: Stars A glimpse into the works that banged in post-war Japan Kayla Francis (Tokyo) What exactly is it about art that creates world-wide recognition? What makes it so uniquely interesting that despite having different origins it can flourish to stardom in a completely different country? The Mori Art Museum set out to answer these questions with its new Stars exhibition. (1) Showcasing the work of the following contemporary artists: Yayoi Kusama, Lee Ufan, Tatsuo Miyajima, Takashi Murakami, Yoshitomo Nara and Hiroshi Sugimoto, the museum has taken the opportunity to celebrate the international stardom that the artists have reached in modern Japan and worldwide.
Takashi Murakami
His smaller and highly sexualised anime-style characters do a great job of highlighting the unrealistic expectations of the human body that many people face today in modern-day in Japan.
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Takashi Murakami paints “Self-Portrait” on Creative Commons
The museum wasted no time in showing Takashi Murakami’s work first. Japan is well known for its kawaii and otaku (geek/fandom) culture and Murakami’s work is a rich embodiment of this. The artist is well known for his super flat and far from realistic designs. He does a great job mixing the bubblegum kawaii fantasy culture of Japan and extreme sexualisation. His work ranges from well-endowed anime-style sculptures to his adorably erratic and colourful mural of Mt. Fuji and flowers. Murakami is the embodiment of every geeky stereotype people have of Japan on crack. Murakami’s massive sculptures of a troll-like figure are especially worth seeing. The attention to all of the small details makes the sculptures look ready to come alive at any point.
