i love him

sometimes images pop in my head and I draw them

sketch

deidara is a loving hommage to famous japanese artist tarō okamoto. their connection runs like a thread through his entire character, ranging from his famous quote "art is an explosion", to his interest in sculpting, to the designs of his art pieces and even to his characteristic hand mouths. this post is intended as an overview for naruto fans to understand him and his art better.

men aflame (1955), tree of children (1985), the salon of the tokyo tarō okamoto museum

tarō okamoto is a sculptor and painter of the 20th century japanese avant-garde. while his art is more colorful and abstract than deidara's more simplistic white clay creatures, you can see an obvious inspiration in their design. okamoto studied ethnography and was inspired by the ancient pottery of the jōmon people (a hunter-gatherer society from 14k-300 BCE), giving his art its characteristic archaic touch. similarily, deidara was given an interest in sculpting and clay work, and more often than not he represents a more primitive approach towards art and life as a whole. i recommend to look up okamoto's many artworks and see for yourself, especially his sculpture garden.

okamoto's tower of the sun is his most renown piece and many fans will recognize it as the shape of deidara's final C0 explosion. while many have seen the outside, the inside of the tower is less known: a spectacle of hundreds of simple life forms at the bottom, gradually evolving to humankind at the top. deidara's C0 suicide bomb is not just a hommage to the real life version, but a contrasting commentary to the life-affirming original.

deidara's iconic exclaimation "art is an explosion" (geijutsu wa bakuhatsu da) is a direct reference to okamoto as well. it became famous through a maxell tv commercial, the video is sadly not the original one, but one of many featuring his quote. it's fairly well known across japan and even got him the silly tokosatsu alter ego taroman using this phrase. there is depth to this quote: okamoto explained that he sees art as a spontaneous eruption of life and creative spirit, much like the big bang. while it isnt taken as literal as deidara's explosions, they certainly share an outlook. there is room to philosophize about how this aligns with deidara's destructive nature and how he percieves his own art using the lens of okamoto. how an explosion can both destroy and create, how all of our movement and progress stems from one singular explosion from the beginning of the universe, how art is just a smaller version of this bang of creation inside of us, and so on. i believe it gives a better picture as to why deidara has such a deep-seated obsession with this concept. for some additional fun, compare it to sasori's contrasting perspective.

last but not least... looks familiar, doesn't it?

chat i cant stop drawing him

“life is only beautiful because it’s so fleeting.”

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