Takashi Murakami, Tan Tan Bo Puking - a.k.a. Gero Tan, 2002, Acrylic on canvas mounted on board, 141 3/4 x 283 7/16 x 2 5/8 in., Collection of Amalia Dayan and Adam Lindemann, Courtesy of Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris and Miami, ©2002 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved

If you live in New York City, or happen to visit before July 13th, you need to check out the Murakami retrospective at the Brooklyn museum.

What?! You don’t know who Takashi Murakami is? You know, like Superflat? Never heard of it? Did you miss the giant eye-covered balloons in front of Rockefeller Center in 2003? Or “Wink” in Grand Central Terminal in 2001? Did you miss “Little Boy,” the otaku-art exhibit curated by Murakami at the Japan Society in 2005?

If you are not an otaku, you may have heard of Murakami as the Japanese artist who did the cover art for the Kayne West album “Graduation”. And if you’re a fashionista (who knows how you reached this site) you might know about Murakami’s collaboration with designer Marc Jacobs making some of the best-selling Louis Vuitton purses of all time.

If you Japanese pop culture, pop art, Kayne West, or Louis Vuitton, this exhibit will appeal to you. There are rooms filled with neon-colored smiling flowers and cartoon characters puking rainbows, for god’s sake, who doesn’t want to see that?

Takashi Murakami, Flower ball (3D), 2002, Acrylic on canvas mounted on board, 39 3/8 inches diameter, 1 15/16 inches depth, Private Collection, courtesy of Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris and Miami, ©2002 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved

The Louis Vuitton Murakami handbags are at the heart of the ©Murakami exhibit, which traveled here from Los Angeles. According to the director of the exhibit, the Murakami show in L.A. attracted huge crowds of first-time museum-goers and many repeat visitors.

At the press opening of the New York version of the show, Brooklyn Museum Director Arnold L. Lehman seemed annoyed as he told reporters, “A lot of people have approached me asking about the appropriateness of the Louis Vuitton shop,” referring to the pricey gift shop at the center of the exhibit, “The purses are not offshoots of Murakami’s work, but the work itself… The museum also houses Tiffany Lamps and Herman Miller furniture one could purchase.”

©Murakami has more than just Louis Vuitton stuff - the exhibit houses more than 90 of Murakami’s works over two floors, including DOB, Hiropan, My Lonesome Cowboy¹, the series of Cream and Milk screens, rooms full of Jellyfish Eyes, and the Second Missin Project Ko2 Advanced series of giant transforming anime plane girls.

Takashi Murakami, Installation view of Second Mission Project ko2 (1999), at Wonder Festival, Summer 2000, Oil paint, acrylic, synthetic resins, fiberglass and iron, Courtesy of Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, Galerie, Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris and Miami, and Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo, Photo by Kazuo Fukunaga, ©1999 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Murakami is famous for crossing the line between art and commerce. Inspired by Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, Murakami aims to totally cash in the merch of his pop art (unlike Warhol, who died before he could collect on T-shirt sales). Downstairs from the Vuitton gift shop is another, more reasonably priced gift shop featuring pins, books, T-shirts, and stuffed animals.

Irritatingly the merch in the proletariat gift shop does not include Kayne West T-shirts or Hiropan blind-box figures - instead, all the toys and keychains are promoting KaiKai and KiKi, the title characters of a two-episode anime series playing on a loop in the exhibit. KaiKai and KiKi are alien bunny things who pilot a living spaceship creature and go on childlike fantasy adventures. One episode has a lot of sci-fi and Godzilla-like elements, and the other episode is more like My Neighbor Totoro (insomuch as magic seeds are planted). The color cards during the end credits pay homage to classic anime series like Dog of Flanders, but the episode content is a very modern and expensive-looking 3D CGI made to look 2D.

Apparently Murakami’s anime was produced here in NYC, at the KaiKai KiKi Animation Studio located in Queens. The studio was formerly called the Hiropan Factory, named after Warhol’s factory. Murakami spends half the year living in Tokyo, and half in New York.

KaiKai KiKi is not Murakami’s first animation. A Louis Vuitton-CG short is widely available on youtube. An early Murakami animated short featured DOB, a blue Mickey-Mouse-looking character. Murakami says, “DOB is based on Japanese manga and game stuff, [like] Sonic and Doraemon, but many Americans ask about his relation to Disney…”

Murakami knew he had made it big when pirated DOB figures appeared on the streets of Hong Kong. In ©Murakami, Murakami himself is the brand being sold. Hitching on to Vuitton as a brand name is brilliant if your goal is to get pirated.

If Murakami is a sell out, I am totally buying. After watching KaiKai and KiKi I immediately bought a KaiKai pin.

Directions to the Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum’s page about ©Murakami

¹ My Lonesome Cowboy is NSFW. I was surprised to find reproductions of the sculpture on display in front of pachinko parlors across Japan.

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