Alen Yen's ToyboxDX

	April 26, 2001


CURRENT RUMBLE

Multiples:Toys, Art, and Cultural Critique from Takeshi Murakami
Larry B.
4.26.01

Japanese animation (and its meditations upon the interaction between humanity and technology) has become so codified that it has passed from mere cultural phenomenon to full fledged institution. It is no surprise that the generation in Japan who first grew up within its thrall has for the last several years been engaged in its reproduction: revivals of series and characters, and re-issues of toys, etc. This trend is not limited to mere nostalgia-a few youngish businessmen buying revamped souvenirs of their youth-and in the hands of many designers and artists it has become a source of inspiration for historical reflection, and new innovation. There are many examples of this, but by far the most famous in the United States is the work of Takeshi Murakami and his Hiropon Factory (another example is the work of Mariko Mori-- her performances and objects also engage otaku culture, and have manifested in toy form). The best known of Murakami's "deconstructionist otaku"¹ works are cute and perverse anime-inspired fetish objects that seem to simultaneously celebrate and critique the oversimplified emotional expression, and transparent psycho-sexual narrative structures of anime itself. All this, while also engaging the Western art historical legacy of Pop and Conceptual art-utilizing mass production techniques, relinquishing traditional notions of "authorship," addressing the culture of the commodity, etc., etc.

In this regard, Murakami's work is significant because it so easily and definitively transcends the questions that have attended the Pop art phenomenon since its inception in the 1950s, from the nagging questions of the relationship between Warhol's art (he had a factory, too) and commodity culture in the 60s and 70s, to the stale theoretics of the postmodern 80s (Koons, Haring, Scharf, et al.). Actually, it doesn't so much transcend these issues as it absorbs them, and introduces them into a formula that provides a new consideration of the intertwined fates of "high" art and "low" mass culture.

However, critics and curators can't seem to get past this old dichotomy-several recent shows demonstrate their difficulties in doing so. Last year's PS1 exhibition, featuring Secret Mission Project ko² (an amazing, disturbing heroine, henkei-ing into a sleek ship, which never entirely loses its fleshy aspect-buy the model here) wanted Murakami to be the enlightened artist, ripping the veil of shallow eroticism qua pornography away from otaku culture². Conversely, the current installation at Grand Central Station in New York presents Murakami in his most banal aspect-big balloons = fun for the kiddies. [note the ingenious subversion here: "Hiropon Factory," slang for "methamphetamine factory", is lauded near the heart of Disney-fied, Giuliani-policed Manhattan - ed.]

Fact is, as Murakami states in the Superflat catalogue, the artist considers otaku and anime culture as the first truly significant cultural development since the death of the post-war avant-garde (in several decades, in other words). It is international, it disregards any designation as "kitsch," it has millions of participants; it is the perfect cultural movement for our post-industrial epoch. For Murakami, it is a study in flatness-- or, Superflatness, which means that it is a complex surface, with many infinitely shallow layers superimposed on one another. These pure surfaces are not just visual, but emotional, cultural, and technological as well. They speak to a rejection of traditional western metaphysics, which promotes the existence of a "deep" reality at the expense of "mere" perception, and of course, the rejection of the split between avant-garde and kitsch³:

The people who come to work for Hiropon Factory don't know what art is. Japan doesn't have high culture, only subculture. Or rather, the high culture we do have is floating on a cloud, as invisible as the emperor. Apart from that there is just subculture, from Beat Takeshi to erotic mangas, and then the outgroup of the otaku, or hobbyists. I think we won't need art and artists some day. That's why Japan is the future, don't you think so? We don't have any religion, we just need the big power of entertainment.⁴

Recently, Yappy and I had the chance to spend some quality time with a "multiple" Wink figure-- yes, a toy actually-- produced by Murakami and Hiropon. This particular figure was commissioned by the Peter Norton family (think Norton Utilities) from the Hiropon Factory as a limited production Christmas gift for the year 2000. Wink is a bulbous-headed androgynous figure, with a tuft of blonde hair, and multiple eyes (winking and in virtually every other state of openness). He sits atop a sphere composed of smiley-faced, multi-colored wild flowers, which in turn sits atop a metallic-looking base, again covered with Murakami's trademark eyes.

Typical Murakami iconography, as they say in art history classes (though, I'm not sure if Murakami has been canonized quite yet). But this is also a toy - Wink is a bendy figure (!), all the parts are mass-produced plastic, the flower ball opens up to reveal a CD with original music composed by Zakyumiko of the Hiropon Factory. This is a rare toy indeed, but more importantly, its very quotidian art-- I don't know how many of these were actually made, but it potentially could have been millions, and therein lays the significance of the piece. This is not a unique, precious object sitting behind glass in a museum-- it's a toy, plain and simple. Of course, it's not that simple-- it's also art; an object that has cultural and aesthetic significance, and is meant (despite Murakami's own Warhol-like self-effacement) to elicit reflection on the part of the observer (user?).

The power of Wink comes from its refusal to engage the question, "is it art or is it a toy?". Frankly, it's a moot point. Art is a commodity and a fetish, just like toys are. The only real difference is that toys are not subjected to the same level of cultural scrutiny and interpretation and exchange as art. Except, that is, in obsessive, otaku-derived sub-cultures like collecting, and fandom in general.

Ultimately, Murakami's work and Wink particularly demonstrate that the collecting of objects, and the obsessive micro-historical detailing of the conditions of their creation and production (sound familiar?) is the common cultural basis of art and toys (and everything else). This is the surface of the "superflat": the cataloguing, classification, and arranging of objects and information alike, not because they have some inherent metaphysically derived value, but because they look really cool together.

¹Yappy, "Rumble - 3.18.01: Hiropon NYC" Toyboxdx.com.

²http://www.ps1.org/cut/press/murakami.html.

³Clement Greenberg, "Avant-garde and Kitsch," (1939), reprinted in Art and Culture. (Boston, Beacon Press, 1961).

⁴Interview with Takeshi Murakami, BT Monthly Art Magazine, Japan, Issue 5, May 2000

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