Takashi Murakami Versus Himself

Murakami's caricature of himself vomiting with happy flowers behind him

Last week my colleagues and I had a chance to see the latest Takashi Murakami show being held at Tai Kwun Contemporary that runs until September 1 minus the hordes of crowds. I saw his show last year at the Vancouver Art Gallery called The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg, and none of the pieces in there were in this exhibition in Hong Kong.

Entitled Murakami vs Murakami, this show gives another side of the artist that are on a more personal level, as well as site-specific pieces, sculptures, animation, costumes and even carpet! Visitors had to wear shoe covers in order to tour the exhibition as there are two rooms covered with Murakami carpet!

The curious The Birth of a Universe sculpture in gold

We were advised to go to the third floor then walk down and the first room had carpet covered in colourful skulls. In the middle of the large room is a giant gold leaf sculpture called The Birth Cry of a Universe after Murakami worked on it for 10 years.

It's several layers of creatures with nasty spiky teeth, collapsing on top of each other. Why one would make it in gold... is it meant to be ironic? Bling bling? Grotesque yet grand? We don't quite know what to make of it.

The next room is filled with mannequins all looking uniform in orange jumpsuits, and there are pieces from Murakami's own personal art collection. There are photographs of Larry Gagosian, prints of illustrations by Andy Warhol, some strange pieces of sushi that have images of women on them...

After walking down the spiral staircase we were immediately taken by the several costumes the Japanese artist designed -- with him as the mannequin in white complete with glasses, white beard and white hair. He is making fun of himself wearing them in various poses and they're hilarious.

Murakami being eaten by Mr DOB

He's dressed in a giant ball covered in his famous smiling flowers and he's even wearing a sunflower headdress complete with green leggings and even sneakers covered in his signature sunflowers. In another one he has a hot pink octopus on his head and a colourful suit with octopus arms on the blazer. Maybe Murakami should design his own line of clothing...

Even better he is being eaten by one his own creatures Mr DOB, actually Murakami's alter ego, or wearing what looks like a massive kimono but really it's a humungous polo shirt of his happy flowers, funky pants and giant slippers. His creativity really knows no bounds.

Another room features the superflat flowers. Murakami's theory of superflat refers to not only the perspectival flatness on the picture plane in Japanese art, but also the rejection of hierarchical divisions between high and low art, and of society itself.

This room is also covered in carpet featuring every possible shade of his flowers from red, green, blue and yellow that are all coded with numbers... it's really nerdy! There are giant sunflower cushions to sit on and watch a Murakami animation that is so absurd I burst out laughing when a creature that was terrorizing a city spewed out a giant piece of turd... thank goodness we couldn't smell it!

Cute (but expensive) flower cushions on the flower carpet

I also love the way Murakami is very willing to make fun of himself and the way he looks. There's a caricature of him vomiting some colourful stuff from his mouth, his eyes looking glazed. The walls were covered in the flower wallpaper and one of my colleagues thinks superfan Murakami collectors probably have the same wallpaper on their walls... how crazy is that?

The final room is a serene departure from the previous one, though it's completely covered in gold. In a way it harks back to Warhol's Silver Factory, but up several notches with the wow factor. There's a giant gold sculpture called Flower Parent and Child, a caricature of Murakami raising his right hand in salute with his dog Pom, the first creature with whom he could really express his love -- even though he is married...

Murakami vs Murakami is such a curious exhibition that reveals so many facets of the artist and his evolution of work. His mind must be going non-stop with so many ideas that he has to have a giant team of people to execute them all -- brilliantly too.

A gold sculpture of Murakami and dog Pom

He and Jeff Koons are the two artists who don't physically have a hand in every single piece of work they produce, and yet they claim them as their own. However it's no different from artists from other periods in history who relied on apprentices to help them too.

Nevertheless the size, scale and various mediums Murakami produces is staggering and doesn't seem to be stopping anytime soon.

Murakami vs Murakami
June 1-September 1, 2019
Tai Kwun Contemporary
10 Hollywood Road
Central
www.taikwun.hk
Tai Kwun Contemporary

Review: The Price of Everything

Artist Larry Poons on his way to his studio to paint in The Price of Everything

The art market is a fickle one, and it's just like the stock market -- it's a combination of experts who proclaim who's hot and who's not, fueled by media coverage and those who follow, wanting to get a piece of the action with lots of money involved.

Meanwhile the one who makes the actual art -- the artist -- continues to be the starving artist... well the ones who consider themselves purists.

That's the crux of The Price of Everything, a fascinating documentary by award-winning director Nathaniel Kahn.



We don't actually get to see Kahn, but we hear him periodically asking people questions -- how much is art worth? Is it really worth that much? Who's to say its value? And why did you buy it?

He talks to all kinds of people, including Amy Cappellazzo at Sotheby's who has masterminded an upcoming auction and she is so pleased with herself as she shows off the final proofs of the catalogue that will go to print.

