Critical, cultured, conflicted and borderline chameleon-like — artist Takashi Murakami’s nearly 40-year career has been an ongoing process of reinvention.
The celebrated Japanese artist gets the career retrospective treatment at the Vancouver Art Gallery Feb. 3 to May 6 as the only Canadian offering of The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg.
Murakami’s works dabble in all manners of directions: manga, anime, paintings, sculptures, 2D, 3D and even movements that he himself invented.
Enter “Superflat.”
“It was about joining the high and the low art and in that I mean his acceptance of commercial projects and collaborations with fashion designers and brands,” said Diana Freundel, the gallery’s associate curator of Asian arts. “He was doing things considered as low art and combining them with pop culture.”
Those pop culture ties led Murakami to his first high-profile collaboration with designer Louis Vuitton in the early 2000s. In 2007, he designed the album cover for Kanye West’s album Graduation.
More than 50 pieces are included in the retrospective and are laid out chronologically to follow Murakami’s career arc from the early ’80s to present day. Most of the works are paintings, along with a small smattering of sculptures. The level of detail and scope found in his artwork is massive.
“He never drops one thing or subject matter,” Freundel said. “In many ways, they’re connected and related to one another.”
For a guy known for his outlandish outfits and style, the exhibit’s name falls in line with that outside-the-box thinking. An octopus will eat parts of its body in an attempt to fend off disease or death.
“It’s this idea that it will feed on itself in order to thrive,” Freundel said. “Murakami practises like that.”
Freundel characterized the artist’s formative years as rooted in social commentary. The style known as Nihonga attempts to reconcile traditional Japanese customs with western modernization. As his career evolved, so too did his output, to the point that his work has been shown on virtually every continent.
“He pays attention, but he is also part of popular culture,” Freundel said. “He is very invested, I think, in being a part of the sub-cultures, the popular culture, the new technologies, he’s very in touch with what’s happening in the visual arts but also outside of it.”
And as is the case with any high-concept art show, there’s a Beastie Boys link.
The Vancouver exhibit is no different, as an exhibit preview and private birthday bash for the artist who will be in attendance are slated for Feb. 2 at both the art gallery and the Commodore Ballroom. The shindig at the Commodore will be headlined by former Beastie Boys DJ, Mix Master Mike.
For ticket and exhibit info, see vanartgallery.bc.ca.
