Murakami

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Murakami / Brooklyn Museum. Billboard on Houston Street, New York. 

Infantile Capitalism

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Infantile Captalism. The Economist. April 19-25, 2008. 

excerpted text:

"At the centre of Takashi Murakami's new exhibition is a shop. Even Andy Warhol never went that far

"Among the many rooms that make up this grand retrospective of the work of Takashi Murakami, Japan's best-known contemporary artist, one is especially provocative. It is not the gallery with the wide-eyed cartoon-like figures in bizarrely erotic poses. Nor is it the atrium, with its towering sculpture of a colourfully grotesque, pointy-headed alien, surrounded by adorable marshmallow-like sentries. The biggest buzz is about the space right in the centre of the Brooklyn Museum's 18,500 square-foot (1,700 square-metre) show: a fully operational Louis Vuitton shop, where visitors can buy their very own luxury handbag covered in Mr Murakami's playful designs for upwards of $650." 

"This approach to art is particularly Japanese, argues Mr Murakami. Discriminating between fine art and popular merchandise, or individual genius and learned craft, is a Western preoccupation. Trained in traditional Japanese art, Mr Murakami coined the term 'Superflat' for his theory about the similarities between the formal, decorative flatness of Japanese painting and the shallow, glossed fantasies of popular Japanese cartoons. It also recognises the lack of distinction between high and low in Japanese art. To others his art is known as the school of 'infantile capitalism'."

"Having it both ways is typical of Mr Murakami, who has managed to create an intellectual framework that lets him do and sell whatever he wants. Perhaps the best thing you can say about it is that his unbridled embrace of commercialism seems more honest than cynical."

Takashi Murakami's Smog of Luxury

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Takashi Murakami's Smog of Luxury. R.C. Baker. Village Voice. 04.15.08.

excerpted text:

"When he was a child, Takashi Murakami's mother used to tell him: 'Takashi, you are very lucky. If Kokura had not been cloudy, you wouldn't be here today.' On August 9, 1945, she'd been a kid herself, living in the city that the U.S. had targeted for its second atomic-bomb attack on Japan. Because of bad weather, she and thousands of others were spared, and Nagasaki, with a small patch of blue in its overcast skies, was incinerated instead. Fate doesn't get much more capricious than that. Perhaps Murakami, a globe-trotting artist, curator, and theorist, feels he's been living on borrowed time since before he was born, in 1962. This might explain his varied (at times, frenzied) output of paintings, sculptures, animation, and luxury goods, all on view in this Brooklyn Museum retrospective."

"Having sold miniature versions of his sculptures as "snack toys," Murakami has bested even Warhol in the ancillary-merch sweepstakes—which brings us to the Louis Vuitton shop, installed as part of the show, blunt as a torpedo amidships. After taking in the chromatic amplitude and rarefied surfaces of the sculptures and paintings, the 'Jellyfish Eye'–patterned bags and white-clad salesfolk feel beside the point, but these ostentatious items may actually be the heart of the show. As Scott Rothkopf's fascinating catalog essay points out, Murakami's career is a veritable case study of art-world conflicts of interest, because "his activities as a curator and critic function as a shrewd marketing device. By framing and advancing a new 'movement' of sorts, he has gained for his cohorts significant traction in both foreign intellectual and commercial markets." For example, Murakami curated the hugely successful 'Little Boy' show at the Japan Society in 2005, presenting himself and the artists he represents through his company, KaiKai Kiki, as exemplars of a new Japanese avant-garde. He then convinced Yale to publish a catalog laden with his own essays. So peddling exclusive accessories becomes just another tentacle in Murakami's evolving marketing organism. Andy must be bowing his head in admiration."

"As with Warhol, the best stuff here is surprising, gorgeously executed, and darkly alluring. The 11-foot-square canvas The World of Sphere (2003) features more chirpy flowers and the usual bulbous creatures, one with hula-hoop halos spinning like centrifuges around its pointy head. A miasma of Louis Vuitton logos rises like swamp gas in the background, a smog of luxury." 

Hitting the Vuitton Murakami Shop at the Brooklyn Museum

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Hitting the Vuitton Murakami Shop at the Brooklyn Museum. By Lynn Yeager. Village Voice. 04.15.08. 

excerpted text:

" In the end, I went down to Canal Street, the same ratty Canal Street that Vuitton thought was so witty to make fun of. And there I found a wonderful fake flowered satchel for $35, which I thought a cool guy like Murakami would probably get a kick out of, since the nameless third-world artisan who made it added some flourishes that LV hadn't thought of, like silver faux-snakeskin trim and mirror studs. But it turns out I am wrong about Murakami, as I am about so many things. A wall text at the museum announces that 'the concept of copyright itself holds an exalted position within Murakami's practice, rooted in the acknowledgement of his work as simultaneously interweaving deeply personal expression, high art, mass culture and commerce.'"

" Not for sale? Isn't this a store? I skulk away and eavesdrop on another White Suiter who is explaining to a well-heeled customer that the three canvases on the wall, all printed with LVs, are in fact up for grabs, at around $6,000 for three, though the price varies according to whether the canvases are signed, or bear a particular number, or some such. "It's the same denim that Vuitton uses for their clothes," the salesman says reverently, and I want to yell: 'So?'"

Murakami / Louis Vuitton

"This is Not a Sidewalk Bag". Guy Trebay. The New York Times. 04.08.08. 

excerpted text and quotes:

"The baggage in question, made since 2002 in collaboration with Mr. Murakami and Louis Vuitton, has generated sales estimated to be in the hundreds of millions, by far the most successful such venture in the label's history. "

"Vuitton has a long tradition of these collaborations, of relationships with artists, going back to the Impressionists." (Yves Carcelle, Chairman of Louis Vuitton)

"Still, nothing the company ever did hit the jackpot like Mr. Murakami's cherry-ornamented and "Multico" bags, which came about, as Mr. Carcelle explained, after 9/11, when Vuitton designer Marc Jacobs, suggested to his corporate bosses that it was no good to mourn forever: fashion had a responsibility, ahem, to help people past their grief."Marc said," Mr. Carcelle recalled, " ' If I work with Takashi, and we do something colorful, I think it will help make New York strong again.'"

"Like the handbags, the purpose of these editions, Mr. Murakami said later, is to bring art to the hoi polloi, people in no position to lay out the $1.5 million that another Franch billionaire Francois Pinault, paid for a  23-foot Murakami statue of the space alien Mr. Pointy in 2003."

"Anyway, it is not the money that matters to him, he insisted, "I always want art to be accessible," he said at dinner, where the guests included Kristen Davis, Tinsely Mortimer and Julian Schnabel. "The money embarrasses me," he said, not looking embarrassed in the least." 

Murakami

Installation of Murakami. Brooklyn  Museum . April 2008. 

Marc Jacobs / Murakami

Marc Jacobs on Murakami. Produced by MOCA.