Takashi Murakami is Japan's biggest contemporary art star, and has been for almost a decade. As his MOCA Los Angeles mid-career retrospective gets closer, the Japan Times offers up three articles looking back at Murakami's career and forward at the future with, and without him:
How will history judge Murakami the artist?
Right now there are at least two movements that will one day require their champions. One is the rise of non-Western art; the other is the final consummation of the union between art and commerce, which was set in motion by the Pop artists. Takashi Murakami has a shot at both titles...
Murakami: Heritage + manga = contemporary art
The key to Takashi Murakami's success was that his art came packaged with a theory, and for that theory he relied heavily on a 1970 book titled "The Lineage of Eccentricity," by art historian Nobuo Tsuji...
A legacy in question as Takashi Murakami gets animated
Artists can never be 100 percent sure of their legacies. Some die famous and confident they'll be remembered for generations. If they're lucky, they might be right.
On Japanese television, where Murakami is a frequent guest on variety and art-themed shows, he doesn't look his age, playing with aplomb the role of the otaku artist, complete with baby face, ponytail and oversize wire-rimmed glasses. In person, however, his eyes are creased and puffy, and advertise clearly: "I'm 45 years old." Equally conspicuous are his confident voice and his big bursts of laughter...