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 Vixens of the Floating World 

watercolor/marker/ink

Art and Entertainment maintain a tricky love hate relationship. We associate the latter with pacification. Talented artists in every industry, I find espeically in Hip hop, are constantly being told to "dumb it down" or to make things less "artsy." While the rappers that do are put on trial for their exploitation of women with the obvious defense of sex sells. Evidence of the real consequences are vague at best. We put High art into the circle of intellectuals and educators and Low Brow art into the circle of pop-culture. Pop-culture, in a sense, is modernism's right hand man, downgrading the importance of tradition, escaping the confines of academic critique. An "in with the new and out with the old" attitude often risks a lack of education. "High" and "Low" art are difficult to desegregate. As if to desegregate learning and having fun, a combination that is often euphoric and gives us a path. Every human deals with feeding the mind versus pleasing the senses. The word amuse itself means without thought: "a" without, "muse" thought. There were nine daughters of Zeus called muses that personified knowledge, art, literature, dance, music, and poetry. Here my own muses relax in a Ukiyo-e inspired background. A Japanese style of art that translates as "pictures of the floating world." An Evanescent life of carefree pleasure, a genre that was popular before the turn of the century and would later influence the naturalistic decadence of Art Nouveau.