2024-12-10
30 分钟We visit two new London exhibitions. ‘Japanese Art History à la Takashi Murakami’ at Gagosian’s Grosvenor Hill outpost offers the contemporary artist’s interpretations of Edo-era artworks. We sit down with Murakami to discuss AI, where he finds inspiration and the atmosphere that he likes to create in his studio. Plus, we meet the curator of ‘Electric Dreams’ at London’s Tate Modern. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Hello and welcome to Monocle on Culture.
I'm Robert Bound.
On today's show, we're looking at art two ways, with an interview with a proper titan of contemporary art, the Japanese pop art maestro, Takashi Murakami.
And with a visit to Tate Modern's new show titled Electric Exploring Art and Technology before the Internet.
So if you like your Louis Vuitton bags exuberantly decorated with smiley faces, and who doesn't, or if you're keen to delve into the experiential world of digital, kinetic and psychedelic art, and who isn't, you'll be well catered for over the next 29 minutes of monocle On Culture.
So do stay tuned.
The Japanese artist Takashi Murakami is one of contemporary art's big beasts.
Up there with David Hockney, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons and Cindy Shaw.
He's represented by the Gagosian Gallery and fetches massive sums at auction.
Ever since he was an art student in Tokyo in the early 1980s, Murakami was fascinated by the time honoured techniques and subject matter of traditional Japanese art and how it rubbed up against the new and the next.
And that's very much the vibe of his new show at Gagosian's Grosvenor Hill Gallery in London.
It's titled Japanese Art History Alla Takashi Murakami and its bright, bold, smiley faced and mangrified, as you might expect of the artist who stamped smileys on Louis Vuitton's luggage.
But it's also a show that takes some of the great works of traditional Japanese art on which it riffs very seriously and in fact, truly, tenderly.
Murakami mixes the ancient and modern so we see gold silkscreens and fluro highlights.
And there is a lot to look at.
Many of the works in this show are huge, ambitious things.
Gold screens with a dozen panels populated by worlds of characters from life, myth and history.
It does feel like a landmark show.
And here is Takashi Murakami.
Murakami san, thank you very much for your time today and congratulations on this amazing new show here at Gagosian.