Conversations | Tokyo as Studio: Takashi Murakami and Shinro Ohtake

Conversations | Tokyo as Studio: Takashi Murakami and Shinro Ohtake

Thank you. Hi everyone, I’m Andrew Maerkle, editorial director of Art Week Tokyo. It’s wonderful to see such a great turnout for this talk. Art Week Tokyo was established in 2021 as a citywide initiative for activating the art ecosystem in Tokyo and reinforcing the city’s connections to the regional and international art scenes. The event is held across four days every November and connects 50 of the city’s leading museums, galleries and art spaces across coordinated programming. We also organize special platforms, including our curated sales platform, AWT Focus, our talk series, and the AWT Bar, which invites an emerging architect to design a space where we serve artist cocktails and special food creations. As you know, Art Week Tokyo is organized in collaboration with Art Basel, and here in Hong Kong, we are deepening our relationship by organizing several activations over the course of the fair. Today’s talk is one of those activations. We also have curated tours of Tokyo galleries at the fair, and a pop-up edition of AWT Bar at Ronin in Central. We are thrilled to have two of the most important artists of Japanese contemporary art in recent years with us to speak on the topic ‘Tokyo as Studio’. I’ll briefly introduce the speakers. Takashi Murakami was born in Tokyo in 1962, and holds a PhD in Nihonga from Tokyo University of the Arts. He is one of today’s most recognizable artists, known for introducing his Superflat theory of contemporary visual culture to the world, in addition to exhibiting at important venues, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Palace of Versailles in France, and Tai Kwun Contemporary here in Hong Kong. His art can be seen everywhere from fashion apparel to album covers, music videos and skateboard decks, as well as buses. His work is currently on view in a major new exhibition, ‘Takashi Murakami Mononoke Kyoto’, which continues at the Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art through September 1 of this year. And he’s opening another exhibition, ‘Hiroshige’s 100 Famous Views of Edo, (feat. Takashi Murakami)’, at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, which runs from April 5 to August 4. Shinro Ohtake was born in Tokyo in 1955, and has been active as an artist since the late 1970s. He has inspired multiple generations of Japanese artists with his practice of ‘working with what’s already there’, which he applies to everything from collages and assemblages to mixed media paintings and kinetic sound sculptures, as well as his signature _Scrapbooks_. Ohtake has participated in major exhibitions of international art, including the first Asia Pacific Triennial, the eighth Gwangju Biennale, the 55th Venice Biennale, and dOCUMENTA 13. He is the recipient of this year’s 65th Mainichi Art Award in recognition of his retrospective ‘Shinro Ohtake’, which opened in late 2022 at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, and traveled to multiple venues in Japan over the past year. Murakami-san, Ohtake-san, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedules to join us today. I think the theme of the talk is relatively self-explanatory. I would just say that there are probably no better artists we could ask to talk about ‘Tokyo as Studio’ than Murakami-san and Ohtake-san. Murakami-san, I believe your art has really helped to shape the international image of Tokyo and its culture over the past two decades and more. And Ohtake-san, you have a very embodied and physical relationship with the city and its urban space that goes back to your childhood in post-war Tokyo. I’d also say that I think both of you are indicative of how Tokyo is a global city that produces a culture that is informed by connections with other cities and cultures across the world, including here in Hong Kong. We’ll get into that over the course of the talk. But since you were both born and raised in Tokyo, I thought we could just start by talking about how the city shapes your artistic vision. What parts of the city have inspired you, and what parts of the city have you pushed back against in building up your artistic practices? Hi, this is Takashi. Yes, uh… Ohtake Shinro-san is one of my… Before my debut, I saw his show and then I decided that I wanted to… be a contemporary artist. Almost two years, I had been copying his work. And then, one day, he came to our university. He walked around and then I was asking him, ‘Hey, Mister Ohtake-san, so can I talk a little bit?’ And he’s very kind. ‘Oh, okay.’ ‘Okay, so, but… what are you doing?’ So it looks like a very nice conversation. And then I became an artist maybe. But the main thing is, he said the Tokyo stuff… Honestly, I’m not Tokyo image, but he was doing for his art something… He’s very linked with Japan’s strongest economy, the bubble economy, the zone. That means, like, he was doing with, kind of, I don’t know, like my image was… He’s got very good connections with Japanese money, but he said no. But, you know… exactly, the kind of… my generation and his generation, this is a very big gap. His generation was… in time for the bubble economy stuff, meaning the Japanese people had confidence, the first time they had confidence after losing World War II. And then, my generation… The economy was crushed. And then everybody went into depression. And then we had to find our way and then myself, I had to escape from Japan. So that means I can’t speak to the Tokyo style, but… maybe much better than me, Ohtake-san can talk about the Tokyo stuff. Yes, well… Regarding the bubble period you just mentioned, Murakami-san is actually seven years younger than me. I didn’t experience any of the things people associate with that era, despite being part of that generation. Of course, people say that in those days Tokyo was in a very good position economically, but as a thirty-something at the time, I felt very distant from all that. The same goes for my twenties, too. Speaking personally… In 1963, the anime series ‘Astro Boy’ debuted on TV, so I’m part of that generation. I still remember watching it kneeling in front of the TV the very first time it was shown. My childhood years spanned roughly the period from 1955 to 1965, or thereabouts. For kids of that era, the dream future jobs were either a baseball player, pro-wrestler, or manga artist. Before starting elementary school, my dream was to become a manga artist. But I soon realized I didn’t have any kind of talent for that, and quickly gave up. I’d only drawn eight pages, I remember. When it comes to Tokyo, I don’t think I was aware of this at the time, but looking back at my adolescence now, I think cinema was my biggest inspiration. I used to go to the movies all the time as a teenager and in my early twenties. Ohtake-san, you talked about growing up in post-war Tokyo prior to the Olympics, where there was a lot of construction going on, and I think things were also kind of freer. I remember you also talking about going over to Tezuka Osamu’s production studio and receiving animation cels from his animators. So maybe that was also a period of time when it was much… Yes, that’s right. Back then, there wasn’t really any concern for privacy. There was this book called ‘How to Draw Manga’ that had all the artists’ addresses and phone numbers. So as kids, we used to say, "Whose house shall we go to this week?" And we’d just show up. But all the artists were so kind. We’d show up on the doorstep of people like Tetsuya Chiba, all these figures we looked up to, and they’d graciously sign things for us. When we went to Osamu Tezuka’s studio, the artists working there gave us the used animation cells that they didn’t need anymore. About ten each. Once, we climbed up onto the wall of Osamu Tezuka’s house to look inside. He was watering his plants. After that, he invited us into his house and gave us shortcake and tea. I don’t actually remember that part, but another friend who was there told me about it. Thinking about it now, there were lots of warm, pleasant adults around at the time. I’m really appreciative of that now. Murakami-san, you were just talking about the bubble era, and you actually curated an exhibition of works from your collection, which you titled ‘Bubblewrap’. So I think the bubble is an important period for you, and how you understand also art history. Could you talk a bit more about your experiences during that time? Okay. Ohtake-san’s position at that moment was… very original, I can say now. Because the art is what? The Japanese art people couldn’t understand. That’s why graffiti art is, say, art is graffiti. Graphic art, not graffiti. That’s why the design thing and product thing everything, it’s all art. So that’s why Ohtake-san’s position in the people, like me, makes anybody recognize it’s an art piece because it doesn’t fit with commercial something. So then, ‘Bubblewrap’, my theme at that moment, Seibu company had a lot of power. It’s this conglomerate, a kind of department store, it’s kind of real estate and exactly a train business, and those guys, the Tsutsumi family, were playing with real estate, like a hotel business, and everything. Then they have a huge amount of money and they pay for each artist, and made some competitions. But, you know… at that moment, my feeling was fuck Tsutsumi. Because too many pay for the money and also this is