johnny lightning muscle cars

zvswgogna

Fashion imitating art
When I met the artist Takashi Murakami at the Fondation Cartier in Paris last month, where his exhibition had opened to huge acclaim, he had more of the air of a dotcom entrepreneur than a heralder of the avantgarde.
Wearing a faded Tshirt decorated with one of his own cartoontype characters, his hair slicked into a ponytail then looped back on itself like a Samurai warrior, he presented a blend of East and West in more ways than one. 'I researched the careers of Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst,' he tells me. 'I wanted to last, so I analysed how these artists had achieved it while others hadn't.'
Murakami's rampantly cute yet subversive work paintings, sculpture, wallpapers is populated by characters inspired by Japanese manga cartoons and films which have their origins in the Walt Disney films imported to Japan in the Fifties, and which form a subculture. He will be shown in Britain for the first time at the Serpentine Gallery in London this month. The exhibition is an adaptation of the Paris show that affirmed the artist's growing reputation; it attracted 75,000 visitors close to a record for the institution.
Two days after it opened, Murakami received an email from Marc Jacobs at Louis Vuitton proposing a collaboration. So it was that, during the recent Paris fashion week, I witnessed the Murakami effect. The venue was a datedlooking industrial park at the farthest reaches of the Metro, and the assembling fashion crowd looked tired and tetchy. Then, as they entered the courtyard, their collective mood lightened. There, dancing high above their heads,[url=http://www.holisteroutlet.cc]hollister femmes[/url], were 11 huge balloons displaying the designs by the artist.
Eight balloons were covered in the Vuitton trademark symbols, the monogram and fleurdelis. This most staid of patterns was now painted in sherbetcandy hues against a white background, with mangacartoon style depictions of eyes interspersed among the symbols. Astonishment! In the world of highstyle logo design, in which the known emblem is a crucial part of the package, any change is viewed as epic. 'It's the first time that Vuitton has done its logo in different colours like that,' says Vanity Fair's fashion director, Elizabeth Saltzman. 'It's a very big deal.'
Each model carried a different Vuitton bag, transformed either by Murakami's revamped logo or one of his cartoon images.
'The characters I've been making recently have been rather scary,' Murakami says, 'so I tried to make these cute. I made three characters based on the three flowers of the Louis Vuitton monogram, each with a flower somewhere on their bodies.' Jacobs named the bag after Murakami, a first for the house. The price of the Murakami bag bearing his signature 'eye' design is likely to be the 'high end of The collaboration is part of the trend for merging the worlds of visual arts, fashion and culture, according to Julia PeytonJones, director of the Serpentine. 'It's interesting that Jacobs has chosen an artist who is respected but not yet a household name,' she says. 'It's to do with art and not spin.' Jacobs says he was 'immediately drawn to Murakami and his ironic, sometimes childlike, whimsical approach.'
Such commissions are not before time, in Murakami's view. 'Art is losing out to more exciting entertainment media; people are all heading in the direction of excitement. Unless the system changes, people with talent won't come in.' While Murakami considers his work with Vuitton to be part of that strategy, some might consider that Vuitton's aim in associating with him was primarily to consolidate the brand's appeal for the Japanese market.
Yet the curious fact is that Murakami had to make his reputation in the West before being taken seriously in Japan 'first successful in America, then Japan, is the normal way for artists,' he says drily.
In pursuit of his goals, Murakami has thrown himself about the globe like a DHL parcel. He laughs about the difficulties that his schedule and his belief in what he describes as 'telepathy' can bring. 'It's a bit frightening sometimes if I'm in New York, say, and misbehaving, then my girlfriend will be on the telephone from Tokyo to see what I'm up to.' And you can imagine why she might be worried; despite the language barrier and his reluctance to reveal much about himself, the artist manages to radiate charm and charisma.
Born in Tokyo in 1962, Murakami first heard stories about American life and culture from his father, who was in the Japanese Navy and was struck by what he encountered on his base. Murakami wanted to be an animation artist but didn't consider himself good enough. Instead he studied nihonga (a 19thcentury synthesis of traditional Japanese painting techniques with Western methods and motifs). In 1991 he earned his doctorate from Tokyo University.
But soon afterwards he gave up nihonga to practise contemporary art. 'I had a problem,' he says. 'I didn't really have an identity.' So he created the first of his characters, Mr Dob. Originally Mr Dob was a MickeyMousestyle figure, whose large round face formed the letter 'O' and whose rounded ears were inscribed with the letters 'B' and 'D'.
His creator took Mr Dob to America in 1992 with high hopes of recognition, yet found little interest. Homesick, he retreated into Japanese cartoon culture, and there found his path within the subversive imagery of otaku. Otaku is the word used to describe Japan's dropout video generation, a geek underclass.
'They are people who are probably not very balanced, who get into manga, animation and computers,' Murakami says. 'At first, being otaku was like being a couch potato but now the ideas are coming from a different cultural base.' Later, Mr Dob took on a lifeforce of his own in increasingly elaborate colour manifestions as a crazy character rampaging across Murakami's work.
While visiting an otaku convention, Murakami recalls, 'I saw a drawing by an artist of a sexy woman with very big breasts. I adapted the design, made it threedimensional and lifesize.' So, in 1997, Miss Hiropon was born, an idealised figure with milk emanating from her breasts. Murakami describes her as 'human scale, an erotic stereotype yet not human'. A host of other provocative characters followed, including Kiki and Kaikai, cute bunnylike creatures named after the Japanese for 'frightening' and 'strange'.
The scope of Murakami's projects, which involved complex production processes for his major works and merchandise meant he could not accomplish them alone. In 1995 he launched the Hiropon Factory. 'They were all volunteers because I couldn't pay them,' says Murakami. 'The idea was that we all cooperated using Warhol's Factory as inspiration. Recently my work has started to sell, and I can afford to pay salaries, rather than relying on goodwill to make the work.'
In 2001 the Hiropon Factory became the Kaikai Kiki Corporation, with bases in Tokyo and New York, and now employs more than 30 people. Murakami aims to credit each individual who has worked on his projects, 'just like at the end of a film'. Kaikai Kiki also produces keyrings, Tshirts, mouse mats, soft toys, prints and sculptures.
Murakami's prices continue to rise. Christie's achieved a new record for the artist in May when a sculpture entitled Hiropon sold for $427,500 against an estimate of $120,000. The work had originally sold for $15,000. A triple panel will be a star lot at Christie's New York on November 13, with an estimate of $150,000200,000.
And seducing the West is still an ultimate ambition. 'It's difficult to straddle two cultures but that's the paradox I want to present: I want to make something that makes Western people hold their heads, pause and wonder.'
'Takashi Murakami: Kaikai Kiki' (November 12January 26), Serpentine Gallery, Kensington Gardens, London W2
Tino Sehgal
Tino Sehgal was nominated for his pioneering projects This Variation at documenta (XIII) and These Associations at Tate Modern. Both structured and improvised, Seghal's intimate works consist purely of live
encounters between people and demonstrate a keen sensitivity to their institutional context. Through participatory means, they test the limits of artistic material and audience perception in a new and significant way.