iona rozeal brown, E.I.N. intrusion (watch out for the big girls). (After Yoshitoshi's "Onogawa Kisaburo, from One Hundred Tales of Japan and China"), 2008, mixed media on framed panel, 62 1/8 x 50 1/8 inches. Photo by David Naugle.

Japanese art and culture have had a checkered and paradoxical influence on European and American art since that first batch of Hokusai prints showed up in 19th-century Paris as wrapping paper on a shipment of porcelain. And we have had excellent scholarly and popular surveys of the earlier decades of the exchange (Christopher Benfey’s The Great Wave being a good example of the latter). The post-World War II impact of Japanese aesthetics and religious practice has also been well documented.

But we could use a survey (I hope there already is one) of the more recent transmutations of Japanese culture into American fine art, paying particular attention to the new channels of transmission—not Hokusai prints and Zen calligraphy, but anime and manga. Before we leap to any conclusions, we ought to remember that those Hokusai prints were considered ephemeral trash fit to be used as wrapping for commercial export.

And just as the 19th century came to the greater realm of Japanese art through the world of Japanese prints, and just as the mid-20th century came to it through the impact of Zen calligraphy and rock gardens, the 21st century has been discovering Japanese traditions by way of the eminently hip medium of Japanese pop culture.

iona rozeal brown, king yo on the queen, yo!, 2010, mixed media on paper, 94 x 60 inches. Photo by David Naugle.

iona rozeal brown’s mythologies and mashups at Saltworks Gallery is a case in point. She is not the first African American artist to adapt or adopt Japanese styles, but she may be the first to marry hip-hop and bunraku in a mythological style worthy of William Blake.

The art of the mashup is thoroughly American, but brown comes to it by way of study in Japan in Japanese theatrical techniques. The costumed artifice of bunraku and Noh theatre plays artfully into her cross-cultural portrayals.

To make matters even more confusing, the mythology of her mashups is situated somewhere midway between the ghost stories of Japan and Africa and the hero’s quest of The Lord of the Rings—plus Star Wars, The Matrix, and the sci-fi novels of Octavia Butler thrown in for good measure.

If William Blake was the first major case of a one-person self-invented mythography based on archetypes, then these images certainly follow in that tradition. It’s as difficult to guess the story of brown’s mythologies and mashups by looking at its iconography as it is when browsing through Blake’s prophetic books.

Although it would take too long to spell out all the major players, brown’s basic story is like Blake’s neo-Platonism mashed up with Japanese Buddhism. In brown’s version, young souls called saplings descend from heaven into the earthly realm the artist calls H.E.Z. (Humanic Enterprise Zone). There they are troubled by negative forces, most notably the demon depicted in demons #1: introducing E.I.N. (everything I’m not) as a dark, claw-fingered force straight out of Japanese mythology, transmitted by the visual conventions of anime.

The idea that some of the young saplings are tuned to a pop culture that communicates between earth and heaven is carried forward in the portrait of the character Ana Mei in ”…hold on…” – Erykah Badu, which is the only editioned print in this exhibition of mixed-media paintings on panel (plus one acrylic work on paper, study for graphic novel: arrival to hez.)

iona rozeal brown, sneak attack (you aren't playing fairly... AT ALL), 2010, mixed media on panel, 18 x 24 inches. Photo courtesy Saltworks Gallery

The appropriated images proliferate, demanding the explication that the catalogue of brown’s recent museum show in Cleveland gives them. The work titled a children’s story features the Hootchie Putti, whom brown calls “little demon things with long hair, tits and ass, and their breasts and behinds all have bar codes on them.” They are contrasted with the mature odalisques of council of voices speaks, reclining figures that, however languid they may appear, are reportedly modeled on the Parthenon’s east pediment sculpture of the Three Fates, thus illustrating the council’s function as female oracles who mediate between earthly and heavenly realms and oversee the saplings in H.E.Z.

Yoshi, the messenger/rescuer who answers to the council of voices and intercedes for the saplings, is introduced at Saltworks in king kata #5: introducing yoshi and shown in action in the bottom half of the council of voices speaks diptych, where he is shown in the title to hear and obey the council’s instructions: ”that’s it. i got it. i’m gone.”

It would be possible to discuss the direct Japanese influences spelled out in the title of E.I.N. intrusion (watch out for the big girls). (After Yoshitoshi’s “Onogawa Kisaburo, from One Hundred Tales of Japan and China), and presumably someone will. But it’s enough for now to note that this exhibition, when supplemented by the notes in the museum catalogue, comprises one of the most remarkable and unabashedly entertaining cross-cultural fusion aesthetics this city has seen in some time.

For those who missed brown’s appearance at the exhibition opening, the artist will appear at Saltworks Gallery for a book signing for the museum catalogue mentioned above on October 16.

The exhibtion mythologies and mashups continues through November 6.