confusing. But at the same time, at that moment, you know, 15 years… So the Seibu company paid a huge amount of money for young artists. That’s why. So we understood what is a creative condition. So, like, Roppongi, now where Roppongi Hills is, that area had Wave, a kind of subculture department store, and underground there was an independent movie theater. So, like, the bubble economy thing… it’s kind of like us, the seed artists can grow, using this money stuff. So, but now… Nobody wants to talk about this era. Because the Japanese people are very, how can I say… disappointed that the bubble economy is not their own culture or their own structure for making money. So that’s why nobody talks about these things. That’s why I want to make a revival of this era. Then I added the title ‘Bubblewrap’. But Ohtake-san is just one person. One artist, the star of independent standing position. I was actually at Nakano Broadway recently, which is the Mecca of otaku culture in Japan. It’s an old shopping center with small shops that sell old figurines, old animation cels. And, of course, Murakami-san has a number of shops in Nakano Broadway, including a cafe, a shop selling Kaikai Kiki merchandise, a gallery, and offices. But as I was walking through that space, I was actually looking at the displays and how there are all these figurines kind of put on the shelves in these miniature assemblages, full of tremendous details, colors, and I thought, maybe this is a kind of connecting point between Ohtake’s art, which is full of found imagery that he collects from different sources and weaves into collages and assemblages, and Murakami’s approach to composition, which is also hyper-detailed and exploding with different bursts of color and narratives. So I wonder if the two of you would agree with that statement or could talk about it. Well, let’s see… It’s probably difficult for people to imagine Nakano Broadway without having been there themselves. It’s basically this shrine to Showa-era retro, mashed up with otaku culture, all within this labyrinth-like building. So yeah, I suppose I can see why you might say you see similarities between the place and my work. That certainly makes sense. But you work with vernacular culture, and you’re picking up images that are not high art. It’s kind of considered consumable images, or throwaway imagery that you collect. So maybe, you know, although figures are one element of that, I think I see a connection between that image culture of otaku and some of the other sources that you work with. I don’t really think they’re all that related. I can appreciate that culture for what it is, but as for whether I was all that influenced by it, I don’t really see it that way. This might be something we talk more about later, but having been born and raised in Tokyo, I went to work on a farm in Hokkaido after graduating high school. Tokyo didn’t suit me. I always felt like I didn’t really belong there. I was looking for a place I felt comfortable in. After coming back from Hokkaido, next I went to London, and then Hong Kong after that. I started making my _Scrapbooks_ during my first stay in London. I’d pick up trash and paste it in notebooks. Then when I came back two years later, completely by luck, I got a free ticket for a three-day tour to Hong Kong. When I came to Hong Kong, it was a real shock to the system, the Hong Kong of the time. It was 1979, so quite a long time ago now. So when I first came to Hong Kong, I immediately felt like I’d found my place. Having initially discovered collage when I was in London, the practice became more and more embodied within me after that. As I gradually made the technique my own, Hong Kong ended up being a huge inspiration. This is my first time back in Hong Kong in five years, but it’s still incredibly… Well, obviously it’s changed a lot, but it still has that same energy. This power that it’s always had to feed creativity. Murakami-san, do you see any connection with the vernacular imagery in Nakano Broadway and your own art, or any connection between your art and Ohtake-san’s art through this use of vernacular imagery? Me and Ohtake-san… there’s seven years difference, but this distance is a very big gap. Because he said Osamu Tezuka is one of the manga artists, but he’s kind of the very starting point guy. But the otaku people, the otaku generation is kind of two or three generations later. And also… Ohtake-san is talking about a very pure creative thing but the otaku culture is a very strange and embarrassing eroticism, right? So, like, you know, big breasts, and all of these strange things and it’s kind of a very embarrassing culture, Japanese anime and game culture. But we grow and we’re breathing for this