Murakami in Retrospect

For the last few days, I've scheduled my blog to automatically post videos I've found on YouTube in relationship to this entry. In a way, my intent was to give a kind of teaser and to supply a kind of visual example as to what I'll be focusing on for the bulk of this post. I hope you enjoyed the videos that I've set up, and I hope that this entry ends up being more than just an observation as a result of my tactic.

Takashi Murakami may have been a name that I was not familiar with prior to my start at Watkins, but he has become the center of my thesis. If not by accident, then by similar thoughts and interests. As such, when I became aware of his retrospective show in Brooklyn via word of mouth from Amanda, I said to myself, "Self, you owe it to yourself to go see this show. If not for your own visual education in your college career, then you should go simply because you have to see these pieces in person. You know damn well from experience that photos and documentations alone are nothing when you experience the real thing.

"Plus, there’s animation, which I know you haven’t seen or heard anything about."

It was our last day in NYC, and with several hours to kill before we needed to get to the airport, we spent the rainy day at the museum. I played fan boy; mom played mother-of-an-art-student-that-has-little-understanding-of-contemporary-art.

The first room featured some of Murakami’s more famous sculptures including a few new sculptures, but I made a bee line straight to the darken room lined with a satin carpet that had smiling flowers printed on it. As I walked in, Kanye West’s Good Morning, I saw a new animation style for the digital age.



The characters, backgrounds, and all the elements are digital. Every last one. However, they were flattened through a process known as Cell Shading. In the past, this process never really did what it was advertised to do. Those that have a keen eye for detail could see hints of a 3D model. Since then, the technology has improved, but nothing airing on television now looked like what I saw in this music video. The characters looked hand drawn but moved as fluidly as a Pixar character. The colors were both vibrant and engaging while still being realistic to their environment. Needless to say, on a technical level, I was floored.

I made myself comfortable on the carpet, which was very easy to do, as I waited for the next round of animation. For the next 20 minutes, I would be entertained by a mock anime show featuring two of Murakami’s characters: KaiKai & KiKi.

Done in the same animation technique, the production level for these pieces is surprisingly very high. Murakami went through the trouble of directing and designing title cards that flash before the show, complete with an annoyingly cute theme song that repeats the characters’ names to the same effect of It’s a Small World.

The first episode is called "Planting the Seed." For the record, I won’t post any video of it out of respect for the artist, but I am sure you can find video of it on YouTube. The only reason I posted the Kanye West video is because I am expecting to see it air on MTV soon, since it is graduation season. In any event, the first KaiKai and KiKi cartoon introduces us to the characters that guests will end up seeing further into the exhibit and eventually in the gift shop. KiKi is a pink, three-eyed creature who acts like a curious child. KaiKai is a white, bunny-like creature who appears to be in charge of the duo. The two of them travel from planet to planet as nomads with no reason other than to explore the universe on their chubby ship known as Moumom.

On this particular planet, they find the surface covered in farm land. As they bring the ship in closer for a better look, KiKi gets overly excited and rushes outside to get a better look on the ship’s roof. As he travels outside, stairs start to form along the surface, but that doesn’t help him from falling off the ship and landing in a pool of manure. The old farmer who sees this helps wash all the crap off him as KaiKai begins to motherly scold KiKi. The farmer then explains what they do in their daily life. They’ve landed on a planet that plants watermelons. The old farmer gives them a sample slice and they find the fruit extremely exotic and tasty. Apparently, the two never heard of or tasted a watermelon before. The old farmer then shows them how they plant, grow, and harvest the watermelons. It’s around this time that KiKi learns he landed in a pool of poop, which turns out to be his running gag for the rest of the show. KaiKai finds this disgusting, but the old farmer explains that it is a normal process to insure a good harvest. After helping the old farmer plant seeds, the two are rewarded with a bag of watermelon seeds. The two are so excited that they want to grow the fruit right away. They instruct Moumon, their ship, to pick them up and then land in a nearby body of water. It is here when we start to see just how strange the ship really is. There is no soil to grow the seeds, so Moumom begins to eat chunks of the land. The viewer is given an X-ray view of the ship as it starts to digest the land and then somehow produce a patch of soil on the roof. They throw a handful of seeds on the soil, and the seeds instantly sprout. Over the course of several days, they water and tend to the sprouts, but they don’t bare any fruit. This bothers the two, but KaiKai doesn’t lose any sleep over it. KiKi, on the other hand, can’t sleep or figure out what the problem is. He then remembers what the old farmer said about manure. This is where the Japanese humor doesn’t really pay off for the Western audience, as KiKi proceeds to take a dump on the patch of soil on top of their ship, who was also sleeping the night away. When KaiKai wakes up and greets the sprouts, she finds KiKi’s freashly dropped pile in the patch and pretty much screams bloody murder. As she motherly scolds KiKi once again, the sun rises and the dung pile ends up dissolving into the soil patch. Moumom starts to smile joyously as something big is about to happen. In a matter of seconds, a dozen vines sprout out from the top of the ship baring watermelons the size of their ship. They are so big and so heavy, that they end up knocking KaiKai and KiKi into the water. Knowing they can’t eat all of the fruit they’ve somehow produced, they bring it back to the old farmer. The old farmer, amazed with what they’ve come to deliver, organizes and holds a watermelon festival complete with rides, taste-testing events, music, and pretty much anything else you can think of. When night falls, KaiKai and KiKi return to their ship to prepare to travel to the next planet.

