“An artist is a necromancer,” said Takashi Murakami, as he sat at the main workstation of his Rippongi Hills studio, a sixteen-foot-long table in the centre of a large room surrounded by four designers and five animators. The statement was cryptic. Did he mean a dark wizard? A high priest? Someone who can talk to the dead? Murakami’s work bears witness to his many years as an otaku science-fiction geek and obsessive manga fan. Murakami continued, “An artist is someone who understands the border between this world and that one… Or someone who makes an effort to know it.” Certainly Murakami’s work sits between many universes—art and cartoon, yin and yang, Jekyll and Hyde—but nowadays the artist is by no means an aimless dreamer. “I change my direction or continue in same direction by seeing people’s reaction,” he admitted. “My concentration is how to survive long-term and how to join with the contemporary feeling. To focus on nothing besides profit is, by my values, evil. But I work by trial and error to be popular.”
Murakami is an avowed Warhol fan, so I asked him what he did not like about the American pop artist. Murakami frowned and groaned. “I like everything,” he said finally, a Warholian answer if ever there was one. “Warhol’s genius was his discovery of easy painting,” he explained. “I am jealous of Warhol. I’m always asking my design team, ‘Warhol was able to create such an easy painting life, why our work so complicated?’ But the history knows! My weak point is my oriental background. Eastern flavor is too much presentation. I think it is unfair for me in the contemporary art battlefield, but I have no choice because I am Japanese.”
When I quoted Warhol’s famous line “Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art . . . Making money is art and wor king is art and good business is the best art,” Murakami laughed and said, “That is a fantasy!”
The tantalizing sculptures and brilliantly colored paintings of Takashi Murakami (born in 1962) reveal the artist's enthusiasm for seemingly disparate interests. His attraction to contemporary popular culture, especially anime (animation) and manga (cartoon), also reveals his great love of drawing, first discovered in his youth. As a university student, he studied traditional Japanese painting and earned a degree in nihon-ga, a sophisticated style that developed in nineteenth-century Japan as a synthesis of influences, including Chinese and Western art forms. Murakami has thoughtfully integrated each without diminishing the significance of - or his respect for - either. Most important to his work is his desire to acknowledge his identity as an artist of Japan.
In his essay "A Theory of Super Flat Japanese Art," Murakami expounds on art historian Nobuo Tsuji's idea that formal characteristics such as flat, shallow space and bold linear elements found in the ambitious traditional paintings of Japan are also evident in contemporary art forms such as animation. Murakami recognizes the international presence of post-1945 American art as well and has exceeded the vision of American Pop icon Andy Warhol, who blurred the boundaries between popular and fine art. Murakami has his own "factory" of assistants and has created Mr. DOB, a cartoon character notable for its compliance with Japan's marketing strategy of cuteness and which has its own copyright and product line.
Murakami's greatest affinity is with the work of artists known as "eccentrics" from Japan's Edo period (1615-1868) and, especially, the work of Soga Shohaku (1730-1781). The MFA has some of the best examples of this extraordinary artist's work, and this exhibition includes two pairs of Shohaku's scrolls. Formal relationships exist between Shohaku's bold strokes of ink and, for example, Murakami's "splash" paintings where liquid is carefully rendered across flat backgrounds. Further, the humor of Shohaku's emphatic rendering of recognizable and imaginary characters has not been lost on Murakami. But perhaps the greatest influences on Murakami have been the spirit of Shohaku's life and his willingness to go his own way while never leaving behind tradition.
Move Over, Andy Warhol
Takashi Murakami thinks it might be time to give the whole Louis Vuitton thing a bit of a rest. Best known for his giant, swirling, phantasmagorical canvases starring a cartoon imp named Mr. DOB, Murakami has long been Japan's hottest contemporary artist and an international art-world phenomenon. In the past two years alone, the 41-year-old painter had racked up a career's worth of milestones, including solo shows at the Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York City, the Serpentine Gallery in London, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Tokyo Museum of Contemporary Art. But then Louis Vuitton creative director Marc Jacobs asked Murakami to apply his loopy, bright, Hello-Kitty-on-ketamine look to a line of the company's accessories. Murakami transformed the company's classic (though dowdy) brown-and-gold bags into a multihued riot of LV logos and saucer-shape, cartoon-eye designs on a field of shocking white.
