You can see why The New Yorker (March 28, 2011, p 112) said "Japanese art ...[rose to] fame, a decade ago, ...[with] the master of plastic-fantastic puerility, Takashi Murakami,... [s]ometimes hailed as Asia's Andy Warhol...
Another source, The Art Newspaper, gives us a view of Takashi Murakami's artistic life:
'...Murakami began collecting 30 years ago while he was still a student.
....[That group now] include hundreds of everyday items such as beer mugs, ephemera like fantasy figurines and antiques, ...
'A lot of the collection “looks like garbage”, Murakami tells The Art Newspaper. But there are also major contemporary works in his 1,000-strong collection, most notably Anselm Kiefer’s "Merkaba" .... (2010), a massive fragment of airplane fuselage encased in a glass-and-steel vitrine. The sculpture was shown at Gagosian Gallery in New York in 2010, and when Murakami saw the work there, he says he was “moved” but had no intention of buying it. However, “after the exhibition I enquired whether [it] had been sold and since it was Gagosian, my gallery, they offered an instalment payment [scheme], so I bought it.”...
'The purchase cemented his enduring love affair with the work of Kiefer, whom Murakami describes as “the symbol of my becoming an artist”. He was first introduced to the German artist’s work via a “Japanese imitator”, Shinro Ohtake. “After seeing an exhibition of Ohtake’s work in Japan, I became a contemporary artist,” Murakami says. “But then I realised that he was imitating Kiefer. So my entire life has been based on a misunderstanding. When I first came to New York [in 1998], I finally saw a real Kiefer in a show at the Museum of Modern Art. When I stood in front of it, I cried. The work was Osiris and Isis [1985-87], a painting of a step pyramid, and I was awestruck.”...
'Murakami first started buying art and objects as a student 30 years ago. “Even when I was at university, I was buying prints and photographs, so it began early on,” he says. The first work he bought was Self Portrait with Skull (1982) by the German artist Horst Janssen. “I was 20 and I asked to pay for it in six instalments. I really had to negotiate.
'“I don’t really remember why I was buying early on,” he continues. “When I was studying, I had part-time jobs, so I had money to buy art. But once I started working in earnest as an artist, I had no money, so I stopped buying. My serious collecting started around ten years ago.” Today his collection comprises more than 1,000 works, which Murakami stores along with his own works-in-progress in a vast, factory-like structure in an industrial suburb of Tokyo.
'“Collecting is like an illness; I wouldn’t recommend it,” Murakami says, adding that his “illness” might be incurable and that his purchases continue apace as the exhibition’s opening date approaches....'
....[That group now] include hundreds of everyday items such as beer mugs, ephemera like fantasy figurines and antiques, ...
'A lot of the collection “looks like garbage”, Murakami tells The Art Newspaper. But there are also major contemporary works in his 1,000-strong collection, most notably Anselm Kiefer’s "Merkaba" .... (2010), a massive fragment of airplane fuselage encased in a glass-and-steel vitrine. The sculpture was shown at Gagosian Gallery in New York in 2010, and when Murakami saw the work there, he says he was “moved” but had no intention of buying it. However, “after the exhibition I enquired whether [it] had been sold and since it was Gagosian, my gallery, they offered an instalment payment [scheme], so I bought it.”...
'The purchase cemented his enduring love affair with the work of Kiefer, whom Murakami describes as “the symbol of my becoming an artist”. He was first introduced to the German artist’s work via a “Japanese imitator”, Shinro Ohtake. “After seeing an exhibition of Ohtake’s work in Japan, I became a contemporary artist,” Murakami says. “But then I realised that he was imitating Kiefer. So my entire life has been based on a misunderstanding. When I first came to New York [in 1998], I finally saw a real Kiefer in a show at the Museum of Modern Art. When I stood in front of it, I cried. The work was Osiris and Isis [1985-87], a painting of a step pyramid, and I was awestruck.”...
'Murakami first started buying art and objects as a student 30 years ago. “Even when I was at university, I was buying prints and photographs, so it began early on,” he says. The first work he bought was Self Portrait with Skull (1982) by the German artist Horst Janssen. “I was 20 and I asked to pay for it in six instalments. I really had to negotiate.
'“I don’t really remember why I was buying early on,” he continues. “When I was studying, I had part-time jobs, so I had money to buy art. But once I started working in earnest as an artist, I had no money, so I stopped buying. My serious collecting started around ten years ago.” Today his collection comprises more than 1,000 works, which Murakami stores along with his own works-in-progress in a vast, factory-like structure in an industrial suburb of Tokyo.
'“Collecting is like an illness; I wouldn’t recommend it,” Murakami says, adding that his “illness” might be incurable and that his purchases continue apace as the exhibition’s opening date approaches....'
I like Takashi Murakami. He is reminds me of Koons, only with originality and intelligence.
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