Cappellazzo admits she is most excited about the chase; getting those pieces together. Now she's coasting and expect the sale will surpass US$100 million.

George Condo painting with an oil stick on canvas

Kahn talks to some of the artists whose works are featured in the upcoming sale, like George Condo, Gerhard Richter, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, and Marilyn Minter.

We watch Condo create a painting from start to finish, building a base of thick colours all over the large canvas before drawing faces with a thick oil stick. Part way through working on the painting, he paints over half the canvas to repaint it over again, showing that artists are constantly working through their paintings -- it's not perfect the first time they put paint to canvas.

Meanwhile Minter's work is so intricate that it looks like a photograph of a woman behind a shower stall, insinuating sexual undertones. She laughs when people realize one of her paintings is actually someone's vagina and then have second thoughts of buying it. Nevertheless, she says money-wise she manages to get by without compromising herself.

Nigerian-born artist Crosby says she produces 12 works a year, but when the film was shot, she had a newborn baby, which cut down her production to about six to eight pieces. While she would like to make more art work, she feels she can't just churn them out -- they wouldn't have the same depth in terms of technique or meaning.

Jeff Koons explains how he works on all his pieces

However these artists contrast with Jeff Koons, who has a number of people working for him in a massive studio, at least two people working on each painting -- painstakingly copying masterpieces -- but the twist is adding half a shiny sphere to the work so that the viewer gets to be a part of the painting.

When Kahn asks Koons if he really is working on each piece, the American artist claims he is, having set up an intricate system of paints that he instructs his artists on how to apply them... he also says there is no way he could finish so much work unless he had help.

Others also suggest Koons knows how to play the game, able to sweet talk people into buying his work, from paintings to sculptures to his collaborated Louis Vuitton bags. He even manages to sell art futures -- how about buying a piece of art he's working on now that will be available in three years? Some collectors snap that up.

His star continues to rise, and he is the complete opposite of Larry Poons, a relatively reclusive artist who seemed to drop off the art world's radar several years ago so some people thought he wasn't even alive. But all he wants to do is just focus on his work -- he doesn't want to get involved in the dirty business of money. He lives a very simple life in the country, holed up in his studio painting very long canvases.

Wealthy art collector Stefan Edlis in his New York apartment

Many years ago he had a specific style of doing dots and gets annoyed that people only like this style and don't think artists can evolve to do other things. Poons keeps saying how he wants to be like Mozart and Beethoven.

Meanwhile Kahn also visits art collector Stefan Edlis and viewers can see his stunning collection of art all over the walls of his New York apartment. Kahn asks him how much some works were when he bought them. The usual refrain is around US$10 million. And how much are they worth now? Oh around US$100 million. Uh huh.

It's hard to tell if Edlis really is an art lover or he strictly looks at his art collection as good investments that happen to look pretty on his walls. He keeps track of them on an Excel spreadsheet.

A Jew originally from Germany, Edlis even has a statue called Him that is a mini version of Adolf Hitler in a brown tweed jacket kneeling, his eyes looking up to the right. Kahn asks Edlis about acquiring the statue, but he doesn't seem to care about the meaning behind it. Or is he trying to make Kahn feel silly for asking that question?

And then there's the art historians who are mortified by the business of art, and these works should really be in museums which are more democratic. Jerry Saltz, an art critic agrees, and says that each time he goes to an art auction he feels it will be the last time he will ever see the work in person because they will be sold and then never see the light of day, either because they are hung on someone's wall or worse kept in storage for no one to admire.

And after an exhilarating evening at Sotheby's seeing art works go for tens of millions of dollars, they really do end up in a non-descript suburb that has a giant storage facility -- for artwork.

Poons finally gets another showing, an art dealer who perhaps thinks the artist is undervalued and wants to make some money off of him. The paintings themselves are a gorgeous play of colour, mostly pastels, but again, what are these works really worth?

The Price of Everything
Director by Nathaniel Kahn
1 hour, 38 minutes

Art Basel Sneak Peek

Subodh Gupta's Start.Stop, with tiffins and pots moving on sushi belts

This afternoon I had an opportunity to preview Art Basel and this year was perhaps more commercial than ever. Usually the media have a chance to quickly wander around for an hour or two before VIP clients come in, but today there was no such head start.

Ethereal moving piece by Japanese artist Shinji Ohmaki

Instead at 2pm the doors were flung open -- not without security being hawk-eyed about people carrying backpacks -- and everyone flooded in, reporters and collectors alike into two floors in the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre.

At about 3.30pm the first sale of the day was already made -- a 1975 Willem de Kooning painting named Untitled XII sold for US$35 million. Throughout the afternoon I saw many well-heeled clients -- or as my colleague liked to call them Beijing Bourgeois Bling -- were talking to gallery staff about pieces they liked, and no doubt prices too.

