Murakami Takashi

Brooklyn Museum is now having an exhibition of Murakami Takashi's art work. Murakami Takashi (村上隆) is one of the most influential and acclaimed contemporary artists to have emerged from Asia. His art style is mainly directed by Japanese animation. As he said, animation is "more representative of modern day Japanese life."

However, I think his art is too much alike Andy Warhol's. He repackages low culture and sells it to all other markets in different forms, including $5,000 limited-edition Louise Vuillton handbags. His distinctive style--superflat--has the characteristics of both consumerism and sexual fetishism. In this aspect, he is more like a business man selling products of popular culture than an artist searching for a deeper meaning of his work.

There are different levels of goals for artists. Scott McCloud divides the purpose of art work into six levels: (1) idea, (2) form, (3) idiom, (4) structure, (5) craft, (6) surface. The sixth level artists only consider what appears on their medium, whereas the first level artists ask for the purpose of their art. Murakami's art work is between the second and third levels. He developes his own personal idiom of art and discovers all that the art form is capable of, but he doesn't seems to struggle with the meaning of his art pieces other than selling them.

What is the level of my art work? Emmmm......I must belong to the seventh level.