And now those bags�not to mention Murakami's fame�have gone supernova. After whipping up a hive's worth of buzz at the Louis Vuitton fashion show in Paris last fall, and receiving rhapsodic reviews from the likes of Vogue and Women's Wear Daily, the art world's favorite son has suddenly found himself fashion's "It" boy, too. Though Murakami's bags have been on sale since spring, demand continues to humiliate supply, with shipments selling out before they hit showroom floors. Waiting lists in stores from San Francisco to Berlin still number in the thousands, and People magazine recently lamented (or celebrated?) the fact that the only humans who actually seem to be able to get their hands on his totes�which sell for more than $5,000 apiece�are "A-listers" such as Elizabeth Hurley, Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Lopez (who, People reports, already owns two).
Unfortunately, this dizzying fuss has caused a bit of a problem for Murakami. As he chats before going to a party to celebrate the construction of Louis Vuitton's newest store in Tokyo (the last such obligation he has to the company for a while, he is quick to point out), he is surprised at just how overwhelming the fashion frenzy has become. The crease in his brow, the nervous laugh, the fidgeting: Murakami is uncomfortable. Stroking his wispy beard as a Louis Vuitton minder hovers nearby, he's a touch concerned that too many people, especially in the West, especially those who may not have heard of him before, now suddenly think of him as some sort of handbag designer. "I need to rebuild the wall between the commercial art and the fine art I do," he says. "I need to focus on the fine-art side of me for a while."
In Japan, he asserts, there is little money, prestige or exposure in being a fine artist. But there is also little distinction between high art and low art, and no cultural repercussions for flitting between the two. That's why he viewed this fashion foray as a perfect way to become better known in his own country, where Louis Vuitton is the godhead of the nation's real state religion: the worship of luxury brands. (Indeed, Japan accounts for one-third of the company's international sales). Mission accomplished: in Japan, Murakami is now magazine-cover, mobbed-in-public, rock-star famous�something that a million gallery shows could never have made him.
But in the West, some art-world folks still cling to the romantic notion of the solitary, idealistic, uncompromising (and uncompromised) artist. Looking characteristically frazzled and unkempt in a gray Mr. DOB T shirt, baggy jeans and green suede Pumas, Murakami says, "In the West I am being criticized for being too commercial." Indeed, a recent review of Murakami's Serpentine show in the Guardian newspaper accused the artist of being little more than a huckster: "There's no sign of any internal critique, just a lot of very high-class production values ... not much art here, either�only a feeble sort of entertainment." Worried about his reputation as a serious artist in the West, Murakami rattles off a list of departures he is now taking to maintain his high-art cred. For starters, he says, he is exploring traditional Japanese materials and motifs�updated twists on Buddha statues, scrollwork, calligraphy, screen painting and a 300-year-old dye technique called yuzenzome.
If this all sounds shrewdly (if not cynically) calculating, relax�Murakami has no qualms about being calculating. Few artists this side of Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons (both of whom Murakami counts as major influences) have spent as much time strategizing their careers, calibrating their output according to the laws of supply-and-demand�all the while keeping an eye on how the mandarins of culture perceive their mercantilist ways. (Is he a sellout? Is it art? Are such distinctions even relevant anymore? These are questions that fuel Murakami's career.) Murakami purposely engineers a neo-Pop Art universality to his work, making his art both effortlessly accessible and intellectually provocative�an ingenious feat. His sometimes sincere, usually ironic, often disturbing plays on the empty smiles and bright colors of cartoon cute are designed to appeal to the preteen in Tokyo who just wants a cell-phone strap with an adorable character on it, while also attracting the attention of the doctoral student in Frankfurt forever hunting for subversive subtexts.