Bluebird Planter featuring real flowers by Jeff Koons

Another colleague reminded me that many of these pieces sold were prearranged earlier. So much for impulse buying. The fair is really about the business of art, though we did see a few pieces that were interesting.

This year the biggest name is Jeff Koons, and he was showing some pieces, including a massive bird made of stainless steel decorated with real flowers called Bluebird Planter. There were a few large works called Encounters pieces that are meant to be more accessible and usually catch people's attention.

Shinji Ohmaki's Liminal Air Space-Time is like watching fish swim in a tank -- a light white fabric billows gracefully up and down, kind of like a massive jellyfish bobbing in mid-air.

Performance art of cleaning giant bowls and plates

Another Encounters work is Start. Stop by Subodh Gupta, featuring tiffin boxes and pots riding on sushi belts in concentric circles. The artist recalls the fate of the "dabbwallas", the men who would courier these tiffins filled with home-cooked lunches in a rapidly changing urban environment.

Dining is also the theme of Chou Yu-cheng's Encounters piece Refresh, Sacrifice, New Hygiene, Infection, Clean, Robot, Air, Housekeeping, www.agentbong.com, Cigarette, Dyson, Modern People.

On the platform are giant plastic white bowls, plates and chopsticks and a woman in navy blue overalls wipes them like performance art. In front is a Dyson robot vacuum cleaner that wanders on its own on the stage.

Look up close and they are patriotic Hong Kong pins

On the silly side of things is an Aeron chair spinning inside a plexiglass box, slow then fast, then slow again. It's by American Glenn Kaino, called The Siege Perilous. Uh ok....

Another sculpture looked like an inukshuk, a sculpture of rocks put together by the Inuit that is meant to point the direction to something. But this one here at Art Basel was armless.

At one gallery, there was a pile of gold and red metal things on the floor. I examined it closely to find it was a red flag, and one would immediately think it was from China, but in fact it had a bauhina on the top left corner and below the Chinese characters for "Hongkonger", though the characters were not written nicely...

Looks similar to an inukshuk, right?

In any event, another ho-hum Art Basel for us plebeians. There must be so much to these art works that we just can't understand...

Dior Then and Now

Raf Simons impressed by how Dior's archival pieces are still so modern

I am mesmerized by designer Raf Simons' eyes. They are so clear and bright -- an intelligent person who has the smarts and optimism to get through life.

In Dior and I, director Frederic Tcheng follows Simons from the first day he meets the team of couturiers at Christian Dior, the people behind the dazzling haute couture pieces, to eight weeks later when he presents his first collection.

Simons is understandably anxious -- no one has only two months to put a collection together -- and on top of that transition from doing ready-to-wear to haute couture. There are language and cultural barriers, but the atelier is used to creative directors coming and going, and they take it all in stride.

Simons' fresh floral take on Dior's feminine silhouettes

Some have been there for decades, and they have magical skills to turn fabric into gorgeous suits, dresses, tops and skirts, the tailoring perfect. Even down to the last minute they are carefully hand-sewing things -- a group of them overnight if need be.

They love what they do and are there to serve not only the creative director of the moment, but also honour the spirit of Monsieur Dior. They love the idea of working for the fashion house, the history, but also the grandeur associated with the name.

With time quickly ticking away, Simons decides to pay homage to Monsieur Dior by taking the founder's classic pieces and style and reinterpreting them with innovative fabrics and modern touches.

It turns out the Belgian's style is very similar to Dior's -- as Tcheng cleverly picks out passages from Dior's memoirs and has them read out as voice overs, reminiscing about presenting his first collection at the age of 41, the frustrations, the tears, anxiety and excitement.

Simons uses Sterling Ruby's paintings to make his pieces

We see Simons with flashes of brilliance -- taking artist Sterling Ruby's paintings and making fabrics out of them, and deciding that the space where the fashion show will be held will have walls completely covered in flowers, an inspiration from Jeff Koon's floral Puppy, but also from Dior's childhood home as well.

In the end it comes together and the audience is mesmerized by the sumptuous designs that are feminine and sexy, silhouettes that are reminiscent of Monsieur Dior and yet have a modern touch.

They are not just Simons' ideas, but of the entire atelier -- it was them who translated the sketches into three-dimensional designs that take exceptional talent and experience to pull off. Interestingly the atelier are impressed by the accuracy of Simon's team's sketches, down to the millimetre, though haute couture is a work in progress, as they literally work on a model to figure out exactly what they want to do.

As a result Dior and I gives the general public insight into what it takes to put a collection together, as well as have greater appreciation for haute couture. They cost tens of thousands of US dollars to make, and so they are a form of art.

But throughout it all, it's Simons' eyes that show his emotions -- he is honest and scared, elated and frustrated.

Some criticisms of the documentary are that there was no context, that Simons was coming to Dior after John Galliano was fired in 2011 for making drunken racist slurs in a bar.

However, one could argue that kind of context could detract from Simons' story, and focusing it on him and Monsieur Dior is already a good contrast and interesting story to tell.