{"id":24,"date":"2015-12-15T02:25:00","date_gmt":"2015-12-15T02:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lovejoyphotographic.com\/blog\/?p=24"},"modified":"2020-03-24T04:00:39","modified_gmt":"2020-03-24T04:00:39","slug":"murakami-at-the-mori","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lovejoyphotographic.com\/blog\/2015\/12\/15\/murakami-at-the-mori\/","title":{"rendered":"Murakami at the Mori"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Meeting Takashi Murakami at the opening reception of his \u201cInochi\u201d\nexhibition at the Blum & Poe gallery in Los Angeles in 2004 was a special\nexperience for me. He was a newly minted art superstar, just two years into his\n13-year collaboration with Marc Jacobs on Louis Vuitton\u2019s best-selling line\never. Many were likening him to Andy Warhol for successfully blurring the lines\nbetween art and commerce whilst liberally referencing pop culture; he would say\nhe simply moved the lines. Four years prior, he curated the \u201cSuperflat\u201d\nexhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, which would come\nto be the moniker for the postmodern art movement he spearheaded and included\nglobally acclaimed artists such as Yoshitomo Nara (also represented by Blum\n& Poe). It\u2019s ironic (and fortunate) that what prompted him to move his\nsights abroad was his dissatisfaction with the art market in his native Japan\nbecause his work, and that of his compatriots is what whet many Westerners\u2019 insatiable\nappetite for Japanese art. When I met him, I was starstruck, and had no idea\nthat I would one day be calling his home mine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When I visited Tokyo for the first time the following year, it\nwas my interest in another artist that brought me to the Mori Tower. The scale\nand skill with which Mariko Mori created her photographic composites was\nimpressive. When I learned that her father was a real estate tycoon whom she\nhad convinced to place a world-class art museum atop the centerpiece of his\ninnovatively designed new urban centre, Roppongi Hills, I had to go. I remember\nthere was an exhibition on urban planning at the time, comparing the population\ngrowth and forecast for the world\u2019s largest cities. That was when I learned\nwhat an amalgamated population was. It\u2019s also when I came across some striking\npostcards with stylized illustrations of the Mori Tower\u2019s construction by Akira\nYamaguchi in the gift shop (you may not remember him as the bellboy in \u201cLost in\nTranslation\u201d). The flat, yet intricately detailed work reminded me of\nMurakami\u2019s own, I bought one of everything, and wished to someday see a\nMurakami exhibit at this venue. I love it when wishes are granted and nothing\nbad happens as a result of making them (that I know of anyway). The show has\nbeen up since Halloween, but tour leading around this time often takes me away\nfrom Tokyo in favor of the fiery autumn foliage. The exhibition is titled \u201cThe\n500 Arhats\u201d and features one of the largest paintings in history (300 m2<\/sup>),\nwhich Murakami originally made for Qatar as a token of gratitude for their\nprompt support after the tragedy of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. After more\nthan a decade of wild success, I am happy to see he has continued to astound,\nbringing us more visually awesome conceptual feasts, and conflating complex and\nseemingly disparate tropes onto a deceptively accessible and attractive\ntwo-dimensional plane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Murakami\u2019s exhibition will be at the Mori until March 6th<\/sup>,\n2016. Tickets are \u00a51,600\/adult, hours are 10am-10pm every day, except Tuesday,\nwhen they close to the general public at 5pm; admission stops half an hour\nbefore closing. On a clear day or night, a trip up to the open sky deck is a\nmust, it only costs an additional \u00a5200, and is one of the finest views in the\ncity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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https:\/\/www.mori.art.museum\/en\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Meeting Takashi Murakami at the opening reception of his \u201cInochi\u201d exhibition at the Blum & Poe gallery in Los Angeles in 2004 was a special experience for me. He was a newly minted art superstar, just two years into his 13-year collaboration with Marc Jacobs on Louis Vuitton\u2019s best-selling line ever. Many were likening him […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":327,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50],"tags":[18,17,16],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lovejoyphotographic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lovejoyphotographic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lovejoyphotographic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lovejoyphotographic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lovejoyphotographic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lovejoyphotographic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":331,"href":"https:\/\/lovejoyphotographic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions\/331"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lovejoyphotographic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lovejoyphotographic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lovejoyphotographic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lovejoyphotographic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}