Morimura's career occurred in 1988 when he created Portrait (Futago), a modern recreation of Édouard Manets's controversial 1863 painting Olympia. Morimura positions himself in the roles of both the reclining white Olympia figure and her black maidservant and he replaces part of the surroundings with distinctly Japanese attributes as seen in the golden crane bed linens and the maneki-neko (“beckoning cat” figure said to symbolize good luck). Morimura supplanting both the white and black female subjects with his male Asian body was significant for its subversion of a work considered a staple of the Western Art History canon. The photograph addresses the issues of the male gaze and objectification of the female body, and it simultaneously brings to light the ignorance toward nonwhite subjects in Art History. By occupying the roles of the two sole figures, Morimura renders himself unavoidable for viewers to observe. Morimura's art attracted global attention after he was invited to exhibit his self-portraits for Japan at the 43rd Venice Biennale in their Aperto section. The opportunity to participate in this prestigious international art fair rapidly catapulted Morimura's status to world art icon that soon led to his participation in dozens of group and solo exhibitions throughout Asia, North America, Europe, and Australia at the end of the 1980s and throughout the 1990s. Career success and development (1988–2000) Although the 1988 Venice Biennale was responsible for officially launching Morimura's career on an international scale, his 1990 solo exhibition Daughter of Art History at the Sagacho Exhibit Space in Tokyo led to his popularity within the Japanese art world. The exhibition's theme centered on Morimura's critique of the Art History canon in which he deconstructed Western notions of aesthetic beauty, and examined Japan's longstanding interest in Western culture. The success of Daughter of Art History was later revived in future exhibitions, most notably in 1999 at Luhring Augustine Gallery in New York. Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky was a traveling exhibition held at the Guggenheim, Yokohama Museum of Art, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from 1994 to 1995. As the first historical survey of Post-1945 avant-garde Japanese art, Morimura's selection as a participant in this landmark exhibition attracted positive attention from arts & culture publications. The New York Times art critic Holland Cotter lauded Morimura as a “star” and New York Magazine's Mark Stevens highlighted his ability to effectively cross-fertilize “language, image, culture,