takashi murakami new york times · 2017. 10. 24. · traveling retrospective opened at the museum...

PRESSBOOK

Takashi MURAKAMI

New York Times

October 2017

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24 octobre 2017 - N°41.870

An artist releases his inner dragon‘Annoyed by his challenge,’a Pop Japanese masteranswers his mentor’s callBY HILARIE M. SHEETS

Takashi Murakami rocketed to interna-tional fame in the art world for his PopJapanese anime-inspired charactersand motifs that proliferate playfully andmenacingly across paintings, sculp-tures and a line of commercial products.

He entered high-profile collabora-tions with the luxury retailer Louis Vuit-ton in 2002 and later the rap star KanyeWest that slyly navigated the avenues ofconsumer culture. In 2007, his majortraveling retrospective opened at theMuseum of Contemporary Art, Los An-geles, and he joined the GagosianGallery, poised at the pinnacle of the artmarket.

But in the decade since, Mr. Mu-rakami, 55, has retrenched. Since begin-ning a sustained dialogue in 2009 withthe Japanese art historian Nobuo Tsuji,three decades his senior, Mr. Murakamihas found a mentor who has broughthim into deeper engagement with his-torical Japanese art that has fueled theartist’s prodigious imagination andmarked a profound shift in his work.

“Professor Tsuji has given me thechance to have this breakthrough,” Mr.Murakami said recently at the NewYork City branch of Kaikai Kiki, his stu-dio headquartered in Tokyo that em-ploys some 70 people in the productionand promotion of his artwork. “Hekicked my butt.”

A tribute to their friendship and itscreative fruits has just opened at theMuseum of Fine Arts, Boston. “TakashiMurakami: Lineage of Eccentrics,” onview through April 1, puts 13 of the art-ist’s paintings and sculptures, as well asmultiple studies, in conversation with 50Japanese artworks dating from the late10th through 19th centuries. They havebeen selected from the museum’s col-lection of historical works by the twomen, together with Anne NishimuraMorse, the museum’s senior curator ofMURAKAMI,PAGE2


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24 octobre 2017 - N°41.870

“Takashi Murakami: Lineage of Eccentrics,” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, pairsthe artist’s works with Japanese art dating from the late 10th through 19th centuries.

CJ GUNTHER/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY




24 octobre 2017 - N°41.870

Releasing an artist’s inner dragonJapanese art.

The show includes the pairing of SogaShohaku’s 1763 “Dragon and Clouds,” a35-foot-long ink painting of a comicallyexpressive dragon thrashing its tailthrough the clouds, with Mr. Mu-rakami’s never-before-exhibited 2010reinterpretation done at almost twicethe length. This was executed on a darefrom Professor Tsuji, issued in a seriesof articles called “Battle Royale! Japa-nese Art History” published in the mag-azine Geijutsu Shincho from 2009 to2011, when he picked themes and Mr.Murakami had to make works in re-sponse. For one, the scholar choseShohaku’s dragon and goaded the artistto paint something by himself ratherthan rely on his army of assistants.

“I was so annoyed by his challenge,”said Mr. Murakami, who had first seenthe Shohaku image reproduced in Pro-fessor Tsuji’s 1970 book “Lineage of Ec-centrics” tracing the wild originality ofsix artists from the Edo period (1615-1868), a volume that Mr. Murakami hadfound inspirational as a young artist.

“I decided to place a bind on myselfand just do the whole thing in one gowithin 24 hours,” Mr. Murakami said,“eliminating the process of meticulouslydesigning and going straight to the can-vas as if I were drunk.”

Mr. Murakami’s “Dragon in Clouds —Red Mutation” mimics the sweet gog-gle-eyed personality and physical dyna-mism of Shohaku’s dragon and hissplashing of pigment against the sur-face of the paper, so different from Mr.Murakami’s trademark sleek hard-edgeforms.