culture, that’s why. So we’re proud about that. But in general culture, they say geek people are very embarrassing. So that’s the counter-feeling otaku people have. It’s Nakano Broadway, the generation is me, or more a little bit between Ohtake-san and me, that generation of people created it. Right now, what otaku or geek means is… not bad information, or a bad impression, but our generation is exactly very bad because one of the very famous murderers is Tsutomu Miyazaki, the guy who killed very small ladies, like children. So in that guy’s room, there were so many videotapes and so many otaku posters. And then one day, the television and newspapers had pictures of his room. And then my parents were very fearful about… ‘Oh my God, my son has the same room.’ So, kind of that movement. That’s why still until now the Nakano Broadway has a very creepy feeling. But that’s why I’m very comfortable to breathe inside this area. That’s why I have several stores and a cafe or something. And then, when I came to this area, I’m very relaxed, comfortable. Ohtake-san was just talking about how he had formative experiences in London and Hong Kong. Murakami-san, I understand that you went to New York, and it was when you were in New York that you really understood how you wanted to integrate so-called otaku culture into your artwork. Could you talk a bit about that experience? Me? – Yes. Okay, all right. Why I had to go to New York City was… I had to escape from the Japanese art scene, art market. And the museum industry also, the Japanese museum industry is super-poor. Because after the bubble economy crashed. So, no money. No money means exactly no money. When the museum people invited me, they needed… ‘Okay, Takashi-san, please make these two big rooms… make nice installations.’ And… ‘Okay, how much is the budget?’ They said… It looks like a big room, it looks like that, two rooms. ‘Oh, okay. So we can pay for that… like, 500 dollars’ or something like that. It’s, you know, oh my God. Just going back and forth with a truck, the rental fee is much more. So you can’t do that. But then the museum people said, ‘Everybody does that. Why not? You can do that.’ And then, ‘Sorry, I cannot do that.’ And then I escaped to New York City. And then I was learning what is New York theory to debut for that. And then I got money from the Asian Cultural Council to make the test, a grantee, a fantastic chance. The Asian Cultural Council gave me the money and I gave it to the PS1 museum studio visit project. And then I got for one year a small studio in New York, and I can breathe in very naturally what is real New York art. And then, step by step, I was learning. And I can fit with New York something, but at the same time, I have no connection with the Japanese something. So, until now, I have no connection. Just, you know, Mori Museum. These guys are very special. And also Fumio Nanjo. So this guy, the curator. He found maybe Ohtake-san and me, he’s a very sophisticated curator, an independent curator who learned from the… maybe European something. That guy, you know, gave you a chance, to me or any artist. So I got the chance for the Mori Museum but there are very few other chances. For example, MOT, Tokyo contemporary art museum, I had a big show. But why I got a chance was that Mariko Mori canceled. And then: ‘Hey, Takashi. So we have no time. Just four months, are you available?’ I had no choice. So it looks like my standing position in Japan is super-bad. It looks like that. Backstage, I was talking with Ohtake-san, and he said, ‘Oh, I’m not in a good position,’ but it looks like that. I don’t know. I’d like to talk a bit about how you both engage with the city. Ohtake-san, I know that you often walk around urban space, not just in Tokyo, but pretty much anywhere you go, and you look for signs or presences, things that speak to you about the forgotten time that… that you can find in the city. So I wonder whether you think of your practice, as a way of reading urban space and also how you approach the themes of time and memory, through urban space in your artworks. I wouldn’t say I’m conscious of that when I’m walking in cities. It’s not like I’m walking around Hong Kong with the themes of memory and time at the forefront my mind. I’ll just be walking normally when something instinctively grabs my attention. So my process is really about following my intuition. As I’m walking, whether it’s, say, a big chimney, or factory walls, I want to possess these objects that suddenly appear. As for what they have in common, I think it’s what accumulates on their surface, whether it be traces of something or marks formed by chance. Memories and time exist within all that, I’m sure. But to return to what I was