What do you wear to sit for a portrait? More specifically, what do you wear to sit for a caricature of your own genitals? It’s a classic contemporary art question. Or it soon will be, thanks to Ken Kagami’s live art project at this year’s Frieze art fair. The Japanese artist – known for funny, occasionally phallic, sometimes faecal artworks – is drawing visitors’ genitals, for free, while sitting at a small desk adorned only by a giant turd sculpture. By the end of the fair, he will have handed out thousands of felt-tip caricatures, drawn in just 30 seconds, to anyone who stands in the large line. I, luckily, will be one of them.
The Tokyo-based artist isn’t just a draughtsman. He also produces funny sculptures that turn day-to-day items such as clocks, pants, loo rolls and pens into living jokes. A skeleton with a luscious mound of pubic hair; a shoe breathing through a snorkel; a pillow that’s using an inflated travel pillow. Kagami’s work is hardly subtle, but it is funny. Was the decision to set up shop in one of the world’s most important contemporary art fairs, sketching knockers and knobs, a comment on the industry? Does he want people to laugh at art?
“I definitely want people to laugh,” he says, wearing a tattered baseball cap and grey suit. “But the work is not really a response to the fair – it’s more important to entertain myself.” While Kagami is happy to draw penises for his male subjects, with women he sticks to breasts. Why not vaginas? “Oh, the vagina is very simple. It’s just a hole,” he replies, sticking his forefinger in the air like someone pushing the button on a lift. “It’s difficult because it has no character. I want things that are long, short, sharp, pointed.” Does he think he could draw a vagina, at a push? “Yeah. Er, maybe,” he says. Maybe he could do a Vaginas of the Stars series, to go with his Celebrity Penis zine, which is piled on the table beside us.
The history of comedy in art is as old as art itself, of course. From obscene details in 12th-century illuminated manuscripts to the nipple-tweaking sisters in Gabrielle d’Estrées et Une de Ses Soeurs from 1594 and Gilbert and George’s festival of faeces. But it is rarely quite so personal – delivered by hand, by the artist, to your face. Kagami doesn’t worry how people will react. “British people are not shy,” he says. “Men are sometimes more coy, but women they stand proudly.”
What does he look for when he’s drawing? “I go by people’s face shape,” he explains. “If they have a very prominent feature – a big nose, small eyes, long hair – I’ll use that. I like to draw men with bald heads and small glasses, for obvious reasons.” What would he do if someone was rude, I wonder. If they didn’t get the joke? “I’d give them a small penis,” Kagami replies, looking sanguine. “Because a small penis is so sad.”
One of the reasons Kagami prefers to draw men, he explains, is because the penis has such variation. Breasts, as he puts it, “just tend to hang”. And yet he has never done a penis self-portrait; never turned his pen on his own nib. I offer to draw Kagami a penis caricature in exchange for a picture. Tit for tat. He laughs loudly before agreeing, somewhat tentatively. And so, after I have sat for my own portrait – breasts that look like lost parts of a giant jigsaw – I draw my own penile parody. It ends up looking more like a mournful elephant than a penis, but Kagami seems pleased. He even stands to have his photo taken with it, holding the scribble in front of his crotch like a defender awaiting a free kick.
And so, our strange transaction complete, I get ready to leave. Is he ever sad to part with a picture?“I’m very happy to give out my drawings,” he replies, sincerely. “To watch people walk away holding their genitals: it makes me very happy.”
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Frieze London is in Regent’s Park, London, until 17 October.