Also, like the example of Warhol and Koons before him, Murakami rarely makes his own stuff anymore. He conceptualizes and sketches every major work and follows up with critiques and color corrections throughout production, but he seldom puts paint on canvas these days. His artworks require layer upon layer of acrylics to produce their flawlessly shiny, signature sheen, and he leaves that tedious task to the 40 apprentices he employs in a factory-style commune 20 kilometers outside Tokyo and another 15 disciples in a Brooklyn, New York City, warehouse.
Many critics search for Murakami's essential Japaneseness in the influences expressed through the art itself�influences that include anim�, otaku figurines and mushroom clouds, to name just a few. Yet few seem to have noticed the manner in which Murakami is perhaps most Japanese: taking someone else's concept (the art factory) and pushing it to new levels of discipline, efficiency and production innovation. Spend time at Murakami's KaiKai Kiki commune and you'll quickly discover that the hippie vibe the place radiates is a front. Looking past the shabby prefab trailers and scrubby farmland they skirt, you see that Murakami is as much a factory floor manager as an artist. Under his direction, computer researchers catalog recurring motifs for easy cut-and-paste reproduction, drafters transform sketches into outlines on canvas with robot-like precision, and technicians keep precisely documented recipes for the 70 to 800 colors used in each painting. All workers circulate e-mail updates on their progress every day (an idea Murakami borrowed from a book by Microsoft's Bill Gates) and the KaiKai Kiki employee manual (which covers not just art techniques but also how to greet visitors) is thicker than a phone book.
Murakami is also obsessive about cost saving: the company reuses packing materials and canvases from failed works, and buys Japanese-made Holbein paints not because they are better than American-made Liquitex but because they are up to 30% cheaper. According to some of his employees, Murakami's pursuit of conveyor-belt efficiency can make him a ruthlessly demanding boss. "The word compromise is not in Murakami's vocabulary," says Tomohiro Hoshino, who does 3-D paintings at KaiKai Kiki. Still, Murakami's relentless focus on the business of making art pays rich dividends. He proudly notes that in 1998 it would take him and 30 helpers six months to complete a large work. Now his art factories churn out 40 pieces a year.
In an essay accompanying one of his shows a few years back, Murakami outlined his master plan for total art-world domination, based on the premise that New York still decides what art matters: "1. First, gain recognition on site (New York) ... 2. With this recognition as my parachute, I will make my landing back in Japan ... 3. Back overseas, into the fray." So how far does he think he has progressed in his quest? Murakami relaxes for a moment, looks around and grins, as if he's got a secret. "I think that Louis Vuitton is a big part of accomplishing No. 2. What I would like to do now is break down the barrier between high and low art in the West." How he plans to accomplish No. 3 is not exactly clear. There are those traditional motifs he's working on, such as calligraphy and screen painting. And he mentions an animated feature film he would like to make. He doesn't know. He's still figuring it out. Overall, though, he likes his chances. "As a Japanese artist whose art is born in the chaos of an art scene without rules or distinctions, maybe I am able to break boundaries in ways that a Western artist cannot," he says. "In some ways, I do all this," and here comes another smile, "because I can."
Buying It
A Takashi Murakami retrospective.
Murakami with his “Cosmos” (2003). Warhol as marketer, not as artist, is his lodestar. Photograph by Ethan Levitas.