saying, I first arrived in Hong Kong back in the days of Kai Tak Airport. I remember the thrill of seeing the city from above as we landed, coming in low over the buildings. The view below, a melting pot of time and memory. The other thing I remember being struck by was this power of perseverance people had. In Tokyo, by comparison, I didn’t feel anything like that, at least not back then. Hong Kong felt much more international in flavor. Back then, before I’d started exhibiting visual works, I used to collect sounds which I then recorded on vinyl. Taking a taxi after arriving at Kai Tak Airport, I remember being struck by the sound coming from the radios. The different smells, the feel of the humidity… I used to go to sheet-metal shops and record the sounds I heard there. It was as if all the sounds and sights of the city existed within this chaotic vortex. That’s how it felt. So to go back to what I was saying, themes of memory and time always occurred to me after the fact. Setting out to make work expressly on those themes strikes me as being somewhat risky. Looking at your collages, there are bus tickets or tram tickets, there are pieces of product packaging, there are images torn from magazines, and you feel a kind of networking or diversity of different times coming together in the work. Murakami-san, I think your practice is fascinating because you’re circulating your imagery through urban space in so many different platforms. You are making artworks, but you’re also making merchandise. You’re doing collaborations with shoe companies and skateboards and different artists as well. What are some of the strategies that you consider when you’re working on these projects that you know are going to be circulating in urban space? Okay. So I have a very good example. If the Western people want to become the sumo wrestler, right, this is very difficult. This is the same thing. I am, like… For Japanese people, or Asian people, to become Western artists, it’s the same. Western culture has a long history and it’s very original. So for Asian people to fit with Western art is super difficult. It’s kind of… everything has to change, like your body and mentality. Everything. Rules and communication, everything is changed. But, you know… until now, we didn’t… the Asian… or mostly the Japanese art scene didn’t understand this happening. So, why am I wearing this? And you ask me why I have to make many platforms… I mean, I cannot survive as a sumo wrestler. Yokozuna means ‘champion’. I cannot do that. So I am maybe… if I do my best, like second or third position. This is my best position. That means I cannot win the championship. So that’s why I have to look for another way. So that is my reality. I know you’ve also worked in digital space, with NFTs, you are active on Twitter, and you started your own YouTube channel recently, has the… proliferation of digital space and online space in contemporary society changed the way that you approach art and approach the city? Okay. It’s very nice for crossing the border line. The media is, I thought, until now, I believe to the cryptocurrency world. Now, NFT art is not in a good condition in the economy, but this is a freedom. This area doesn’t have any border. Like I told you, I cannot be a champion in a Western art world, but in a cryptocurrency, or like a cyber world, everybody’s flat. Like, that’s why I was very… pushing for the NFT something, until now. And now, at the end of this year, I will release something new, something with NFTs. So it’s, you know, the cyber world and the digital world is a very… how can I say… democratic area, but at the same time it’s kind of, for example, the Japanese government hates and rejects the cryptocurrency area, the culture. And also the very strong countries reject cryptocurrency. So that is because of the freedom, complete freedom. It’s already started that this cyber world is making art. For example, Basel art fair is physical art pieces. are being moved, right. It goes through the dealer. So that’s the art market. But… the digital something sometimes doesn’t need dealers. So that breaks everything. That’s why the art world is still… They didn’t mention that this is art, but… But I think this is next. Completely next. Social media is kind of step one, step two. But cryptocurrency is step ten or something like that. I don’t know, but this is my opinion. Ohtake-san, I think of you as more of an analog person. You’re very, you know, you work with your hands a lot. But have you been paying attention to new forms of digital culture? I remember you were saying the other day that you had actually done a digital project around 2001, 2002, your ‘Mouscape’ series, and works like ‘Buglayer’, where you were