Media and Culture in the Art of Takashi Murakami

While I was home in Los Angeles this past weekend for Thanksgiving break, I went and saw the Takashi Murakami exhibit at MOCA. The show consists of a wide variety of mixed medium and thematically, it touches on a number of subjects having to do with the mass media and its relation to technology, as well as, culture. Specifically, Murakami has a Warhol like propensity for taking images that would otherwise be considered examples of lowbrow, popular culture and transforming them into “high art.” However, what is so interesting about Murakami’s work is the way in which he does this with icons from both American and Japanese culture. Moreover, Murakami does not merely elevate these images, but he reappropriates them as well. As a result of this process, the final work consists of an American image that has been reappropriated as a Japanese image, which has in turn been repappropriated as an American image, which has been reappropriated as a Japanese image, and so on in this manner until it is unclear as to which culture the original iconography is a reference to. For example, in one sculpture entitled Miss Ko^2, Murakami depicts a buxom, blonde waitress who bares a striking resemblance to both Barbie and some sort of heroine that you might find in a Japanese anime. Consequently, the piece, which stands at the entrance to the exhibit, establishes a theme of East meets West, while at the same time underscoring the problems that can arise from this sort of cultural mash up. Specifically, the contrast between Miss Ko’s doe eyed, childlike expression and her exaggerated, womanly physique implies pedophilia and perversion in the Western psyche where as in Japan, it does not. Accordingly, the individual piece and the retrospect as a whole both serve to illustrate a number of important topics in the anthropology of media. In particular, it serves as a material example of Tomlinson’s theory of mediation by illustrating how media is interpreted and absorbed given a certain cultural context.