CK: What happens when art
reaches a mass audience - is that called fashion and film?
TM
: When my work reaches a mass audience, then it means I'm able to
communicate well. It's very important to share that feeling. I want a big
audience so that my pieces can survive in the future.
Louis Vuitton store, New York, 2004 / Photo: Cheryl Kaplan
CK : The fashion collaboration you did for the
Spring/Summer 2003 collection with Marc Jacobs, the artistic director for
Louis Vuitton, had a massive public impact and appeal. Your first major
fashion project was with Naoki Takizawa for Issey Miyake in 2000, when you
made a reversible raincoat. You've also created a line of your own
products that are available at galleries and online. Your characters have
been the connecting point for both your art and fashion.
TM:
The LV design ideas came from Marc Jacobs' orders and direction, as a
response to is request. It was an illustration that I did - it was design
work. I don't regret using my characters in the context of fashion. Louis
Vuitton work is exactly that: design work. The collection is separate from
my sculpture, like the
Lonesome Cowboy. I didn't really use those characters in the context
of fashion.
CK: But you used certain symbols on the handbags
that married with the LV monogram.
TM: I did the collection
with Louis Vuitton and Issey Miyake, but it was the fashion designer who
wanted to carry my design; the work wasn't linked to a pure art concept. I
see the work I do as an artist as being separate from the work I've done
for fashion and design.
Takashi Murakami: My Lonesome Cowboy, Courtesy: Kaikai Kiki. Reproduced with
permission. (c)1998 Takashi Murakami. All Rights Reserved.
CK : The Tokyo Girls Bravo exhibition at
Marianne Boesky Gallery is another in a series of curated events you've
done. In what way does this group show of 10 emerging Japanese artists
continue the workshop ensemble idea you've established in N.Y. and Tokyo,
first with
Hiropon (heroin) Factory and now Kaikai Kiki Studio?
TM:
Japanese artists have huge potential, but in Japan, there's no market and
no structure for an art vision in the commercial world. In New York,
there's a big market for fine art. I'd like to bring these artists, to
test this possibility, to see if it's good or bad. I'd like to get a
really good reaction here and then see.
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CK: Has the contemporary art
market changed in Japan?
TM : Yes and no. Yes, because last
year there was the inauguration of the
Mori Art Center, which made a very big and positive impact on Japanese
culture. The Mori building and
town project had a very strong impact. The Japanese economy has been slow.
Public museums don't get money from the government. It's a bad situation
for young Japanese artists.
CK: In talking about his fashion
line, Marc Jacobs said: "I'm not interested in creating pieces for a
museum." This struck me as an interesting contrast to your practice, which
involves art venues.
TM: Marc Jacobs is in the fashion
world, so he doesn't deal with the museum reality, but with the public. At
the moment, I can't really say what the museum reality is.
At
"Tokyo Girls Bravo", Takashi Murakami is knee-deep in admirers. He's even
signing autographs. A crowd of Murakami supporters shuffles out of the
elevator. Everyone looks cute. Murakami poses for a few snapshots. I talk
with Tim Blum from Blum and Poe,
Murakami's L.A. dealer, about Murakami's latest endeavors. Later, Blum
hops into a cab. This is New York.
CHERYL KAPLAN: How
does Takashi Murakami's collaboration with a fashion designer like Marc
Jacobs or Naoki Takizawa differ from his art projects?
TIM BLUM
: Culture is part of the entertainment industry. That blurring of lines
between high and
low into one flat line has been Murakami's credo, falling into the
"Superflat."
CK: Even as Murakami's LV handbag
collaboration hit the knock-off stage, it seemed like part of his
"Superflat" strategy.
TB: That was the dream.
Especially when that image appeared on the cover of
artforum. Takashi was freaking out, and it was ideal. The LV project
catapulted him into mass media and a mass cultural realm. Within the art
world, there were people who took that as fodder that he's a celebrated
designer. The art world is unable to deal with artists addressing a mass
audience. For people who don't understand what he's about, the work can be
looked at as incredibly attractive, cute, majestic, Disney-esque. Murakami
starts out being frustrated with the Japanese art world. Moving his way
through the Western art world, he realizes there aren't a lot of
differences, it's just a bigger market.
Takashi Murakami: Reversed Dauble-Helix, 2003,
Installation at Rockefeller Center New York
Photo: Tom Powel Imagining (c) Public Art Fund
CK: What's the relationship of the "Superflat," a
term you helped invent, to the fashion world, particularly to the Miyake
and Vuitton collections?
TB :
"Superflat" comes from a formal position that deals with
perspectival rendering. Then, there's a theoretical idea of "Superflat" as
a cultural pivoting point. The Superflat exhibition at the MoCA in L.A.
dealt with that head on, including artists from different disciplines.
There was a fashion collaboration
Chiho Aoshima's wall mural collaboration with Issey Miyake for their
spring 2000 campaign re-positioned as an art work.
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