working on the computer, to make compositions. Yes, as you mentioned, in 2001 I was commissioned to produce work by computer for the first time. That was my first experience creating art using a computer and mouse. What I found counterintuitive about the whole thing… I guess that was the point, but they asked me to number the prints. I suppose… When you think about the history of printmaking, it was about making multiple non-original copies which can be widely distributed. That was the whole point. Limited editions make sense in an analog world, because the more you print, the more the woodblock or copperplate wears down. So the number of works in a single edition would depend on how many times you could print a work that remained the same as the original. Ideally speaking, you’d be able to create an infinite number of works all of exactly the same quality. But now with digital, we’ve got this cutting-edge technology, yet we’re artificially limiting the number of works produced. It struck me as paradoxical. You’d think being able to produce and distribute an infinite number would be ideal. But by limiting the number of prints instead, we’ve ended up embedding digital work within the same framework as woodblock and copperplate printing. It felt like… the contradictions of the digital age were being laid bare for the first time. That’s how it felt to me. And one other thing. Copperplate and woodblock prints used to be considered ‘flat’. Back before Murakami-san’s time, works were called either ‘three-dimensional’ or ‘flat’. Paintings were flat, sculpture was three-dimensional. Before digital, I mean. But with the advent of digital, the surface of the work literally became ‘flat’. So now the tiny protrusions on woodblock prints, or in the case of oil paintings, the paint itself, which used to be ‘flat’, the bumps and texture of the paint took on a whole new meaning. In a sense, at least in comparison to digital works, woodblock prints and paintings have now become ‘3D’. Even the canvas is a three-dimensional object. So through this experience of creating art digitally, I came to a new discovery about how to think about the art itself. New for me, anyway. The realization that paint on a canvas was actually an object with its own dimensions. I remember that vividly. And I think with your digital works, you ended up cutting them up and making collages out of some of them as well, right? Yes, exactly. In the case of my own work, it doesn’t feel right unless there’s something ‘sticking out’. If it’s just flat. Maybe it’s how I’m wired. I want to rip things up and stick them places. That’s definitely in me. Collage is similar to painting in that the thickness of the paper accumulates. Strictly speaking, it’s a 3D object. Something I found interesting about working digitally was the way that by enlarging the work and zooming in, it’s like you’re entering the picture. When you paint a picture, your distance from the canvas is fixed. But by looking at what you’ve made at such proximity, this whole new world emerges. You discover all these layers and details you had no idea you’d even created. That feeling of having entered the digital work itself was totally new to me. Murakami-san, you, of course, are a master at working on computer and designing your compositions on computer. Could you talk a bit about that sort of interaction between the digital and then the output of your artworks? Now the topic is AI. So, until these 15 months… We had been trying to use AI, but the audience is against AI. This is very surprising. Mostly the film industry people in Hollywood, those people are super strong against AI. So that’s why this issue is very sensitive. But right now I have to think about the AI stuff in the digital. But honestly, I’m doing very attractive. I employ many people. Right. But in your production process, I think… you sketch ideas and then you put them onto a computer and you kind of develop them through a digital program? Okay. Honestly, I’m not a digital person. I make very small drawings. Because small drawings take a very short time to create, like six seconds, ten seconds. And then I pass these sketches to my assistant, and my design or painting style is we have a theory. That’s the tracing and then… copying that. But AI can bearable to the… immediately to tracing my style. So kind of that. Right. We were talking about the post-war period of Tokyo and the bubble era of Tokyo. I think over the past 20 years or so, we’ve also kind of reached this period where we have these big real estate developments like Roppongi Hills, which are buying up whole neighborhoods and turning them into sort of commercialized spaces. I wonder if you could talk a bit about whether that’s changed