciate the depiction of knickers, I put a lot of energy in that !
What space do you allow to tattooing in your art ?
I think it is something beautiful, also something today very natural, common. As you can choose clothes, a hairdress, you can also choose a tattoo. Therefore, I see woman’s tattoos as a way to reveal a little bit of their personnality. What I especially like is the neo-classic style the american sailors had, an old style to which I add a bit of a personnal touch. Rockin Jelly Bean’s exhibition is open at Yôso until September 1st. Yôsô- 5 Rue Euryale Dehaynin, 75019 Paris +: http://www.rockinjellybean.com http://erostika.net/blog.php
