ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the case study of Koya Abe. Abe, a Japanese artist living and working in New York City, explores Western and Japanese cultural differences in his digital composite photographs. The purpose of Abe’s work, as he states, is to depict humanity. He explained that art is a part of culture, and culture is a part of humanity. In his work Abe aims to understand the essence of Western culture by offering a Japanese way of interpretation on Western cultural phenomena manifested in art. In Topology of Art Chapter 7, Abe changes the spatial arrangement of objects in classical Western paintings by removing some physical elements and adding elements from another painting by the same artist. Abe explained his production and workflow by citing his composite After Young Man Beside the Sea as an example. He reuses the painting Young Man Beside the Sea by French painter Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin as the main image.