the way art circulates in the city and changed the potential for art-making in the city. Okay. Mori Building Company decided to invite the galleries. This is marketing, not a Tokyo thing. It’s a Mori Building marketing thing. Then I was working with Mori Building. That’s why my company moved very close to Roppongi. And then… I very naturally started the gallery in the Azabu area, it’s very close to Roppongi. But I don’t know… Okay, so I have never thought about what is Tokyo, I only think about what is Japan, right. Because Japan is very big, like Hokkaido to Okinawa. So my themes always come from the south, like Kyushu island and Okinawa island, and these people are always against the central government. So that philosophy… I come from Kyushu island, the blood. That’s why it fits with… against the government. And now, maybe you guys are watching the very nice Japanese samurai movie Shogun on Disney+ or something. So that movie very much fits my feelings because British or American artists created the costume design and architecture, everything is very nicely over the Japanese technique in making what is Japan. what is Japanese history. So it looks like that. That’s why I’m not focusing on the city or not like, kind of, and also the… My big point of view is Japan has a lot of natural disasters. That’s why we have religion. It came from nothing. Like just a… mirror, like a Shinto way is why… A natural disaster is a kind of god. So, you know, I’m thinking about that but… until now, I’m not thinking about what is a city, Roppongi is what? Roppongi is Mori Building, the company area, and the Mitsubishi, Sumitomo… It looks like that, I don’t know. Ohtake-san, you also have made works like the ‘Zyapanorama’ series, where you go out into other cities around Japan, and pick up materials from those cities and turn them into artworks. I mean maybe to pick up on what Murakami-san was saying, how do you see this sort of interaction between Tokyo and the rest of Japan? It doesn’t really occur to me. I’m not someone who thinks much about where I am. I go wherever’ll have me. So long as there’s somewhere I can work, I’m happy to go anywhere. This might be getting away from what you were asking, but on this question of Tokyo as a theme, I’m reminded of something. Around the time I went to Hong Kong, Zen, wabisabi, and the concept of ‘<i>ma’,</i> or empty space, were all the rage in art exhibitions back then, which were pushing this idea of ‘Japan’. But the way I see it, all these things feel very ‘Kyoto’. Of course, when I go to Kyoto, I find it all very charming. But by the same token, if you were to ask me whether I consider that idea of ‘Japan’ as part of myself, I’d honestly have to say no. I approach it as a complete outsider, as a tourist. That’s what Kyoto feels like to me. When I go with a British person to the rock gardens of Ryoan-ji temple or wherever, I find it dull how they’re all moved by that stuff. I’m standing there like, ‘Is it really all that?’ I just don’t feel it’s all that representative of Japan. Yet the image persists. Thinking of back then, the film ‘Blade Runner’ came out in 1982. I remember thinking how much it reminded me of Junichiro Tanizaki’s ‘In Praise of Shadows’, which is all about the shadow in Japanese aesthetics, the ‘wabisabi’ of Japanese culture. Watching ‘Blade Runner’, I felt like I was seeing a new vision of the aesthetics of ‘In Praise of Shadows’. In that sense, I’ve always been more intrigued by fake things than real ones. Fake things always seemed more ‘real’ to me somehow. I’m much more likely to be inspired by a postcard of a place than seeing the actual view with my own eyes. I’ve always been like that. As an art student, I was always told to look at the thing itself. To ‘feel the other side of the plaster.’ I was like, ‘How the hell do I do that?’ There was this huge importance placed on seeing things as they are, but I always felt like my inclination was to do the opposite. As a student, certainly. Tokyo lacks a certain reality, I feel. By comparison, the chaos of everyday life in Hong Kong, that daily fight for survival, maybe it’s a million miles from what we think of as art, but it felt deeply connected to my artistic practice as a young artist. Murakami-san, you just opened a major exhibition in Kyoto that’s dealing with the theme of Kyoto. Do you want to respond to what Ohtake-san was just saying, or carry it forward in some way? Okay. My standing position and his standing position is completely different. Because his standing position is very… how can I say… spiritual. For me, right? Kind of that he’s very… watching himself. And when we look at his paintings or sculptures, it’s kind of, he says he’s against the Kyoto style of