MURAKAMI, FROM PAGE 1

“Takashi has interpreted this in avery expressionistic way that I findtremendously exciting,” said Ms. Morse,who collaborated with Professor Tsujifor over a decade in cataloging the mu-seum’s thousands of objects of Japaneseart, including the Shohaku collection.“Takashi sees himself as a spiritual heirfollowing on Shohaku,” she added.

While Mr. Murakami finds his dragonembarrassing technically, he said, “it led

me to approach my own limit and beginmaking this series of massively scaledpaintings that without my communica-tion with Professor Tsuji would not havehappened.”

He is less disparaging of his 82-foot-long 2014 painting “In the Land of theDead, Stepping on the Tail of a Rain-bow,” a hallucinogenic landscape of fig-ures and black skulls swept up in atsunami of roiling water that is on viewat the Broad museum in Los Angeles.Many studies for the painting are shownin Boston.

“That painting I feel is one answer Ican give to Professor Tsuji,” said Mr.Murakami, to show him “that I humblyreceived the ‘Lineage of Eccentrics,’ di-gested it myself and added somethingthat is completely different from what Ireceived.”

Professor Tsuji called it a great honorto be a part of this creativity as an arthistorian. Through the magazine project“which was filled with drama, unpre-dictability and nonsense,” he said, “I re-alized Murakami’s genius, rare in an art-ist, in which he is able to assimilate wide

knowledge from others and incorporateit into his works.”

Mr. Murakami’s deep dive into hisown Japanese heritage was a way of ad-dressing a kind of identity crisis, saidMichael Darling, who organized the art-ist’s recent retrospective “The OctopusEats Its Own Leg” at the Museum ofContemporary Art Chicago. “He hadreached this apex in his career around2007, but I think it worried him andmade him question why he was makingart,” said Mr. Darling, whose exhibitiontraced the artist’s arc from smooth plas-ticized figures to mythical beasts andmonks rendered craggy and gnarledand at gigantic scale. It was the most

highly attended show in the Chicagomuseum’s history and opens at the Van-couver Art Gallery next year.

“Without saying that Murakami was-n’t interesting before, which I don’t be-lieve,” Mr. Darling added, “I do thinkthat his relationship with Professor

Tsuji has had a real noticeable impact onhis career and his development.”

The show at the Museum of Fine Arts,Boston, highlights works inspirationalto Mr. Murakami. He made an almostone-to-one copy of the conical lotus-shape base supporting a late-10th,early-11th century Buddha in the muse-um’s collection and used it to prop up hisown Buddha interpreted as an anima-tion character in his sculpture “OvalBuddha Silver” (2008). Mr. Murakami’sgolden multipanel “Kawaii — vacances(Summer Vacation in the Kingdom ofthe Golden)” (2008), populated with afield of smiling flower faces, echoes thedazzling ornamentation of poppies on agold ground in a 17th-century screen bythe school of Tawaraya Sotatsu.

In a large-scale work commissionedespecially for this show, Mr. Murakamiaims to please his teacher. It incorpo-rates the eccentric depiction of naturalphenomena, including a direct refer-ence to Shohaku’s screen “Transcend-ent Attacking a Whirlwind” (circa 1764)where a tornado resembles a serpent’scoiled tail. Speaking while the piece wasstill in progress, Mr. Murakami con-fessed that it had been very difficult andhe had not yet succeeded.

“I want to show Professor Tsuji that Ihave been studying all he has given me,”he said. “I’m hoping this work to bethat.”




24 octobre 2017 - N°41.870

From left, the Japanese art historian Nobuo Tsuji; Anne Nishimura Morse, senior curatorof Japanese art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the artist Takashi Murakami.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON

Soga Shohaku’s “Dragon and Clouds” (1763) is featured in “Takashi Murakami: Lineageof Eccentrics,” along with Mr. Murakami’s reinterpretation of the work.




24 octobre 2017 - N°41.870

takashi murakami new york times · 2017. 10. 24. · traveling retrospective opened at the museum...

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