FACT AND FICTION: ARTISTS
Takashi Murakami
View images of Takashi Murakami's artwork
at the following sites:
vgallery.co.za
publicartfund.org
assemblylanguage.com
Read an article about the artist at The New York Times
The
Murakami Method
By Arthur Lubow, Published: April 3, 2005
Read biographies of the artist at:
Blum
& Poe
vgallery.co.za
Background
Born 1963. He grew up in Tokyo; his father was a driver and his mother a
housewife. He holds a Ph.D. in nihonga from Tokyo University of Fine Arts
and Music. With a characteristic lack of being bound by hierarchies, Murakami
has seamlessly assumed roles as artist, businessman, curator, theorist,
designer, and celebrity. He has been exhibiting since 1988.
Practice
He began his artistic career making conceptual pieces in the western tradition.
Spending time studying in America on a scholarship made him reassess his
Japneseness. Back in Japan he looked with a sense of critical distance on
aspect of Japanese culture. The unusual phenomena of the otaku took his
interest as this type of person is closely associated with the graphic and
visually dominated manga form. Rising to international fame and with the
making and subsequent sale for the largest amount ever paid at auction for
a Japanese artwork ''Miss Ko2'', a 2 meter tall fibreglass anime style figurine
of a young girl as a waitress. He has collaborated with Louis Vuitton to
design for the luggage brand, a mutually beneficial partnership. Murakami
developed his preferred art practice.
Murakami lives in a modest house next door to a factory located in the otter
suburb of Tokyo. This factory is his ‘studio’. Employees of
Kaikai Kiki Co Ltd. Arrive every workday morning at 8.50. “He sleeps
and makes art” says Dana Friis-Hansen, executive director of the Austin
Museum of Art in Texas co-curator of a 1998 Murakami exhibition at Bard
College in New York. He will often request for himself and his staff to
sleep in the gallery in sleeping bags. They will often cook noodles in the
gallery while they work.
Murakami, who may be Japan's most influential living artist, certainly doesn't
seem like the type to issue manifestoes: Wearing wrinkled cargo shorts,
round wire-rimmed glasses, and an unruly topknot, he looks two decades younger
than his 38 years. That said, the artist, who in the next few minutes cites
both Jeff Koons and George Lucas as major influences, hardly shies from
self-promotion: His studio on the outskirts of Tokyo, modeled on Warhol's
Factory, churns out T-shirts, posters, and mouse pads with entrepreneurial
abandon." Indeed, Murakami, while perhaps still an underground figure
in Japan, has recently become a darling of the U.S. art world.
So Murakami is still a conceptually artist. He no longer touches his work
but exercises extreme quality control over the smooth surfaces to ensure
no brush marks are visible and they are ‘superflat’ in the old
tradition of nihonga painting and the newer expectation of factory production
techniques. He fosters his staff promoting their careers and providing opportunities.
Murakami surrounds himself with young people and enthusiastically promotes
their careers. West, But like the business man he is he takes a 10 percent
commission, however, it is from the gallery's share of the sales, not the
artist's.
In 2001 at Grand Central Station and 2003 at the Rockefeller Centre he exhibited
monumental sculptures and balloons of his ‘cartoon –like characters.
Through this exposure and his curating he has been a major part of putting
Contemporary Japanese artwork on the international radar.
He developed and theory of ‘Superflat”. Perhaps this can be
explained by explaining some other aspects of Japan. Zen is a religion without
a concept of heaven or god, in the western sense, which emphasizes nowness,
hereness and emptiness. Perceived shallowness and superficiality of Japanese
contemporary life, the shallowness of the social mask the population wear,
the shallow politeness in everyday transactions, the shallow depth of traditional
forms of two dimensional depiction. But is also a comment on the flattening
of social life and experiences.
He has worked across many forms and as in Japan there is no impediment between
no high and low art forms, has collaborated with Luis Viutton, the fashion
label most well known for luggage and handbags. He has created many designs
for this company and this has only added to the desirability of both his
fine art work and his own range of merchandise.
Read an article and critique of ‘Superflat’ at findarticles.com
Superflat:
Kitty Hauser on fan fare
ArtForum, Oct, 2004 by Kitty Hauser
Newspaper and magazine articles
Artnews, Summer 2002, p. 90.
Artforum, September 2001, pp. 192 -3
New York Times, Wed. 25 July 2001
New York Times, June 24, 2001, p.31 - 32
The New York Times, Art in Review, Friday, April 6, 2001, p.E38
Artnews, March 2001, p. 134 -7
ArtForum, November 1999, p 134 -135
The New York Times, July 1999