Latest news with #ClevelandMuseumofArt
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.
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
Japanese artist Takashi Murakami opens exhibit in Ohio museum with more than 100 works
CLEVELAND -- 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 opening 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.
Straits Times
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Straits Times
Fashion's continuing obsession with Takashi Murakami
Artist Takashi Murakami in front of his Flowers series, ahead of his exhibition, Stepping On The Tail Of A Rainbow, at the Cleveland Museum of Art in April. PHOTO: DUSTIN FRANZ/NYTIMES CLEVELAND – Takashi Murakami sat dashing off a portrait of artist Shahzia Sikander, one of several high-profile personalities he would sketch that afternoon in late April in advance of his new exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art in Ohio, the United States. Cameras clicked and whirred, focused less on his subjects than on the artist himself, who was kitted out for the occasion in a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, a loose-fitting frock coat and an outsize helmet that lent him the look of a rainbow-crested chicken. The peripatetic Tokyo-based artist, entrepreneur, cultural critic and self-styled brand had arrived in the wee hours to oversee the installation of his exhibition Stepping On The Tail Of A Rainbow, set to open to the public on May 25 , complete with a true-to-scale replica of a portion of an ancient temple at Nara in Japan. But Murakami, 63, seemed to take the moment in stride, sketching tirelessly as a small crowd craned to take in his performance. His playfully eccentric get-up was conceived partly to captivate his followers. They are the critics, collectors, hypebeasts and, at least as ardently, a world of tastemakers and style setters – among them singer-songwriters Usher and Pharrell Williams, and fashion entrepreneur Sarah Andelman – who travel in his orbit. Some have embraced him as a puckishly endearing mascot, the irreverent embodiment of his daftly cartoonish characters. Those with deep pockets collect his work. Others, for whom high art is out of reach, snap up one in a steady proliferation of small-scale interpretations of his most familiar pieces: the trinkets, T-shirts, housewares and handbags that serve as a relatively accessible form of brand extension. His image, a variation on the manga and anime and emoji-inspired characters that populate his work, is strategic. 'Takashi is a style icon, aware of the role an artist can play in a public sphere,' said Mr Sky Gellatly, who forged relationships between Murakami and a number of artists and lifestyle brands. 'His attention to the details of his outfits are part of a holistic expression for his work and his collaborations.' Well aware of some followers' cult-like enthusiasm, the artist himself is loath to let them down. 'In a competitive world, there are just two choices,' he said. 'You can make a new movement,' he explained, referring to Superflat, a Murakami coinage for a pop-infused movement that erodes the distinction between fine art and commodity. 'Or you can be the new guy.' 'That is why every two years, I change my style,' he said. 'That way, the audience may be thinking, 'Oh, this is not boring.'' Small chance. Indeed, Murakami is having a buzzworthy year. His show in Cleveland is an expanded version of one in 2022 at the Broad in Los Angeles. He exhibited with Gagosian in London and, in May, arrived to take in his show at Gagosian in Manhattan. The exhibition – Japonisme, Cognitive Revolution – inspired by traditional Japanese art, highlights Murakami's interpretation of prints by the 19th-century master Utagawa Hiroshige. All of this is to say nothing of the recent outpouring of Murakami brand collaborations. They include, most prominently, the reissue and update of his 2003 collection of handbags and accessories first conceived with Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton. The new collection, unveiled in January in partnership with Williams, the creative director of menswear for the luxury brand, is modelled by A merican singer-actress Zendaya . Takashi Murakami in the Reid Gallery at the Cleveland Museum of Art. His exhibition, titled Stepping On The Tail Of A Rainbow, opened to the public on May 25. PHOTO: DUSTIN FRANZ/NYTIMES The artist is candidly pleased with its success. 'I had very good luck with the first collaboration,' he said. 'If sales are good this time, it is a great way of expanding my work and promoting my name. It's kind of a win-win.' In spring, he released a Major League Baseball collection celebrated with pop-ups in Los Angeles and Tokyo and sold through Complex stores. At Frieze in May , he introduced limited-edition, panda-decorated platters in support of the Coalition for the Homeless. To some, his high-end goods are out of reach. (The Vuitton monogram bags sell for as much as US$5,000 or S$6,500.) But fans flock to hi s shows just the same. Art world professionals view the artist as a trailblazer. 'His landmark 2003 collaboration with Louis Vuitton redefined the possibilities of fashion-art partnerships, introducing a new visual economy in which luxury, playfulness and critique could co-exist,' said Mr Matthew Yokobosky, senior curator for fashion and material culture for the Brooklyn Museum. Murakami has collaborated with many brands, with one of the most recent being the January 2025 reissue and update of his 2003 collection of handbags and accessories first conceived with Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton. PHOTO: DUSTIN FRANZ/NYTIMES In Cleveland, Murakami sat obligingly in front of Hustle'n'Punch By Kaikai And Kiki, one of his most familiar works. The artist, who tends to speak in densely packed paragraphs, confided that he struggled with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder . He closed his eyes as he spoke, the better to marshal his thoughts. His zany costume notwithstanding, he was in no mood to clown. 'W hile on the surface, the works in this show might seem beautiful and cheerful, w hen I'm creating my work, I'm very much influenced by the spirit of the moment,' he said. 