Art in Japan>Contemporary Art 1930-2004>Takashi Murakami: Summon Monsters? Open the Door? Heal? or Die?

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Takashi Murakami: Summon Monsters? Open the Door? Heal? or Die?

by John McGee

Takashi Murakami, DOB in the Strange Forest-Red, 1999 
(© Takashi Murakami, kaikaikiki 2001)

Talent or hype? Every highly successful young artist faces this question. Takashi Murakami’s first major museum exhibition in Japan demonstrates that he and his assistants have handfuls of both. 

The Japanese artist of the moment, Murakami is a bona fide superstar whom collectors fawn over and dealers can’t keep in stock. He’s also responsible for the “Superflat” exhibition—his take on the characteristics of contemporary Japanese culture—that drew crowds to the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art earlier this year (and seen at Shibuya’s Parco Gallery last year). 

But Murakami—trained in nihonga (traditional Japanese painting)—is most famous for his anime and manga-influenced painting and sculpture. This show of over 100 pieces from 1993 to the present features two of Murakami’s most important series—Mr. DOB paintings and life-size anime figures—as well as other recent character paintings (smiling flowers), sculptures (a giant inflatable) and a few pre-DOB paintings. However, it doesn't include his biting, early conceptual work. 

An imp in a blue knockoff Mickey Mouse outfit, Murakami’s alter-ego DOB sprang to life in 1993. DOB, one of many characters in the artist’s world, shifts between a cute, wide-eyed wandering innocent and a fluid-form fanged demon with more eyes than a six-month-old potato. DOB’s evolution is traced from his debut as a simple small golden logo on a purple field (DOB Genesis, 1993), through a Warhol-esque two-color silkscreen portrait series (But, Ru, RuRuRu..., 1994), to an epic, distressed-surface DOB drifting on a bodhisattva cloud (727, 1997) and beyond. 

In all of his paintings, nihonga finish-fetish surfaces embalm the vibrant colors and graphic flatness of manga, merging high with low, old with new. Increasingly though, DOB seems lost not in the strange forest (site of one of his adventures), but in the computer graphics orchard of “spherize,” “invert” and “twirl.” 

The anime sculptures are Murakami’s most impressive work—a breathtaking pantheon of otaku gods rendered life-size and definitely in-the-flesh. A silver-haired Eros commanding a self-made semen-lasso (My Lonesome Cowboy, 1998) takes otaku masturbation fantasies to perverse, full-bodied extremes. Nothing superflat about Hiropon (1997), a green-haired babe skipping a rope formed from milk squirting out of her enormous breasts. Three versions of the winged Nike, S.P. ko2 (1999), show her transforming from a crotch-forward, high-performance jet into an erotic elfin girl machine. 

Numerous video monitors around the museum show the hardworking army of students and young artists at Hiropon Factory. This master-apprentice workshop isn’t as freewheeling as Warhol’s Factory. It’s a tightly-run art fabrication plant where Murakami designs, the assembly line pumps out product, and the master gives final, hard-earned approval. 

The catalog explains this in depth. It’s an expose of Hiropon Factory that reads like a corporate annual report or how-to guide. Two-thirds of the book is dedicated to texts written by Hiropon Factory production, administration, PR staff and outside fabricators attesting to their unflagging efforts and glorifying the unflinching perfectionism of the master—a charismatic, demanding, sharp-eyed autocrat to whom all willingly sacrifice themselves. 

Murakami is no doubt a skilled artist, one of the most important of his generation. But his self-promotion gets a bit overwrought and distracting. For example, some videos show (and identify) Bjork and other famous people at his openings. Is he begging for validation or encouraging a cult of personality? Perhaps his show of earnestness is merely meant to confirm the quality of his brand image.

This exhibition was held Sep-Oct 2001 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (MoT) in Kiba, Tokyo, Japan.

©2006 John McGee

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