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Japan Today
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Japan Today
Japanese artist Takashi Murakami opens exhibit in Ohio museum with more than 100 works
Takashi Murakami greets visitors to an exhibit of his art at the Cleveland Museum of Art in Cleveland. By PATRICK AFTOORA-ORSAGOS Japanese contemporary artist Takashi Murakami has never been limited to one medium, creating paintings, sculptures, luxury goods with fashion houses like Louis Vuitton, album covers and an exclusive merchandising collection with Major League Baseball. Now, he has filled a U.S. museum hall with portraits in every color as part of an exhibit that opened Sunday at the Cleveland Museum of Art. 'Takashi Murakami: Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow,' an update of an exhibit first shown in Los Angeles, features more than 100 ranging works. Murakami, known for his smiling rainbow-colored flower icon, intentionally layered light-hearted themes with historical events linked to trauma, he told The Associated Press. The art explores the impact of trauma on people and culture, said Ed Schad, curator and publications manager at contemporary art museum The Broad in Los Angeles. The portraits "have historical roots and that they could actually tell you a lot about what a society is doing, how healthy a society is, what a society is responding to,' Schad said. 'What society is responding to most often in this exhibition is the idea of trauma.' One sculpture depicts Murakami and his dog with half of their bodies in anatomical form, showing their bones and organs, while the other half is their outward appearances. The sculpture, Pom and Me, is described as Murakami's interpretation of his experience in the West through the lens of his Japanese identity. Square portraits featuring cartoonish flowers with facial expressions cover one wall of the exhibit, organized by background color to create a rainbow effect. One flower is wiping a tear from its eye, while another appears to be a zombie. One has blood dripping from its mouth. One appears to be in awe watching fireworks. Though there are no obviously direct visual references to historical events, the museum said the art can be seen through the lens of three events in Japanese history: the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States during World War II, the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, leading to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Murakami said it's a bit of a misunderstanding that his work 'is very easy and very popular." "But this is okay because this is one of my tricks,' he said. What someone might admire about his art as a child, Murakami said, would likely not be what is admired by an adult. Before entering the exhibit on the lower floor of the museum, visitors can walk through a version of the Yumedono, the octagonal-shaped building at Horyuji Temple in Nara, Japan. Murakami said he was inspired to create the structure after viewing the 2024 television series 'Shōgun.' Inside the structure are four new paintings — 'Blue Dragon Kyoto,' 'Vermillion Bird Kyoto,' 'White Tiger Kyoto' and 'Black Tortoise Kyoto' — created between 2023 and 2025. The ticketed exhibit runs until early September. © Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
New York Times
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Marie Kondo, Takashi Murakami and the Other Japanese Icons on T's New Covers
The five covers of T's annual Culture issue — which this year is devoted entirely to Japan and its outsize cultural influence on the world — feature six of the country's icons, one of whom is nonhuman. The 88-year-old artist and graphic designer Tadanori Yokoo made a collage featuring classic Japanese monsters — with Godzilla as the star — for his cover. The other subjects were shot by the photographer Piczo in various Tokyo locations at night, accompanied by models wearing spring looks from Japanese fashion designers and replicas of ancient Japanese masks, many of them from the tradition of Noh theater, which dates to the 14th century. The diverse group, which includes an international television star, a shape-shifting photographer, a pair of architects reconceiving contemporary museum design and a wildly successful artist, has redefined the way that Japan looks, thinks and creates. Takashi Murakami With work that includes painting and sculpture but also music videos, album covers, toys, key chains, trading cards and a recently rereleased collection of Louis Vuitton bags, Takashi Murakami, 63, is arguably Japan's best-known living artist. The founder of the Superflat movement — which compresses the iconography of Japanese culture into cartoonish, brightly colored 2-D imagery — Murakami, who is based in Tokyo, studied traditional Japanese painting in art school, an education reflected in two new exhibits. A solo show at Gagosian in New York opening in May will include the paintings he created in response to the 19th-century artist Utagawa Hiroshige's '100 Famous Views of Edo,' while 'Takashi Murakami: Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow,' on view from May 25 to Sept. 7 at the Cleveland Museum of Art, will fill the museum's atrium with his re-creation of the Yumedono (or Hall of Dreams), an octagonal structure built in the eighth century as part of the Horyuji temple complex in Nara. Hair and makeup by Rie Shiraishi. Model: Mayo at Stanford Marie Kondo Marie Kondo, 40, realized at age 5 that she preferred organizing her dolls to playing with them. As a 19-year-old university student in Tokyo, she established what she calls her 'tidying' business and, seven years later, in 2010, published her first book, 'The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up,' which has been translated into 44 languages and adapted into a hit Netflix series. It was Kondo's show that introduced mainstream America to the idea that possessions worth holding on to should, as she has famously said, 'spark joy,' a concept she discovered after blacking out during a particularly grueling clutter-clearing session and waking up to find that, if she looked at them closely, treasured objects appeared to glow. Her company is now based in Los Angeles. Hair by Yusuke Morioka at Eight Peace. Makeup by Asami Taguchi at Home Agency Tokyo. Prop stylist: Agnes Natawijaya. Model: Mayo at Stanford Explore More Read the editor's letter here. Take a closer look at the covers. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
