Business masquerading as art

'Where can I get his goods?!?' wrote Kimiko, in an e-mail sent to a web-site reporting on Murakami's show at the Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York.

Takashi Murakami is one of Japan's better known contemporary artists. Famous for his Mr DOB character and other works that are heavily influenced by the Japanese world of animation (or anime as it is commonly known). Recently, he has exhibited in Paris and, as I write this, he has a one-man show at the Serpentine Gallery, London. However, he is more well-known in the U.S., for his solo and group shows, and for his Super Flat show which he curated. 'Super Flat artists create their own version of popular culture to draw attention to the dominance of media, entertainment and consumption,' he said. It was reported that at the American debut of Super Flat in Los Angeles a crowd of over 8,000 guests attended the opening party.

Super Flat is seen as representing Tokyo cool, and cutting edge Japanese art. It blurs the boundaries between art, grahic design, fashion, animation and illustration. The Super Flat Manifesto written by Murakami reads as follows:

'The world of the future might be like Japan is today -super flat. Society, customs, art, culture: all are extremely two-dimensional. It is particularily apparent in the arts that this sensibility has been flowing steadily beneath the surface of Japanese history.
Today, the sensibility is most present in Japanese games and anime, which have become powerful parts of world culture. One way to imagine super flatness is to think of the moment when, in creating a desktop graphic for your computer, you merge a number of distinct layers into one. Though it is not a terribly clear example, the feeling I get is a sense of reality that is very nearly a physical sensation. The reason that I have lined up both the high and the low of Japanese art in this book is to convey this feeling. I would like you, the reader, to experience the moment when the layers of Japanese culture, such as pop, erotic pop, otaku, and H.I.S.ism,fuse into one. [H.I.S. is a discount ticket agency in Japan. By lowering the price of travel abroad, the company is having a profound effect on the relationship between Japan and the West.]'

When the Super Flat show was mounted at the Henry Art Gallery, Chief Curator Elizabeth Brown explained.

'In Japan, Generation X or twenty-somethings are known as shinjinrui, literally 'new human race.' This exhibition presents the artwork of the shinjinrui, young artists fueled
by a culture saturated with Hello Kitty and other cute symbols, computer games, anime, and manga, and often motivated by a desire to revolt against the very consumerism that those symbols represent. Though kawaii
or cute imagery is predominant in Japanese pop culture, many artists corrupt it with sexual and violent content. Multi-media artist Yoshitomo Nara, and Murakami himself, have made an enormous impact on international contemporary art with works that combine adult or complex content with ostensibly angelic protagonists. Bome's female characters embody fantasy personas such as the schoolgirl and cat woman while Henmaru Machino's drawings of hybrid humans are highly sexualized. Digital illustrator Chiho Aoshima's cute girls often cannot escape the violence that is common to popular animation and video games. Artists in the exhibition who work directly in manga and anime demonstrate the deep hybridization of these media.'

Murakami was born in 1963 and holds a PhD from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. Is this man an artist or is he a businessman who happens to use art as his product? Is it art at all?

A number of themes seem to drive Murakami. The first is that he comes from a poor background and he says that this has made him want to earn money. In one interview he said he created the Hiropon Factory (a concept based on Warhol's factory) because 'it originates from the marketing reality of having a 0% share of the art market.' However he has also said that he doesn't think his products have long-term commerical viabilty in Japan. 'I wanted to be commercially successful. I just wanted to make a living in the “entertainment” world. What I have done so far was to make a living. And I was highly strategic about what kind of paintings I should make for that purpose.'

Secondly he wants to re-establish the importance of contemporary art.'In Tokyo, contemporary art has no significance,' he has said. To him, fashion, manga, anime are the art forms of the young. He also believes there are no art museums of importance nor curators in Japan. 'Its a hobby for them,' he once said.

Thirdly, he sees Japan as a distinctly discriminatory society, and its youth are feeling more and more alienated, particularly the otaku, the generation that is obsessed with anime. (In the West, they might be referred to as nerds).

But does his work appeal to this disaffected generation? Well not to all.'To be honest,' one young Japanese girl wrote to me, 'I don't like his animation because it's too childish. But I think his anime must be liked in Japan... but I think it's appeal to young people(high school student or more younger..)not to women. But it's true(and it's unfortunate), Japanese people like such cute characters (most of my friends put many cute straps on their mobile phone..), because these help us
to keep our childhood. I think most of people don't like to become an adult.'

