or just what is it that makes today's cute so different, so appealing?
Sugary Sensation 2, by Hikoro
Since signing up with DeviantArt, I have observed several artists working in the area of what we call cute, or more specifically the Japanese style of cuteness, kawaii. Recently one of my favorite cute practitioners, Cait Leslie (screen-named firstfear), posted that she was dismayed by her reputation as 'only drawing cute things', and understandably annoyed with people leaving single-word comments on her works labeling them as such. Since I wear my art history degree like a badge, I felt it my duty to remind her that this style of cute, while many would dismiss it as simply charming, is nonetheless a form of expressive modernism. Of course, with modernism I am pointing to avant-garde art movements of the 20th century, or as Christopher Witcombe puts it, "modern art as concerned primarily with essential qualities of colour and flatness and as exhibiting over time a reduction of interest in subject matter."
So Pleased, vector, by firstfear
Leslie's pixel designs (I guess you could call them drawings), adhering to the Japanese example, deal with the simplification of form; physical elements are reduced to bolder shapes, lines are thick, and overall form is round and smooth. Color, when applied, also plays a big part in modern cuteness- there must be a harmony between tones, and a soft, pastel quality is preferred to intensity. Finally, balance and composition are extremely important to such design; the more minimal your art is, the more obvious it is when visual elements are arranged in an awkward manner.
This Japanese style of cute is distinctly formalist, though not necessarily in the classic Clement Greenberg-ian sense. As Momus describes in his essay Cute Formalism, "Formalism for us [Greenberg followers] is intellectual, masculine, dry, adult, hard, macho, unsentimental, avant garde. Cute on the other hand is silly, feminine, wet, childish, soft, effete, sentimental and kitsch." Essentially, kawaii art is avant-garde ideals presented as friendly and accessible; sugarcoated, if you will. Like the Sanrio characters, or the even happier, more minimal San-X characters.
Cuteness is more widely present in Japan than over here, I suppose because in their society it is taken as it should be: harmless, aesthetically pleasing design. Here in America cute is associated with things like babies, women, and young animals...in other words, WEAK. And there is no room for feminine, childish weakness in the good ol' USA. Too bad. I guess we're not quite modern enough.
But kawaii doesn't have to be childish. It can be subversive too, or scary, or bizarre, or downright mean. For instance, some of the contributors to Kawaii Noir, or artist Mori Chack, or hell, my own comics.
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