What are the similarites and differences between Courbet's project and Murakami's?

The Stonebreakers

Versailles Exhibition

Gustave Courbet's painting, The Stonebreakers, was done from direct observation of the rural laboring classes (Mulholland 118). The painting depicts two labor workers breaking rocks. Both however, are unsuited for the very physically demanding work. The boy on the left being too young to lift his basket and the man on the right being too old to wield his hammer (Mulholland 118).  Courbet painted directly what he saw to communicate a political message associated with that time. Courbet was focusing on urbanism which was relevant to that era. Courbet saw his subject matter and its 'truthful' depiction in radical political terms (Mulholland 118).  By painting a replica of what he saw he was able to display back an image of 'truth'. He sought to produce a new art, relevant to the masses flooding into huge cities engorged by the Industrial Revolution, dealing with complex contemporary issues of modern living in a direct, non-mythical fashion (Mulholland 118).

In Murakami's project, he too, like Courbet, is trying to convey a "truth" that is relevant to him and Japanese art, but his commentary is done in a "mythical" sense in opposition to Courbet's "non-mythical" depiction. Although Murakami's art appears superficially innocent and escapist, it is an index of the cultural and social whirl of postmodern Tokyo (Mulholland 123). Murakami presents a political project which represents a cultural self consciousness. Murakami stresses the insurgence of consumer-driven subcultures, equating in generational Japanese rebelliousness with voyeuristic passive aggression, sexual fetishism and compositional dynamism (123). He does this through the doctrine of superflat “a cultural oxymoron, a ritualistic form of resistance against the perceived oppressiveness of the ritualistic behavior that dominates Japanese daily life” (123).