Living in japan, nostalgia and toys are everywhere!! It’s pretty common to see adults obsessed with games, Pokémon, Disney. Adults talk about their love of Tokyo Disney, K-pop idols or their favorite Sanrio character. Overall it’s pretty culturally accepted for everyone from young children to older adults to be at arcades or trying to get a toy from the claw machine!
You actually bring up an excellent point. My perspective and therefor my argument is from a purely Western lens. Though reading your comment, it’s only reminding me of how badly I want to go to Japan myself. I’m not much for Pokemon and Disney, but Sanrio? I’m literally wearing Hello Kitty as we speak haha
So true! Fun and joyful expression are deeply missing in art. There is profundity in playfulness, and Sari demonstrates that so well through her paintings. Great essay!
As a former DLR cast member, I know all about Disney Adults (tm), especially the kind that all visited together in their coordinated custom shirts, the kind that are all about getting the limited edition Halloween popcorn bucket.
At the same time, there are much more harmful addictions.
As for millennial nostalgia, that's something that keeps coming up again and again in my writing, both fiction and nonfiction. Part of it as a paradoxical marriage of what we might call naked sentimentality and above-it-all ironic detachment. That push-pull has an aesthetic interest of its own, I think.
Are you familiar with Wayne Thiebaud's paintings of cake slices, etc? That struck me as an art historical parallel for Shryack's work.
That’s so interesting that millennial nostalgia keeps popping up in your writing. I wonder if we’ll continue to see this as a trend among millennial writers. Like I said, it’s such a huge part of millennial culture.
And yes I LOVE Wayne Thiebaud! I’ve been obsessing over his work lately. He reminds me a bit of the illustrator Robert McGinnis.
I think millennials are like the Romantics in that nostalgia is probably especially aesthetically powerful for us: think about the aesthetics of vaporwave and chill wave, for instance.
Oh 100%. It definitely feeds into itself in that way. Especially given contemporary aesthetics cater more to minimalism and lots of neutrals. I think it’s natural that millennials would reject a lot of that in favor of the more colorful and aesthetically interesting looks of the past.
Living in japan, nostalgia and toys are everywhere!! It’s pretty common to see adults obsessed with games, Pokémon, Disney. Adults talk about their love of Tokyo Disney, K-pop idols or their favorite Sanrio character. Overall it’s pretty culturally accepted for everyone from young children to older adults to be at arcades or trying to get a toy from the claw machine!
I love Sari’s paintings that express so much joy and play as well :)
You actually bring up an excellent point. My perspective and therefor my argument is from a purely Western lens. Though reading your comment, it’s only reminding me of how badly I want to go to Japan myself. I’m not much for Pokemon and Disney, but Sanrio? I’m literally wearing Hello Kitty as we speak haha
So true! Fun and joyful expression are deeply missing in art. There is profundity in playfulness, and Sari demonstrates that so well through her paintings. Great essay!
Thank you! That’s a incredible compliment coming from you :)
As a former DLR cast member, I know all about Disney Adults (tm), especially the kind that all visited together in their coordinated custom shirts, the kind that are all about getting the limited edition Halloween popcorn bucket.
At the same time, there are much more harmful addictions.
As for millennial nostalgia, that's something that keeps coming up again and again in my writing, both fiction and nonfiction. Part of it as a paradoxical marriage of what we might call naked sentimentality and above-it-all ironic detachment. That push-pull has an aesthetic interest of its own, I think.
Are you familiar with Wayne Thiebaud's paintings of cake slices, etc? That struck me as an art historical parallel for Shryack's work.
That’s so interesting that millennial nostalgia keeps popping up in your writing. I wonder if we’ll continue to see this as a trend among millennial writers. Like I said, it’s such a huge part of millennial culture.
And yes I LOVE Wayne Thiebaud! I’ve been obsessing over his work lately. He reminds me a bit of the illustrator Robert McGinnis.
I think millennials are like the Romantics in that nostalgia is probably especially aesthetically powerful for us: think about the aesthetics of vaporwave and chill wave, for instance.
Oh 100%. It definitely feeds into itself in that way. Especially given contemporary aesthetics cater more to minimalism and lots of neutrals. I think it’s natural that millennials would reject a lot of that in favor of the more colorful and aesthetically interesting looks of the past.