Like most of us, artist Takashi Murakami’s life and perspective has been changed by the pandemic. As he said in a 2022 interview with the Gagosian Quarterly:

“My awakening to the metaverse happened in the summer of 2020, the first year of the pandemic, when I saw the way my children interact with the video game Animal Crossing: New Horizons. One day they were watching some fireworks display within the game while talking on Zoom with their school friends (whom they could no longer meet in person), admiring wholeheartedly how beautiful it was. I saw the reality of our shifting values when I realized that these children could see beauty within a small video-game screen.

This experience was similar to my own when I first encountered contemporary art, at the age of twenty-six: I was shocked by the gap between what you saw and the concept, and I realized that once I understood the context behind the gap, the artworks took on an entirely different appearance”.

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Here’s an excerpt from an interesting 2021 HBR interview on Creativity with Takashi Murakami (link below)

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To get a glimpse into the merging of Murakami’s perspectives – and if you’re lucky enough to be in the area! –  visit The Broad Museum in Los Angeles. Running until September 25th, the beautifully titled exhibit – ‘Stepping On The Tail Of A Rainbow’ – is taken from one of Murakami’s included pieces: ‘In the Land of the Dead, Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow’.

Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow features 18 works – the Broad’s significant Murakami holdings, and six pieces on loan. Also included are six new Augmented Reality works, created in collaboration with Spark AR, Instagram, and BUCK.

Here’s a short film by Eric Minh Swenson that captures Murakami and the exhibit at The Broad.

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www.creatorsvancouver.com

Header Art:
• Tan Tan Bo a.k.a. Gerotan: Scorched by the Blaze in the Purgatory of Knowledge. © Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

• https://hbr.org/2021/03/lifes-work-an-interview-with-takashi-murakami