Takashi Murakami has gained mass popularity with his trademark Superflat style and colorful pantheon of cute icons including smiling flowers, jellyfish eyes, and Mr. DOB. Similar to Andy Warhol, Murakami melds consumer culture and fine art with the help of a factory of assistants. "©Murakami" innovatively brings the two worlds of consumer culture and fine art together by housing a Louis Vuitton boutique (with Murakami-designed bags ready for purchase) inside the museum. Art for art's sake is over. This is art for art's sale.

Go here to see various works by Murakami in a sort of catalogue.
An article by Swindle Magazine.
"I always emphasize that the power of the dark side exists even in cuteness and in the thoughts of peace-addicted people." - Murakami
An article on an exhibition of his work.
Murakami remixes modern Western art and traditional Japanese art, while denying the hierarchy of high "art" culture vs. low pop culture.

In his tour, Murakami points out how the skull looks like a mushroom cloud. He has made death cute and non-threatening by inserting his smiling flowers in the eye sockets. "Smiling is sometimes a hard job," says Murakami while standing next to the very cheery Kawaii!Vacances d'été.

See Murakami's tour here. (Recommended.)

While in New York we stumbled upon an exhibition of Murakami's in Brooklyn and felt a deep revulsion. Here is a stumbling of the Internet's puking.

(Try, for one, to understand that the smiling flowers -- the first image above -- covered a room, all four walls, and contained flower ball sculptures inside. That people really love this.)

(To be more descriptive, you started on the first floor of the exhibit which featured otaku supersmooth, (pre-)pubescent cyberborg bodied 'beings'; the overall feeling one of twirling semen or super smiles or Louis Vuitton -- at the end of the first floor portion. You then went to the stairs, where things started to decay. Skulls, mushrooms, puking creatures. Still smooth and still cute, still with flowers garlanding the worlds -- eg., flowers ringing in the eyes of the mushroom skull clouds -- see pink backgrounded image above. Occasional traditional Japanese style mixed into this. Shinto scroll presented to the huge creature puking about to die and never loving until this last possible moment -- is he on the wrong floor? Such is rebirth now. Rebirth in the pocket. And yet, here it is.)

("free smile with every meal", and what's a man? a woman? they say to watch your breath, and we would have it hypostatized. Murakami, do you paint the world with childish glee?)

In 2008, Takashi Murakami made Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People list, and was the only visual artist to do so.

I've read somewhere that whereas Andy Warhol took consumer goods, 'low' pop culture and made it 'high' art, Takashi Murakami takes consumer goods, 'low' pop culture, and makes them...'high' art? 'low' art? consumer goods?...

I recommend these videos, in this order:
One
Two
Three
Four

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1.) I almost forgot about this (from a while back):
Board game unravels confusing treaty lingo

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1.) The secret of meditation is the art of unlearning.
Mind is learning;
meditation is unlearning:
That is -- die constantly to your experience;
let it not imprison you;
experience becomes a dead weight
in the living and flowing, riverlike consciousness.

Live in the moment unburdened by the past,
flow in the moment unblocked by the mind,
and you will be in meditation.

from Osho, A Cup of Tea

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2.) Please try releasing your hold, and releasing your hold, observe: What is body-and-mind? What is conduct? What is birth-and-death? What is buddha-dharma? What are the laws of the world? What, in the end, are mountains, rivers, earth, human beings, animals, and houses? When you observe thoroughly, it follows that the two aspects of motion and stillness do not arise at all. Though motion and stillness do not arise, things are not fixed.

from Dōgen, Guidelines of Studying the Way, chapter 8

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1.) "A ninth-century Muslim mystic described the tones of a flute as 'the voice of Satan crying over the world because he wants to make it outlive destruction; he cries over things that pass; he wants to reanimate them, while God only remains. Satan has been condemned to hold to things that pass and this is why he cries.'"

quoted in A World History of Art, Sixth Edition, by Hugh Honour and John Fleming

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also, for one more fantastic photo of the Mezquita in Cordoba, Spain (formerly a mosque, now a cathedral), click here

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1.) http://muvtor.btk.ppke.hu/etalon/522.jpg
from the Book of Kells (early 9th century AD),
an illustrated manuscript on vellum

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Ygdrasill:
WHOSE ROOTS ARE
STARS IN THE HUMAN MIND

(film title by Stan Brakhage 1997)

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2.) Although [Wes] Anderson had made up the main character's unlikely name, it was eventually learned that there is a real Steve Zissou, a trial lawyer in New York. After being contacted by the film's production company, Zissou granted permission for his name to be used in the film, and he is listed in the film's credits.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Zissou#Real-world_references

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