A Talk with Takashi Murakami

Just before the opening of Takashi Murakami: Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow, former Margaret and Loyal Wilson Chief Exhibition, Design, and Publications Officer Heidi Strean spoke with artist Takashi Murakami about the multifaceted contemporary exhibition presented at the CMA. Encounter the depth of and surprises in Murakami’s work here, then visit Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow in Cleveland for your own experience of the Japanese artist’s world. 

HS: A re-creation of the Yumedono, the “Dream Hall” from the Hōryūji Temple complex in Nara, Japan, is the first work visitors encounter in the exhibition. This is your collaboration with the producers of multiaward-winning television series Shōgun, which is set in Japan in 1600 as an embattled Japanese lord becomes entangled with a shipwrecked English crew. What is the importance of this structure as an entry point?

TM: The interpretation of Japanese culture by producers Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo is really fresh. That’s what’s moving to me. In Shōgun, once every two episodes, there’s a hara-kiri, a ritual suicide, which I thought was very interesting and captured a sense of life through death. My imagination expanded. Also, when I first saw Shōgun, I loved the art of the set, the scenery. So I wanted to meet [the production designer], Helen [Jarvis] and tried to contact the team. Of course, when Justin and Rachel wanted to meet, it became something deep, much deeper than I had originally intended. The collaboration came up as a way to make a structure to house my Four Symbols paintings.

HS: As we stood in the Ames Family Atrium with Justin and Rachel and first envisioned the site of a Yumedono re-creation, was it important to you that it be a Buddhist temple rather than a Shinto shrine, or were there specific aspects of religion or history that you wanted it to suggest?

TM: There’s really no significance in the fact that it’s Buddhist rather than Shinto, because, for example, Rachel and Justin created a whole worldview with Shōgun, but they aren’t really particularly Buddhist. Or they don’t have a faith in the Buddhist religion, but religion in the sense of one’s view of life and death, spirituality. So they embody a certain type of worldview. Outside of whether something is Shinto or Buddhist, [works of art] exist for me as things that symbolize a reality or a philosophy.

HS: The Dream Hall in Nara, commissioned in the 700s, houses a hidden statue, the Kuse Kannon, which some believe can alleviate suffering. People know that the statue is there but can only visit it on occasion. How is this mysterious aspect of the Yumedono reflected in the Cleveland re-creation, which houses your Four Symbols paintings that reside over the cardinal directions?

TM: The Shōgun team looks at the world of historical cities, effectively showcasing something’s context or history. I try to think of a more conceptual expression. In this collaboration, having the structure at the entrance of the exhibition means that first, visitors go way back in history and encounter the sense of life and death in that period in Asia. But once you enter the structure, you immediately encounter my paintings that are actually not very Japanese. They represent the four mystical creatures from China [reflecting an even earlier history], that protect a capital city. Then you go through this space into the exhibition, which is really all about, to us, the ideal country.

HS: Can you talk about your process in choosing the artworks from the CMA’s collection that you then used to create your works in response that feature in the subsequent parts of the exhibition?

TM: I made intuitive and primitive choices [of CMA pieces to respond to], thinking—I know the same thing! Or, this looks really cool. I used Photoshop to deconstruct the paintings and all the different colors into hundreds of screens, then silkscreen to reconstruct the paintings, where differences inevitably came up. 

When you look closely at my completed paintings, they are very different in detail from the originals. But when you look from afar, or take a photo of the completed painting, it might look like a copy, or there will be something about it that feels completed. But I’m aiming to create a slightly “off” effect. There are small discrepancies with reality. But looking from afar again, you can sort of recognize that type of oddness, even though you might know the original painting or work. You have to adjust your mindset to the new work.