Murakami at MOCA

Museum of Contemporary Art – Los Angeles

I first became aware of Takashi Murakami while studying in San Francisco for my undergrad. I remember a large painting featuring colorful toadstools with too many eyes. I dismissed critics’ claims to his brilliance as companion to the current anime craze. As the fervor over his work increased over the years, I felt more and more alienated – did I just not get it? Is it a cultural thing? I am someone who has always prided myself on the depth and range of my art insight. Put a piece of poop in a plastic baby shoe and top it off with an orange peel and I will get it – you are obviously attempting to communicate the anthropologic significance of things done innocently in a throwaway society…right? However, you can fill the MOCA Temporary Contemporary with a bunch of Murakami stuff and I am seriously left bored, despite the shiny colors.

Having done a little research on Takashi Murakami before writing this, I know he is a cultural theorist and a curator as well as an artist, and I believe I understand his intent. However, operating on the idea that all art should be accessible to someone walking in off the street without having researched the artist,  if the intent of the artist is not decipherable without a huge artist statement, then the curator should work as a middle-man for viewers. So here is my “blind man” review:

The show at the MOCA was curated to highlight the blurred distinction between high art and the aggressive mass production that Murakami has always been criticized for. Along with paintings and sculptures and “installations” (does putting wallpaper in a room with paintings an installation make?), there is also a huge collection of the Japanese equivalent to the plastic prizes from a Happy Meal, a room full of paraphernalia (T-shirts, pins, make-your-own-Murakami models) from Murakami’s company, KaiKai Kiki, a 16-minute cartoon, a Kanye West video animated by Murakimi, and some commercial spots.

Most of the visual content of the show pulled from the same, redundant pool of imagery–happy flowers, mushrooms with eyes, the DOB (head with Mickey Mouse Ears and sharp teeth), two characters from an anime series, and cartoonish renderings of bodily fluid. This being a retrospective representing most of Murakimi’s career, I would have say the guy has made quite a living without being that inventive.

Most paintings were visually engaging from a design sense–hypnotic color use and repetitive shapes. There seemed to be a lack of interaction between characters that would signify any undercurrent of relationship. In fact, compositionally, the paintings mostly looked like images that would be used for branding or packaging. I honestly don’t know why he would bother using paint–a good giclée would have accomplished the same effect (does paint a painting make?). Two rooms were completely wallpapered with imagery reflected in the paintings hung in them. It seemed a sorry attempt at visual overloading in order to draw attention away from the mind-numblingly decorativeness of the actual art. I heard one viewer remark that she would like to have the “Happy Flower Wallpaper” in her room. Toward the back end of the exhibit, things got a little more interesting. It was as if the idiotic happiness of his own work had started getting to him–the large-scale paintings of his star characters puking and rotting were a welcome relief.

The sculptures could be split into two groups–adult anime and happy, cute stuff. A three-piece series showed a transformation of a girl with wings turning into a fighter plane with her vagina as the nose. Two figures at the center of the exhibit were reminiscent of hentai, a girl with uber-breasts squeezing huge nipples that spurt milk into a circular shape behind her, while a blonde boy sprayed semen into a whip shape. These were two of the models that also appeared in the Happy Meal prize-type part of the exhibit. Of the “happy, cute stuff” sculptures, one was pretty interesting. One was a “self-portrait” anime buddha seated atop cartoon lotus leaves centered on a squished elephant. He has a happy, crooked grin on his face–the deity of nothingness atop a shiny, plastic world.

I walked into the video room to be surround by a Kanye West song. Murakame had represented the rapper as a brown bunny trying to get to high school graduation. It was pretty vapid and boringly animated. The first episode of a new anime created by Murakami was, however the freshest thing in the exhibit. His characters, Kaikai & Kiki, learn how to grow watermelons by planting the seeds, watering them, and using their own poop as fertilizer. I liked it because it was not only educational, but the first thing I had seen in which the characters he created actually have a life outside of adornment.

Atop the mezzanine, a fully functional Louis Vitton boutique was installed to sell the accessories and luggage that Mark Jacobs had hired Murakami to collaborate on. They are like regular Louis Vitton bags covered with Louis Vitton branding, but with the logo on white leather in bright colors accented with Murakami signature eyeballs. Women in smart black frocks stood behind displays waiting to help whatever idiot would drop a grand on a handbag. This section, out of all of the rest of the exhibit, was the most disgusting and yet the most comprehensive as far as understanding the intent of the artist: To cover the world with little green eyeballs and make a lot of money doing it. Not only does he have the little kiddy keychain market covered, but he is owning the boutiques as well.

Murakami follows in the steps of Andy Warhol in that he understands and exploits the obsession with pop culture. Personally, I relate to sentiment offered towards the end of Andy Warhol’s career and life: “I’ve decided something: Commercial things really do stink. As soon as it becomes commercial for a mass market, it really stinks.” I imagine an anthropologist sifting through some garbage dump on what used to be Tokyo or Los Angeles 5,000 years from now. What will they think of our innocent, throwaway society? That we all worshipped mushrooms with too many eyes and women with breasts so full of milk they could feed armies? Whatever it is, this commercial art really will stink.