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Chapter Six Playing with Kitty
Serious Art in Surprising Places
While the avant-garde is conventionally imagined as sharp and pointy, as hard-or cutting-edge, cute objects have no edge to speak of, usually being soft, round, and deeply associated with the infantile and the feminine. — Sianne Ngai (2005:814)
[Sentimental] imagery unthinkable in serious, high-brow, cutting- edge visual art for most of the twentieth-century has emerged as an important concern of the early twenty-first century. — Nick Carpasso (2005:5)
One aspect of Hello Kitty – led pink globalization that many observers might find surprising is the degree to which Sanrio’s icon has pervaded the edgy fringes of art worlds outside of Japan, as well as to a limited degree in Japan. Some of these forays have been promoted, if not prompted, by Sanrio as it engages in its own public imaging through associations with selected artists. Others have been instigated by artists themselves, and can be seen within the purview of what Nick Carpasso, the curator of the Pretty Sweet: The Sentimental Image in Contemporary Art exhibit, identifies as an emerging trend in serious art worlds, as quoted above (see also figure 6.1). In both cases, Hello Kitty acts as an object of aesthetic regard, both to pull the work of art in particular directions and to be pulled into the context of art exhibition spaces globally. Sanrio’s cat, in other words, is never a neutral figure, but always an active, affecting presence (Armstrong 1971). As the company
