Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, 49, recently confessed to a Chinese audience that he's merely a "circus monkey" trying to gratify audiences.
He's been called the "Japanese Andy Warhol," listed as one of TIME magazine's 2008 "100 Most Influential People," a former Louis Vuitton fashion designer (2002-03) and a modern artist.
Invited by Bazaar Art magazine, Murakami delivered a speech on his career and life at the Central Academy of Fine Art (CAFA) last week, explaining that his profession is to create contemporary artworks about current society.
"The significance of art is nullified when it discards the connection with human desires," Murakami explained. "Thus, it's a necessary evil to be in touch with capitalism, the prevalent monster in the world." Despite his grand achievements in the realm of art, Murakami exuded a self-deprecating attitude throughout his speech.
Lost in 'translation: Last year, the artist sparked controversy when he was invited to showcase 22 artworks at the Palace of Versailles, built by "Sun King" Louis XIV. Murakami, whose "Super-Flat" method incorporates two-dimensional anime and manga, was at the time involved in a protest against an unsuccessful Tokyo bill to restrict the sexualized depiction of fictional underage characters in manga comics. A petition against Murakami gathered 4,000 signatures and condemnation from the likes of Prince Sixte-Henri de Bourbon-Parmet, a descendent of Louis XIV, and Bernard Dark, director of the Louvre Museum. Juxtaposed with the palace's 17th-century classical décor, Murakami's colorful pop sculptures were seen as both inappropriate and degrading, although the artist's works explicitly referencing sex or religion were omitted from the actual exhibition.
"The intention of holding an exhibition about contemporary art is to attract visitors to the museum in wintertime," Murakami said. "Yet, to some art critics or conservatives, many items of my solo exhibition were controversial. Miss ko2's skirt was criticized for being too short, while the gesture of a bespectacled little boy sculpture was too much like a Nazi officer's salute."
"The little boy with pointed genitals whose jet of sperm forms a lasso [My Lonesome Cowboy, 1998] [and] the big-breasted little girl whose jet of milk forms a skipping rope [Hiropon, 1997] have no place in the royal chambers," said Anne Brassié, one of the authors of the "Versailles, Mon Amour" petition, referring to two of Murakami's most notorious pieces, neither of which were at Versailles.
Despite a variety of negative reactions in Japan and abroad, in May 2008, My Lonesome Cowboy was sold for $15.2 million at a Sotheby's auction, while Hiropon fetched $7.37 million.
"I comprehend [this] weird phenomenon as a process of 'translation,'" Murakami said. "French artist Claude Monet's paintings were originally unpopular in France. He won his fame in the US at first and was then appreciated by French people."