'This retrospective and the works I've just completed and those I will continue to show visibly reflect the mood of the times.' He was deeply influenced by Japanese artist Hiroshige's serenely nostalgic woodblock prints, he said, in particular the One Hundred Famous Views Of Edo (now Tokyo), made in the aftermath of an earthquake that had decimated the city. Murakami's work addresses the historical traumas that affected his youth and continue to trouble him, chief among them the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Cold War and, later, the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the Covid-19 pandemic. 'Today, tensions with China are also being reflected in my work,' he said. Yet, it is useless, he argued, to try to impose meaning on his canvases. His images come from within, he said. 'They can't be directly related to anything in existing culture.' The idea, he said, is to sever links with reality while remaining practical. 'Making art is a job,' he said, 'and I am in a rush.' Murakami – who employs some 300 people at Kaikai Kiki, his studio in Japan – is impelled to increase and vary his output. His urgency is intensified, he said, by a sense of impending mortality and a dread that he may eventually the suffer fate of his father, who battled Alzheimer's. ' These days, I am very fearful of not becoming myself,' he said. He has found alternative means of self-expression, some that extend beyond the frame. The upcoming Yumedono, or Hall of Dreams, is a recreation of the Horyuji Temple in Nara, Japan, and will be located in the atrium of the Cleveland Museum of Art. PHOTO: DUSTIN FRANZ/NYTIMES He worked with the set designers of the television series Shogun (2024 to present) to recreate the Yumedono, or Hall of Dreams, of the Horyuji Temple at Nara. Still under construction at this writing, with workers clambering over its framework, it is positioned to greet visitors entering the museum in Cleveland. Shogun itself moved the artist profoundly. 'It depicted a time of civil war and how in that time people were always living facing death,' he said. He was struck by the show's exploration of hara-kiri, the Japanese ritual suicide. The act is accompanied by the recitation of a poem that summarised and placed meaning on one's life, he explained. 'It meant ending one's life in a controlled way.' 'My death poem is my art,' he said. NYTIMES Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Axios
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Axios
Stunning Takashi Murakami exhibit opens at Cleveland Museum of Art
The Cleveland Museum of Art has transformed into a wonderland of colorful Japanese contemporary art. Why it matters: The new exhibit, "Takashi Murakami: Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow," comes from a world-renowned Japanese artist and stands as one of the more jaw-dropping CMA showcases in recent memory. The intrigue: Murakami is known for his vibrant works combining elements of traditional Japanese art with contemporary styles like anime and manga. His work has been featured on the covers of albums from artists like Kanye West, Future and Cleveland's own Kid Cudi. State of play: The exhibit starts in the museum's atrium with a recreation of the Yumedono, or Hall of Dreams, at Horyuji Temple in Japan. Murakami worked with the design team from the award-winning TV series "Shōgun" to create a replica of the octagonal structure. The inside is illuminated by four stunning Murakami paintings. Between the lines: The exhibit then moves downstairs to the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Exhibition Hall and Gallery. The two large rooms showcase a wide range of Murakami's work, from fine art paintings and anime to fiberglass and acrylic manga sculptures. 💭 Troy's thought bubble: Murakami intends the inside of the Yumedono to metaphorically transport you into a different world, and you certainly get that effect. The brilliant colors in the gallery inspire a wide range of emotions. As one guest told me, "This entire space makes me feel happy." If you go: The exhibit is exclusive to CMA members through May 24. It opens to the general public on May 25. Tickets are required and are $30 for adults, $15 for children 6-17.
Axios
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Axios
Orchestra's Opera & Humanities Festival focuses on reconciliation
Opera, art and community dialogue take center stage in Cleveland over the next 10 days. Why it matters: The Cleveland Orchestra's annual Mandel Opera & Humanities Festival is the celebrated ensemble's signature spring event. It features various performances, art exhibitions and public forums in partnership with other local cultural institutions, starting Friday and running through May 25. The intrigue: The theme of this year's festival is "Reconciliation," inspired by the early 20th-century opera "Jenůfa" and its themes of trauma, forgiveness and redemption. The Cleveland Orchestra, led by conductor Franz Welser-Möst, will perform the opera three times at Severance Music Center on May 17, 22 and 25. State of play: The full lineup of festivities begins at 8:30am Friday with a symposium on immigration at Severance. Other highlights include performances by Chucho Valdés Royal Quartet and pianist Michelle Cann, as well as forums and exhibitions hosted by the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ideastream and The City Club of Cleveland. Flashback: The Opera & Humanities Festival began in 2023 as the brainchild of André Gremillet, president and CEO of the Cleveland Orchestra. The inaugural theme was "The American Dream" followed by "Power" in 2024. What they're saying:"The goal was to use our annual opera performances to feature not just the Cleveland Orchestra but the incredible cultural scene we have in Cleveland," Gremillet tells Axios. "The festival is based on music first and foremost, but we also want to stimulate some interesting conversations on topics that are timely and important to the community." If you go: The festival features a mix of ticketed and free events.