As a work of art, this short is rather entertaining. Not only is there a story going on that is engaging from the get go, but you have a lot of cultural and social symbolism going on if you’ve read what I’ve read.

The fact that the two characters never experienced the watermelon before implies the introduction of some kind of foreign influence. In a nice artistic reversal, KaiKai and KiKi are the foreigners being introduced to a native food which they take with them. This is how trade used to work in the old world: you sailed to a far away land, find something you liked, and then brought it back. Alluding to the origin of Italian pasta (which is a different take on the Chinese noodles process), KaiKai and KiKi imply that their version of the fruit is better than the native grown ones. This is insanely deep in its symbolic meaning of export and imports, especially when one considers how many Japanese cars we Americans have in comparison to domestically made ones.

Another critique I read after the show suggests that the short film is about the fact that there is no such thing as waste. KiKi may have dropped a fresh one, and we may consider that a waste product. But the fact still stands that what we consider waste is actually food for the plant.

Their ship is an interesting character as it brings the idea of Marx’s commodity fetish to familiar levels that most of us haven’t seen since the rubber toon days where buildings would dance with the characters. Here is a ship that is not only conscious as a living being, but functions as a machine. He eats organic matter, but doesn’t produce waste. He has internal organs, but he also have living quarters for KaiKai and KiKi. This begs the question: What is he?! Machine or creature? The answer is that he is a hybrid of both, but he isn’t a cyborg in the Western sense. In a way, he’s a bit like Doramon in that he’s a magical creature that supplies the needed function, and everyone just accepts that.

The second episode of the animation is titled "The Secret of KaiKai." It opens with a parody of Star Wars and Godzilla, as our duo (who have been redesigned to look like younger selves) travel in another sentient ship named Bouromon to a city in the sky. As they explore the city, they suddenly find themselves entangled in a monster attack. The monster, named Nana-chan, has a head with two mouths. One in the front and the other in the back. Besides destroying buildings, he can pass gas that can whip out an entire army. His two mouths cause the air force, with squadran names after fruits with color names (i.e. Orange Team, Lime Team, Peach Team), to be completely ineffective in their sneak attacks. When push comes to shove, the resident priestess Lady Tama makes herself known to banish the monster back to where it came. The result is Nana-chan being struck by lightning, which causes him to defecate a skyscraper pile of poop.

At this point in the short, we discover that what we’ve been watching is actually a movie that KiKi brought along. KaiKai forces him to turn it off for undeclared reasons. KiKi believes it has something to do with the fact there’s poop involved.

We then see KaiKai making dinner for the two of them, but her thoughts are obviously elsewhere. The viewer is treated to flashback of a war where she was the pilot of the commanding ship. A ship just as sentient as Moumom but with the ability to sense stars and ships hundreds of light years away. They have found themselves outnumbered, and a character known only as Master commands the ship to jettison the cockpit against KaiKai’s wishes. The main ship ends up imploding upon a brutal attack. KaiKai's flashback ends just in time to see KiKi slightly bored and very hungry enter the kitchen. The two of them have dinner in their dining room while Moumom is given a baby bottle of rocket fuel. As they eat, we get an hint that KaiKai doesn’t like space traveling, but feels it is her obligation to continue because of KiKi curious nature. Taking care of KiKi gives her a sense of purpose. They finish eating, and Moumom finishes fueling. Moumom then transforms into a very phallic looking rocket and begins to count down to lift off. In the cockpit area, jelly arm sofas form to make the two planet hoppers more comfortable. As Moumom breaks through the atmosphere, the lower three quarters of him detach and then explode in a field of stars and glitter. This entertains KiKi, but KaiKai is not only unimpressed but depressed. The episode ends with the ship disappearing into space looking like Tinkerbelle flying among the stars.

