Takashi Murakami: high and low

Following up on the example I mentioned in class on Tuesday:

Here is Takashi Murakami's Louis Vuitton store at the LA MOMA, from his exhibit and collaboration there in 2003:



here are some of the designs:


clearly BOTH art and commerce are at work here. It's worth pointing out that something like 2/3 of Japanese women in their twenties own a Louis Vuitton bag, so this collaboration was aimed at selling highly collectible, limited edition commercial goods as much as it was a conceptual experiment in bringing the iconography of fashion into the museum space.

here he is posing with another work:



His style, called Superflat, is clearly also informed by Japanese popular culture--anime in particular.