Lost or Found in Translation:
During the last few years Japanese artist
Takashi Murakami came to western museums with his Manga-Comic inspired
characters and mural. After numerous
biennials and
group exhibitions he hit the big score last summer: He was invited by
Louis Vuitton's artistic director Marc
Jacobs to design bags and accesoires for the label. Now Murakami plans
to take Hollywood with animation films. Cheryl Kaplan talked to
Murukami and his L.A. based gallerist
Tim Blum about the attraction to mass culture and the seductive power
of fashion designs.
Takashi Murakami: LV Monolith, Courtesy: Kaikai Kiki. Reproduced with
permission. (c)2003 Takashi Murakami. All Rights Reserved.
I'm tipped off by the skycap at
Penn Station. He tells me under his breath: track 8 West. I'm carrying a
pale pink flower and two Italian
cornetti for Takashi Murakami. The crowds are growing, but there are only
about four Japanese passengers and none of them is Takashi Murakami or the
executive director of his
Kaikai Kiki Studio, Gen Watanabe. Not since the
Beatles has anyone waited so patiently for an arrival. It's close to
12:03, the
Acela Express to Boston
(the super-fast train) is two minutes late. The Amtrak ticket taker lets
me slip down to the boarding platform, reversing the escalator. No sign of
Murakami. It's 12:16. I'm feeling somewhere between
"Down by Law" and "
Lost in Translation".
Days earlier, at
Marianne Boesky Gallery, a horde of young girls, a few men, and several
children celebrate the opening of Tokyo
Girls Bravo, a Murakami ensemble that showcases 10 emerging
Japanese artists along with its companion show Gallery Swap at
LFL and Emmanuel Perrotin in
Paris. Per capita, there are enough cell phones and digital cameras to
make anyone feel famous. But this is nowhere near Murakami's Louis
Vuitton-sponsored opening at Boesky's last spring, where the already
famous proudly hugged their Murakami-designed handbags as they balanced
glasses of Moet Chandon
champagne.
Julian Schnabel (rechts) and Ingrid Sischy (editor of the magazine
'Interview")
at the opening
of Takashi Murakamis exhibition at Marianne Boesky Gallery, 2003
Photo: Patrick McMullan
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Murakami schedules himself between New York (or rather
Williamsburg, where his Kaikai Kiki Studio engages 15 assistants: "kaikai
kiki" is a term from Japan's
Edo period, meaning eccentric, gaudy, and odd, although recently it's been
used as an adjective to describe younger fashion that's highly colorful
and odd) and
Tokyo, where he has 40 assistants. Murakami is in the practice of tipping
the scales, swinging between art, fashion, and entertainment. He's even
launched his own version of a contemporary art fair, the
Geisai festival.
Knock-off Bag, Louis Vuitton, 2003 / Photo: Cheryl Kaplan
I
n 2003, Murakami pushed that balance between art and fashion even further,
having responded to an email sent by Marc Jacobs' assistant
inviting him to collaborate with Jacobs at
Louis Vuitton in Paris, the 150 year-old luxury accessory house. Murakami
was third in a line of artists/designers chosen by Jacobs since his debut
as artistic director at Vuitton in 1998. But Murakami's own fashion debut
began in 2000, during his collaboration with
Naoki Takizawa at Issey Miyake.
Takashi Murakami, textile-design for Issey Miyakes male-collection, 2000,
Photo: Robert Tecchio (c) courtesy Issey Miyake by Naoki Takizawa
in collaboration with Takashi Murakami
Murakami,
who's been compared to
Koons, Warhol, and even
Walt Disney, has used the West to pry open the East, calling Japan
"culturally impotent." His work fetishizes Japan's culture of cuteness in
an effort to expose it. Everything is based on his concept of "
Superflat," which is driven by a mere interplay of surfaces. Murakami's
depictions display no depth, not even effects of perspective. Instead, he
piles up more and more new comic characters on his canvases and wall
paintings until the pictures seem to explode. In doing so, Murakami proves
himself to be a true member of Japanese
"Otaku" culture, in which mainly adolescents realize a manic
fetishism and obsessive supportiveness as fans of comic and SF-culture in
buying as many
merchandising products of their particular heroes as possible.
Fashion is not new to art; there have been many other artists treading
this line before, from
Cocteau and the fashion designer
Elsa Scaparelli to
Andrea Zittel, who makes her own clothing, and even
Tom Sachs' peripatetic Prada embrace.
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