One of the most internationally renowned Japanese contemporary artists. Underlying his work is a lucid understanding of the power of well known images. He uses his own body as a medium for the disruption of western pictorial convention to produce a tribute to, and ironic critical view of Western painting. Rather than reject images, Morimura thinks it may be more profitable to occupy them.
The famous painting subverted here is 'The Golden Stairs' by Sir Edward Burne-Jones.

The women in this image look beautiful, but they are not what they seem. The artist is playing with ideas about male and female, East and West.

Magazines, adverts and films are full of 'beautiful' people whose bodies we are meant to worship. Often these images are unrealistic - with blemishes air-brushed away and variety denied. There is huge pressure for us to try and be like them, and this can damage our health and self esteem.

However, ideas of what is beautiful have changed throughout history and vary hugely between cultures. This shows how ideals of human beauty are learnt rather than natural. Differences between male and female appearances have also blurred.

Do you like being told what to think?

Once upon a time, in the deepest mid-winter, when snowflakes were
like angels, gracefully descending the spiral stairs of a tall, dark tower,
Queen Snow White sat sewing by that window with the black ebony frame, when her eye fell upon the willow tree weeping by the river.

And the willow tree looked so pretty, being so slender, and with the snowflakes dancing all about it like angels, and she thought to herself:
"Would that I had a child as white as snow, as slender as the willow tree,
and as black as the window frame."

And as she lost herself in this broody thought she pricked her finger with
the needle, and three drops of blood fell upon the snow.

Soon after that Queen Snow White did indeed give birth to a beautiful baby girl, who was as white as snow, as graceful as the willow tree, and her hair was as black as ebony; and she was named Willow White.

Now Queen Snow White was very beautiful. And in the years since she had become Queen, she had come to fully appreciate, just what a powerful force beauty could be. And why should she not, after all, if she herself had not been beautiful would the handsome prince, who was now her husband and the King, would he have fallen in love with the mere sight of her, as in that coffin of glass she lay,
alive, yet still as death? Would he even have spared her more than a passing glance, if she had been anything less than beautiful?

Of course he would not!

And that poisonous piece of apple would never have been shook from her throat, and she would have truly died.

Ah, yes! Queen Snow White knew full well: she owed marriage, her kingdom, her life itself, all to her own compelling beauty. And in the years since Snow White had been Queen, had she not seen, a thousand times or more, how beauty needs not keys to open locked or bolted doors, and that a woman who is not beautiful is
like a star without its light.


This, perhaps, might explain why Queen Snow White had not discarded her Step-mother's magic mirror, though others, the King included, had advised her to smash the glass, to burn the frame :
"Who knows what evil staring into that mirror might conjure."

But she could not do it.

Before the mirror Queen Snow White would stand, staring critically, icily
at herself, and then would she speak the fateful words:
"Mirror, mirror, on the wall,
Who is the fairest one of all?"
And the mirror would answer:
"You, O Queen, art the fairest one of all."

Then she was content, for she knew the mirror spoke only the truth. But Willow White was growing up, and with each day that passed she grew ever more beautiful; and on the eve of her thirteenth birthday she was so slender, and so beautiful she put even the moonlight to shame.

And at the dawning of the day when Queen Snow White asked the mirror:
"Mirror, mirror on the wall, Who is the fairest one of all?" the mirror answered.