At first, when I saw the whole Star Wars and Godzilla parody, I thought this was Murakami’s way of talking about the cultural reset that happened after Hiroshima, which was the thesis for the Little Boy show that happened in NYC in 2003. When the actual joke happened that what we were watching was a movie within the movie, I got confused as to what was going on, half expecting the show to stop at that point. The serious inner monologue is something that I’ve seen in several animes before, but never involving characters that are as cute as the Powerpuff Girls. It was an interesting juxtaposition to have this Hello Kitty looking character give a Gundam style flashback. I took it as symbolically saying that the Japanese culture may be identified as being this cute and mass produced culture despite the fact that there was a very real and, well, "uncute" event that caused them to be this way. I wouldn’t have gotten to this interpretation if it wasn’t for the Godzilla spoof, I’ll admit that much.

It is also in this short where we end up seeing what each of the characters represent. KiKi is the new generation of the Japanese culture, who are growing up experiencing the world for the first time and naively getting themselves into situations that clearly have no consequence to them. KaiKai represents those who have researched the culture’s history and know what kind of impact it has had, both directly and indirectly. Strangely enough, KaiKai isn’t so much from the Western mentality of remembering and honoring the fallen as she is trying to hide the past, as implied by the episode’s title. It’s also implied by the way the two interact that KiKi has no idea of KaiKai’s past. All he knows is that she is able to pilot the ship.

I find it interesting that Murakami chose to have Master’s ship implode rather than explode. Both actions (exploding and imploding) are not represented with fire but with stars. The imploding animation during the war scene looks like the clouds NASA photographs when a supernova occurs. The explosion animation looks more like a glittery display you would find in a fireworks show. For the life of me, I couldn’t guess as to why this was the case.

Having seen what I wanted to, I took the rest of my time to enjoy the show, having seen most of those pieces only in photographs. His sculptures where the real treat for me to see in person. What I took away from the show, however, was a more detailed explanation of his more recognizable character Mr. DOB (or simply DOB).

I learned that DOB actually relates to my thesis! Early in his character, before KaiKai and KiKi, DOB represented the artist. He changed shapes, forms, colors, and size depending on how Murakami felt at the time. There was a gallery space devoted specifically to how this character evolved from the early stages where he looked like Mickey Mouse to the stages before KaiKai and KiKi were drawn. In between, you can see emotions being expressed like frustration and feeling worn out, though surprisingly nothing that hints at depression or sorrow.

His most recent work is a complete departure from the style that dominates the show. Murakami is currently exploring a Zen Buddhist motif, but he is still keeping his trademark bold line work and highly saturated commercial color pallet. Mori went the same way, so I’m not surprised Murakami followed in this path. He apparently has a live-action video piece to be released in 2009 that is in this same area of exploration called Daruma. I couldn’t make any sense out of the preview they had playing, but I did find one scene interesting visually. It was a girl washing her hair in the sink which caused the water to turn a bright pink. It was just strange seeing this clear faucet water turn pink as it passed through your usual Japanese raven black hair.

In the lobby of the museum advertising the exhibit is his 2003 public works piece for Little Boy that was displayed in Rockefeller Center during the show’s run. It’s a major photo hub for anyone visiting the Brooklyn Museum, as it is on your way out the doors. I looked at this sculpture thinking that maybe this was the piece that started his exploration into the realm of Eastern Religion. The sculpture is very Hindu Buddhist in form, yet features characters that could easily be placed with KaiKai, KiKi, and DOB. To actually see this sculpture and place it in a ballpark area of where it would have fallen in his body of work is something that I’ve never been able to do until now with any artist. To do so gave me a very strong sense of pride knowing that I knew what was going on. Or at the least had a really good idea.

When the day was over, I not only got a lot of valuable visual research, I had and experience that will no doubt affect what I create over the summer for my next try at graduation. And that’s worth more than the $280 I spent on the exhibit book and a collection of plush dolls (as seen in the photograph).