My favorite part of “©Murakami,” a retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum of the juggernautish Japanese artist-entrepreneur Takashi Murakami, was the most controversial element in the show when it originated, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, last October: a functioning Louis Vuitton outlet, smack in the middle of things, selling aggressively pricey handbags and other bibelots, all Murakami-designed. (Vuitton has reportedly done hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of business in Murakamiana since its deal with the artist began, in 2003.) The shop is lovely. Shelving units in chrome and white enamel, with recessed fluorescent lighting that sets brass fittings on the merchandise aglint, caress the eye. They provide a haven from the strident grotesquerie of what might be termed Murakami’s fine-art product lines: paintings, sculpture, and wallpapered environments that play off the charms of Japanese traditional and popular arts with close to no charm of their own. But, then, retail swank is an aesthetic lingua franca today, and equations of art and commerce, pioneered by Andy Warhol and colonized by Jeff Koons, among others, are, at least, familiar. The show’s less cozy aspects remind me that I have never been to Japan. I don’t like Murakami’s work, but my dislike, being moody, feels out of scale with the artist’s terrific energy and ambition. For the second time in a couple of months—the first being at the Guggenheim retrospective of the meteoric Chinese festivalist Cai Guo-Qiang—New Yorkers have a chance to absorb our new geo-spiritual fate, as provincials in a world of creative paradigms that no longer entreat our favor. That has to be good for us.
Murakami was born in 1962, and came of age at a time when young Japanese chafed at their rehabilitated nation’s banality, which they experienced as impotence in a society whose economic success and, to an extent, cultural fashions hewed to Western models. (An influential philosopher, Akira Asada, dubbed that society’s condition “infantile capitalism.”) A generational sensibility took hold: otaku, which referred to geekish male fans of science-fiction anime, manga, and video games, and came to embrace other defiantly unwholesome obsessions with popular culture. The cyberpunk writer William Gibson defined otaku for the West, in 1996, as being “pathological-techno-fetishist-with-social-deficit” and, later, as “the information age’s embodiment of the connoisseur.” Relishing apocalyptic violence, saccharine cuteness (“kawaii”), resurgent nationalism, and variously perverse sex, otaku spawned artistic tendencies: Neo-Pop, Sado-Cute, Superflat. Murakami became a leader, or a major collaborator, in nearly every development. He enjoys rock-star status in Japan.
Murakami was the oldest child of a father who had served in Japan’s postwar Self-Defense Forces and a mother who designed textiles. His mother impressed on him that he owed his existence to the chance that the sky above her native city, Kokura, was overcast on August 9, 1945, thus diverting a B-29 to its secondary target, Nagasaki. He took calligraphy classes and attended Buddhist rituals. He was more than encouraged in his study of art. According to the show’s organizer, the MOCA curator Paul Schimmel—in one of several extraordinarily cogent and informative essays in the catalogue—the young Murakami’s parents required him to write papers on exhibitions he visited, which included shows of Renoir and Goya. If he didn’t, they sent him to bed without supper.
While on a fellowship at P.S. 1, in New York, in 1994, Murakami, already prominent in Japan, gained modest attention with cartoonish paintings. Inspired by Warhol, Koons, and the British master of finely calibrated insolence, Damien Hirst, he founded a literal industry in 1996—the Hiropon Factory. (The name is a slang term for crystal methamphetamine, the most potent in a class of drugs that ease tedious mental labor, dangerously.) The firm was reorganized, in 2001, as Kaikai Kiki Co., and now employs about a hundred workers at facilities in Tokyo and New York, flooding the world with the Murakami brand. Is the result visually monotonous and conceptually supererogatory? So is McDonald’s.
Murakami’s most sensational works are among the first of his artistic maturity, from 1997 and 1998: large, pedestalled figures, in brightly painted fibreglass. One, “Hiropon,” is of a girl with huge breasts spurting streams of milk that join to form a jump rope. Another, “My Lonesome Cowboy,” is of a masturbating boy whose ejaculate twirls upward like a lariat. Similarly gamy is “Second Mission Project ko2,” an outsized Transformer toy representing a naked girl, with a detailed vagina, who, click-clack, becomes an airplane. The characters’ faces beam the big-eyed, manically jolly winsomeness that in anime and manga signals contentment. Anyone susceptible to being tickled and enthralled by that cartoon code may find, in these works, blended quintessences of Heaven and Hell. I don’t get it.
