Takashi Murakami- Mr. Cloud.
He used to meditate between the orientalism of the west and the fetishizing of western progress found in Japan. With the mushroom cloud deaths head bunny (1) he asked Japan if they could make anything cute, with My Lonesome Cowboy (2), the 12 foot anime wanker with a cum lasso he asked ‘if I make your obsessions large enough, will you pay attention, with Mr Dobbs (3), his post colonial Mickey Mouse with teeth, he whispered ‘you will buy this consumer product, you no longer care about content.’
He then dropped politics, and made lovely pictures and strange spectacles. There was the flower wallpaper paintings(4) in bright colours that did not say anything but this is pretty to look at or the Francis Bacon paintings (5) which made existential fury into a sci-fi wonderland thanks to his army of courtiers
Finally there is the latest style, an abstract pattern of eyes and circles(6), made to envelop Louis Vuitton Handbags(7), Cadillac Escalades, portraits of Kate Moss(8) and 10 foot canvases with equal vapidness. He has become a designer and his anger dissipated into money.
Which makes his latest sculptures, featuring a new character named Mr Cloud, so disappointing and so liberating. They have a super specific joy about them, the open candy apple mouth, the stuffed animal wide eyes, the amorphous huggable shape, the hard plastic of hip designed consumables. It is an icon of Nintendo aestheics,a triumph of late era decadent design,
It’s the hello kitty of superflat.
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