Takashi Murakami Invades Versailles

On September 12th, 2010, Japanese pop phenomenon Takashi Murakami is set to be only the third contemporary artist to exhibit his work at France’s Versailles Palace. Murakami’s flash pastiches of violent colors and gleeful cartoon characters will grace fifteen of the palace’s rooms, including the King and Queen’s chambers.

Murakami was the only artist to make Time Magazine’s list of the World’s 100 Most Influential People, in 2008. Working in a great circle, the artist borrows from “low brow” art, recasting its pop sensibilities and cartoonishness as “high art.”

He sells the newly haute couture works at inflated prices, though not before copying and excerpting portions for mass production, to be reprinted and sold on merchandise such as pillows, key chains, t-shirts, and Louie Vuitton bags.

In obscuring the demarcation of high/low, Murakami challenges the art world’s pretensions, as well as its preconceptions of Japanese culture regarding high/low art. This has proven an amazingly successful provocation: Murakami’s work has fetched in excess of 15 million dollars per piece at auction.

The impetus behind Murakami’s work is simple: to create a new visual voice for Japan, by integrating the country’s post-war explosion of radically disparate cultural subsets. In looking to Japan’s diverse, fanatical subcultures, the artist noted a drastic departure from antiquated Japanese norms and artistic traditions.

The mischievous joy of Murakami’s work has confronted many western stereotypes of Japanese culture and its austerity. His work is, by nature, outgoing.

The brazen display of such gleefully poppy art in the halls of one of the world’s most beautiful palaces is sure to turn some heads, and Murakami probably wouldn’t have it any other way.

In tapping such unabashedly cartoonish, sunny, and strange streams for his apparently endless flux of exuberant creations, Murakami blatantly challenges preconceived notions of is and isn’t “art.”

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by william Gish
Gloobbi Art

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