Since then, Murakami has softpedalled sex. His recurrent motifs now include a spherical, toothy, Mickey Mouse-like head, named “DOB” (an acronym referring to an obscure joke); generic flower symbols, sporting button eyes and rictus grins; “jellyfish eyes,” with schematic lashes and light-reflection spots; many-eyed mushrooms, at times morphing into atomic mushroom clouds; and ornamental flourishes that recall Hokusai’s waves. Murakami deploys these icons in torrential abundance. His chief handbag design features a measled field of tiny Vuitton logos, jellyfish eyes, and quatrefoil flowers, in many peculiarly unexciting colors. Murakami used to strike me as the most tin-eyed big-name purveyor of bold color since Peter Max. But the show persuades me that his arbitrary way with gaudy hues is of a piece with his execution of dead-flat acrylic paint surfaces, which look untouched by human hands. His aim, it seems, is to control and standardize aesthetic experience, forcing viewers into a, yes, infantile mold of rote response. He offers us relief from the worry, if also the odd reward, of thinking and feeling as individuals—a blissful submersion in mechanical affect, the same for everybody. Warhol, with his work’s beautiful color and catchy evidence of manual touch, is Rubens by comparison. But Warhol as marketer, not as artist, is Murakami’s lodestar.
Yet far be it from Murakami to sacrifice entirely the niche audience of sophisticated art lovers. Now and again, he palpably strives to muscle up his fine-art bona fides with varieties of abstraction, fierce or doomy narrative (a savage DOB or a monstrous character in death throes), spontaneous-looking brushwork, and knowledgeable references to Japanese and Western art history. There’s an “Homage to Francis Bacon” (2002), a sweet and tarty confection of human torment that I’m not sure the late British master would have appreciated. Pastiches of Surrealism, with jazzy distortions of Murakami’s image repertoire, unfortunately prove that surrealizing what is already surreal cancels rather than amplifies the desired effect. And such tactile enhancements as scraped or drippy surfaces and applications of gold and platinum leaf, though often pretty, unwisely evoke painters who express feelings in what they do. Cynical artists should be careful not to remind us that we like sincerity, or, indeed, that it ever occurs.
Most gravely, for me, Murakami seems temperamentally averse to a cardinal obligation of artists that Warhol, Koons, and Hirst accept: the duty to seduce. But to actively woo the eye and tantalize the mind implies the possible existence of resistant viewers. Murakami assumes—or posits, as a ruling fiction—that we are all already spiritual putty in his hands, whether we admit it or (some people are incorrigibly grouchy) not. There is power in this. It amounts to a theory of and for globalized culture. It invites vicarious identification with the artist’s project—an intellectual rooting interest that is rampant among the catalogue essayists. Unenthused visitors to the show may find themselves, as I did, refreshed in spirit by the simple elegance and honestly avaricious passion of the Vuitton boutique—helping the rich shed their burden of excess capital at a rate pitiably slower than what the art market enables, but in there pitching. ♦
Curiouser and Curiouser
You know that a critic dislikes a show when his favorite part is the gift shop. Such is the case with Peter Schjeldahl, whose review of the Takashi Murakami retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum—and the fully functional Louis Vuitton boutique it contains—is published in this week’s issue:
The Japanese artist has been in cahoots with Vuitton for several years now. Below is an animated commercial produced in 2003 by the KaiKai KiKi Company (Murakami’s version of Warhol’s Factory). It’s an anime update of “Alice in Wonderland,” with a cell phone in the role of the rabbit and a luxury leather-lined rabbit hole.The shop is lovely. Shelving units in chrome and white enamel, with recessed fluorescent lighting that sets brass fittings on the merchandise aglint, caress the eye. They provide haven from the strident grotesqueries of what might be termed Murakami’s fine-art product lines: paintings, sculpture, and wallpapered environments that play off the charms of Japanese traditional and popular arts with close to no charm of their own.
