(c) Takashi Murakami @ Brooklyn Museum of Art, 4/5/08
Posted on April 9, 2008
Filed Under Journal
We headed over to the Murakami exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, just a couple days after the opening bash with a long VIP list and a performance by Kanye West, who is a Murakami fan. The show overall was very impressive, my only gripe was the militant guards going nuts about photographs. I was able to sneak a couple though, one of this pretty amazing anime-inspired sculpture.
The first thing we noticed is that Murakami is big. His work is physically huge and his art / commerce blend has turned into a mini-empire; with high profile collectors paying through the nose for his paintings on the top end, and easily accessible manufactured plastic pop art (with candy) on the low end. And somewhere in the middle are the works like bags for Louis Vuitton and an album cover design for Kanye West.
The album cover is a perfect illustration of Murakami’s reach: now due to the popularity of Kanye’s album, over a million people own Murakami reproductions… in the form of an album cover. The press is comparing him to Andy Warhol and even Walt Disney with his ambitious and prolific ‘factories’ churning out pop-art. I can’t think of a living and working visual artist (painter) with this kind of reach. With all that, the body of work in the show is also very fun. Worth a look for sure.