Another girl said, 'I guess men loves to have something to hug too, but we all have been thought that men are suppose to be macho, so cute cuddy toys "makes" them sissy?? As for girls, I think we're lucky, it's alright to show that we are "weak", well, that probably tells why high power women have no interest in cute cuddy toys. As for the rest of us, it's alright to show our soft side. Maybe it's a girls' instinct. Maybe it's a feminine thingy. Well, I think majority of these cute cuddy toys never fails to put a smile on our face no matter how bad a day is. Sometimes we even take them as our confidante. It's how I see his characters. They're cute and cuddly.'

And a third: 'I found the Murakami Takashi's home page. I've never seen his picture and his character. Do you like his art? I don't know if I like his picture or not. His illustration is modern. I'm glad that Japanese works internatinally.'

In one interview, Muramkami talked about the fact that he is rarely reported accurately, if at all in Japan. He went onto mention that lack of reporting of a serious nuclear incident.

'It was a kind of news blackout by telling that it was not serious. I think the Tokaimura nuclear accident is one of the worst disasters after the World War II. It was as harmful as Aum Cult’s gas attack in Japan. The Japanese government suppressed the truth. I’m afraid many people will be dying because of the nuclear accident. I learned about the accident from the news in New York, although no Japanese newspapers carried it. I also read through the Internet. Most Japanese don’t bother to get such information. Even if they do, they would not be galvanized into action because they don’t believe that their action would affect any changes.'

As I was writing this I read a report in the Japan Times.

'For years, Japan has been cited for violating prisoners' rights by the United Nations Human Rights Commission, but has done nothing. The UNHRC knows about the leather belt; and the rules about solitary confinement that force an inmate to maintain the painful seiza sitting position for days on end; and the forced labor (Japan says inmates are paid for their work, but they have no choice about whether or not to do it); and the lack of exercise time; but the Japanese people don't know about these things because, supposedly, if they did they'd feel bad about them.'

Currently, Murakami is collaborating with Louis Vuitton to redesign their logo and symbols to create a new range of bags for Japan. (Which is LV's single largest and most profitable market).

Murakami is a brand, making money by selling both cute merchandise to (some) girls in Japan, and anime models to his otaku fans. Meanwhile he critizises the state of Japanese society when at the same time he uses a cross-over art form - anime - a means of entertainment by which the young evade the issues that face them. And that's where I have a distance with Murakmi. I agree with him that contemporary art has little impact in Japan; that society is discrimatory and that the young feel alientated. Yes the media is conservative, and yet rather than address these issues, he produces non-confrontational art, merely mirroring the superficial anime and manga dominated sub-culture. For me, despite what he says, he has lost the passion to use art to express his feelings. He is actually falling into the same trap he despises: people doing nothing about the ills of society because they believe they will have no affect. In a word, his art is 'flat'.

Mr DOB - and at least some of his other characters - has no more depth than Hello Kitty. The difference is that Hello Kitty is not positioned as art but as a commercial product. Murakami claims that whilst his art is commercial - and he wants to make money - it is nonetheless art. But does he think that the young girls and the otaku who buy the merchandise think they're art collectors?

Yes there are more subversive elements to his work; over time his characters have become more absrtact, they begin to fall apart; kalidasope doodles emerge, mushrooms blossom, eyes sprout. But much of this is produced via his factory system: he sketches an idea, an assistant works it up on a computer, and finally someone else creates the final form.

I am not convinced that Murakami is an artist. I don't find him in his work, I don't see passion or tension or thought or, to be an honest an inventive artistic idea. I see a business idea: use kawaii based art as a foundation to create a range of merchandise. And I think that's a good one.

Murakami is just one of many artists working in this sub-culture arena. Art can be anything you want to asign the tag. But it doesn't make it great or even good. In Japan, there are too many graphic designers who in their spare time create what they think is art. We had two shows at The Gallery featuring this type of work. Most of it was vacuous rubbish. I don't buy into the claim that this is urban, youth directed cool, and that the artists are breaking down the old-fashioned barriers that define what is and isn't art. What is happening is that technology replaces content. In fact not only are many of them borrowing imagery from manga and anime without adding to it, most are merely replicating one another. There is no shock of the new here. It might be a mirror of today's Tokyo society but I'd rather see the authentic picture by walking the streets of Shinjuku.

Maybe one day Disney will follow Louis Vuittons lead and license Murakami's Mr DOB and create a Mr DOB world which we can all see at DisneyLand.

Sources: Journal of Contemporary Art 2001.

Japan Times November 17 2002.

my reality - contemporary art and the culture of japanese animation 2001

jam tokyo-london 2001

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(c) 2002.