Swimming in Murakami

Dip Into Another World

“Murakami”, a bound collection of art, stories, and process starts off first with a cover. To the viewer with little or much knowledge about artist Takashi Murakami, the work of art on the cover featuring his “727-727” is mysterious, foreboding, and groundbreaking. This is but the package for the reader to contemplate, once past the exterior, the inside takes one deeper into the spiraling world that is Murakami’s artwork and ideas. In the first few turns of pages Murakami uses a block of lyrics, separated into four lines. Throughout the book these four lines define different themes that contribute and build up his artistic legacy summarized in the 376 adventurous pages. The lyrics are translated from Sigeru Kishida’s song “LV30.”

The lyrics are transformed into metaphorical representations tying together the principles of “Murakami”; they take the reader by the hand and lead them deeper into the mind, the magic, and the madness of this modern Japanese artist.

Knee-Deep

Right off the bat Murakami proposes that his truest intention for the creation of this book is to inspire the young artists of the modern generation. When it comes to the technical and visual layout, a vibrant, electric energy flows the clearly appeals to the youthful or just anyone with an excitable, artistic mindset. The use of vibrant neon coloring presents itself on each page. The text itself acts as a form of art, meshing in with Murakami’s graphic, animated style. In representing his Japanese nature and appealing to American readers, the book’s written content is doubled; once in original Kanji and again in the English translation. The arrangement of the two languages works in bridging together the two cultures as well as tying right into Murakami’s artistic style. The images and block of text are all set and aligned to a grid creating a very clean and readable flow of information.

The content is broken up between five main chapters, some with an array of sub-categorizes. Chapter 1: Summon Monsters? Contains the three volumes depicting stages of Murakami’s most notable accomplishments in taking two-dimensional anime to a three-dimensional level, his creation of alter-ego Mr.DOB, and his process of brainstorming imagination in creating characters and fantasies. This chapter is pure imagery.

Chapter 2: Open the Door? Is a compilation of two texts written by Curators Yusuke Minami and Michael Darling. Both separate texts are words from figures that partially took part in showing off Murakami’s work to the world. They give their outside opinion on his achievements, history, and process of inventing his imaginary characters in many different forms of medium.

Chapter 3: Heal? This is the meat of the book. Murakami takes the reader into his factory and presents us with an in-depth description of each employee and their positions in the factory. This is the only chapter, which has in it a legitimate table of contents for this section of the book. The contents are split into three main section; painting, sculpture, and management. Each section is split into sub-groups with a page or two dedicated to each individual artist in the field, giving them a high amount of credit for their work. This is there the reader gets involved with the reality and play-by-play tangibility of Murakami’s art.

Chapter 4: Or Die? This is the compilation of texts nearing the end of the book, and seemingly the books readable conclusion. Takashi Murakami is the author of this final chapter. In these final sub-categories, Murakami humbly describes his motivation, passion, and thought process throughout the past two decades of creating work. He stresses that, opposite to what other have said, he still is striving to reach his artistic goal, which is a quest to achieve beauty in everything he creates.

Chapter 5: Rewrite it? The actual conclusion to the book is another collection of works by Murakami, quite similar to the set in the beginning.

Submerged

The objective of the book was to promote beauty and inspiration, which I found that it did just so by very creative and dynamic means. The expertise in the layout of the book achieves its goal by presenting the reader with strange and fascinating images immediately upon opening the cover. The reader is able to develop their own opinion on the works until they are exposed to the text occurring over the next mass of pages. Through explicit description, the reader is walked through the thought process of Murakami and is able to get a true glimpse of what it took to make all the art they were previously shown. After all the insightful text they are once again invited to view Murakami’s artwork, with a more educated perspective. The reader will finish the book, whether having read in-depth, or just skipped, with a sense of creativity and motivation guaranteed.

Swimming with the Fishes

Takashi Murakami has been a force to be reckoned with for the past two decades. He works with a large variety of a mediums ranging from painting, sculpture, and graphic media. He has been involved in some important cultural and artistic movements involving the otaku, and having anime become the next fine art form; the understanding and adaptation of cultural differences through artistic visions; and the most important, to inspire young artists and leave his mark in the world of art. He has immortalized himself through his own symbolic character, Mr.DOB, and created a new form of art called “Superflat”. He has and continues to have his work displayed in galleries around the world.

Reflecting on the Water

In my opinion, this book is a perfect example of an accomplished artist. The way he presents his work and views is well organized and engaging. It is arranged so that his work, peers and underlings speak their piece before him. This gives the reader confidence in knowing how others see Murakami and all that he’s achieved in such a positive light. Finally when Murakami does speak for himself, he is humble and passionate in describing his plight. A positive aspect in inspiring artist readers is the revealing of the process of making art. The images show not just final projects, which would leave the reader baffled and intimidated; instead there are rough drafts, color swatches, side notes, and step-by-step pictures work to visually motivate the viewer to build up their own dreams in art.