"[W]e are like a musician who faintly hears a melody deep within the mind, but not clearly enough to play it through."

Wrote the priest and ecologist Thomas Berry, quoted on the last page of "Underground: A Human History of the Worlds Beneath Our Feet," by Will Hunt, the audiobook of which I finished today. The audiobook I listened to just before that was also titled "Underground" — "Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche," by Haruki Murakami. That's what's known as a mildly interesting fact — 2 books with the same title, read in sequence. For balance, let me quote something from the last page of the Murakami "Underground": "Reality is created out of confusion and contradiction, and if you exclude those elements, you’re no longer talking about reality. You might think that—by following language and a logic that appears consistent—you’re able to exclude that aspect of reality, but it will always be lying in wait for you, ready to take its revenge."

The ceremony — as Naruhito accedes to the Chrysanthemum Throne.

Today, in Japan:



"I swear that I will reflect deeply on the course followed by his majesty, the emperor emeritus, and bear in mind the path trodden by past emperors, and will devote myself to self-improvement."

I'd like to know more about the devotion to "self-improvement." What is the Japanese word and what is the significance of the concept in Japanese culture? The "self-improvement" of the new leader is not an idea that has any prominence when an American takes a political office. Imagine a candidate for President offering to devote himself to self-improvement. Self-improvement? That sounds like an indulgence, a lack of interest in meeting responsibilities. I won't lamely speculate on the possible lack of actual work for the Japanese emperor. I'm going to assume there's a very interesting and government-related concept here that is puzzlingly represented by the English term "self-improvement."

From the Wikipedia article on the Chrysanthemum Throne:

Japan is the oldest continuing hereditary monarchy in the world. In much the same sense as the British Crown, the Chrysanthemum Throne is an abstract metonymic concept that represents the monarch and the legal authority for the existence of the government....

And an image of the literal throne:



Here's the Wikipedia article on "Self-help or self-improvement." From the "History" subsection:

"The painting is based on a copy of the motif on a ceramic vase from Yuan Dynasty China, and it took me 15 or so years..."

"... to input the content of the motif, the nuance of the brushstrokes, and the historical context into my brain and digest them in my own way. But it is finally done!"

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" Qinghua" I presented a drawing of this work, among others, to Larry in person when I was moving from another gallery to be represented by Gagosian. He liked my proposal and asked me many times over the subsequent years, “When will the fish painting be completed?” But, perhaps having given up on it, he stopped asking me about the work in the past few years. The painting is based on a copy of the motif on a ceramic vase from Yuan Dynasty China, and it took me 15 or so years to input the content of the motif, the nuance of the brushstrokes, and the historical context into my brain and digest them in my own way. But it is finally done! I’m so relieved to have delivered on something I had promised to Larry. Each of the works in my current show, GYATEI², comes with a certain drama for me. I felt deeply emotional about opening this show.

A post shared by Takashi Murakami (@takashipom) on Feb 25, 2019 at 11:32am PST

"'I love business,' says the artist, who’s interested in evoking money and the market in his art..."

The artist, Takashi Murakami...

...is baffled by what his art costs today. He says he discussed prices with dealer Larry Gagosian before the show, and hearing the figures, told Gagosian that they were “a little bit expensive.” According to Murakami, Gagosian replied, “No, this is big, this is big!”

At last month’s Art Basel contemporary fair, Murakami says, an art adviser told him that prices were now substantially higher than before the September 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. It’s “bigger and bigger,” says Murakami. “Very scary.”

Does he think he’s too expensive? “I think so, yes, honestly, yes,” Murakami says. At the same time, his expenses are high: He employs about 200 people, and has costly travel and communications bills.

Surprisingly, the artist says he lives in a small apartment. “I cannot buy my home yet,” he says. His salary is “a small amount of money.”

The way he describes it, Murakami’s lifestyle is far from luxurious: He spends his days in the studio, painting and sculpting creatures like the blonde hovering over him.

Let's take a closer look at that blonde. Here's video of Murakami talking about the sexuality and the business of his art. 

Challenging the line between art and commerce is cute until it's not cute.

"The point of installing a boutique inside the 'Copyright Murakami' exhibition at MOCA's Geffen Contemporary building was to highlight the Japanese pop artist's trademark blurring of the lines between art and commerce, MOCA officials said at the time of the 2007-08 show. But [Clint] Arthur contends that selling repurposed handbag material as 500 collectible art prints priced at $6,000 and $10,000 crossed the line from commerce to fraud because Louis Vuitton allegedly hid the fact that the prints were made from the same fabric sheets as the Murakami-designed bags and accessories selling nearby for almost $1,000."

Now, try keeping the line between art and law. It's very hard!

2 things blogged about yesterday make me want to post some photos of Mr. Pointy.

Enlarge.


Slightly different enlarged view of this detail.


Enlarge.

An incredibly cool sculpture by Takashi Murakami at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. If you're in New York City and you haven't been out to see it, are you crazy?

(More of my pics of it here.)

2 art exhibitions in NY — one Japanese, one Chinese.

I saw 2 art exhibitions this weekend. One was the bright, poppy Takashi Murakami show at the Brooklyn Museum:

This survey of Takashi Murakami, the artist frequently called the Japanese Andy Warhol, has it all: immense, toylike sculptures; an animated cartoon that rivals Disney; and a fully functioning Louis Vuitton boutique (Brooklyn’s first!) selling Murakami bags. But it also elucidates the trajectory of an artist who began by recycling Japanese popular culture and then gradually figured out how to go deeper, harnessing Japanese traditions of painting, craft and spirituality. The art-commerce, high-low conundrums are fun, but the steady improvement in the paintings is the real heart of the matter. Along with the animated cartoons, which should please aesthetes of all ages, there is a moral component as well.

I loved this show. You should come out to Brooklyn and see it. I've got no photos — they weren't allowed — but there's plenty of video with the artist charmingly explaining himself here.

Then, at the Guggenheim, there's "Cai Guo-Qiang: I Want to Believe":

This museumwide survey of a leading Chinese artist indicates considerable command of cross-cultural references and extreme appropriation, including a gang of sculptors remaking a classic Social Realist ensemble of life-size figures while you watch. Gunpowder is a favored material, violence a frequent motif. A stop-action installation of seemingly exploding cars hangs in the atrium space. Scores of arrows make pincushions of snarling tigers (stuffed), and there are carved-wood religious sculptures and an entire fishing boat. Videos documenting pyrotechnical land-art pieces go boom. The show has far more than its share of hollow spectacle. The scorched, mural-size gunpowder drawings that combine elements of performance art, Abstract Expressionism and traditional Chinese and Japanese painting are the most believable.

Less color, less cuteness than Murakami, but equally outlandish. To me, there is far more profundity in Murakami, but I got something from those leaping clusters of life-size tigers, wolves, pigs, and cars and those drawings made from exploding gunpowder. No photos allowed here either. Go here for some video.

One quibble, and it's not Cai Guo-Qiang's fault. As I entered the rotunda, the guard handed me one of those audio-tour devices with headphones. "Do I need that?" I asked, thinking the show might have an integrated audio track that was part of the artwork. "Yes," she said, so I took it only to discover it was some earnest pedant telling me what to look at, for how long, and what to think. Ugh! Entering the up ramp — it still irks me that they started putting the shows up backwards so that we must walk up the ramp, instead of starting at the top for a gravity-assisted stroll — I passed the place where they were collecting the audio devices from people who were leaving, and I handed mine in. Those things are horrible. How are you supposed to get any good at seeing if someone is always talking in your ear, telling you what to see?