At the Brooklyn Museum - The Dizzying World of Murakami

Photo by myself, part of a massive Murakami sculpture at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

The Murakami exhibit is going strong until mid-July at the BMA, located near Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn.

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Mark and I walked through Prospect Park today to the Brooklyn Museum of Art to see the Murakami exhibit that is currently on view.

Takashi Murakami is one of Mark's favorite artists. Recently we saw a television program that showed him fastidiously choosing every color in his large scale murals, in a paint-by-numbers way. If you're not familiar with his art, I'd describe it as playful, colorful and prolific.

Murakami combines cartoon characters, a huge palette of glorious colors, logos and comic book techniques into a dizzying array of work. Sea green topped mushrooms bare their teeth, surrounded by swirls of pinkish orange and coral. In another room, the walls are covered with cartoon eyeballs of different sizes.

For a slide show of the BMA exhibit, click here.

Some of the murals are gigantic, comprised of several panels into works 30 feet long. They are glorious and colorful, often with backgrounds of matte gold or silver. Some of the images resemble patterned wallpaper and was reproduced to cover the galleries from floor to ceiling. There were also incredible sculptures, as well as products on sale, produced for Louis Vuitton.

Recently the exhibit has been heavily advertised on the subway, and I hope parents are warned at the door. Some of the art is for adults only. I can only wonder what some children thought of a couple sculptures with exaggerated anatomical features. Ahem.

In general, the exhibit was fantastic and inspiring. If you're in New York in the next couple months, do make the trek over to the Brooklyn Museum.



For a the Times review of the exhibit, click here.


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