Zen. But for me, in my eyes it looks like a Western eye already. His painting is a very Zen style, like nothing to the… how can I say… the emptiness. That’s why it’s very pure, the painting. And I’m very jealous of his standing position. But my style of thing is… It looks like… exactly the Shogun production design eye. Like how Western people watch, more, you know… a booster shot to the Japanese-Japanese. And then, my Kyoto show is exactly the booster by… Westernized Japanese people to push for what is Kyoto. But many Kyoto local people helped me to give me many ideas. That’s why that show is very, very intense. The information from the real Kyoto something. So, kind of that. I think you’ve described one of the themes in your art as ‘puking’ or ‘gero’. Could you talk a bit about what you mean when you say that? Okay. All right. Now, in this talk… I’ve told you guys about my marketing artist side. But just marketing cannot survive in the art world. So sometimes, or many times, it came from my something to the very honest thing. So when I was making for the first time the puking painting, I got gout. When I was 36 years old. So my feet were double scale, and I cut my jeans, and then, oh my God, I got very seriously ill. They looked like an elephant’s feet. Very serious, something like the virus. And then I came to the hospital, the doctor said, ‘Oh, you got a very strange virus.’ But another one week, I came back to the hospital. ‘Oh, sorry, Murakami-san. This doctor is internship. That’s why we were wrong. You have gout.’ Then the doctor gave me a pill and then immediately, it was shrinking. So that moment was the first time I very seriously watched myself. ‘Oh, I will be dead soon. So, my body is aging. I cannot drink beer and alcohol anymore, and I cannot eat shrimp or squid or something.’ At that moment I was making the puking-style paintings. It’s just like, you know, give up. So my icon of the character, Mr. DOB, is giving up, and saying goodbye to this world. That’s why I’m making the puke images. Maybe just a last question before we move to questions from the audience, but whether it’s in the city, in a city, or whether it’s online, what are some of the communities that you feel like you engage with, and where do you go to look for new ideas? Maybe Ohtake-san, you can start. I don’t have anything like that. I’m completely isolated from any community. I know a bit about what Tokyo used to be like, but for the last 30 years I’ve been in Uwajima, on the southern edge of Shikoku. I don’t know anything about what’s happening in Tokyo these days. Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you meant by ‘community’, but I’ve always worked in a solitary fashion, and that’s still the case even now. I don’t even think of myself as belonging to the art world. I have very few connections with people in that scene. That was always the case, back then as well as now. How about you, Murakami-san? Honestly, now is the best time for sightseeing in Tokyo, not because of the season, like spring… No. Like, because, you know, very peaceful. And very few people in the restaurants. So, yen and dollar or, I don’t know, won or something… You know, right? So many foreigners come to Tokyo and, you know, shopping is good, huh? And eating. The best food! You can enjoy it anywhere, very cheap. So it’s a good moment for the foreigner. But for the people who live in Japan, it’s super-depressing. Because, like, you know… that salary is stable… so many English words you cannot understand. But at the same time, we have very nice equipment, like a kind of touch button, right? Maybe you knew this system in a kind of the circle sushi bar, right? And also the art movement, it looks like manga-style art is very popular right now. And you can find many galleries, it’s mostly the young people who can open the galleries. So this is not just from the influence from New York or London or Paris, but a very original movement we have now. I don’t know if this is good or bad, but… Who’s making the judgment is like you guys, right? So please come to Tokyo and watching with your eyes and making your experience. So maybe it’s the best timing, but this timing is gone very soon, so I don’t know. We will be starting some war and the economy will crash, and mostly the very dangerous thing is… Tokyo has a big possibility of a hell’s earthquake, right? So now is the final moment. Yes, every day I’m thinking about this, because you can research it on the internet. This past month, every day there’s an earthquake in a neighborhood in Tokyo. I remember in 2011, in the north of Japan there was a huge earthquake. We had an event, Geisai, I invited many Westerners for the jury. But at that moment there was an earthquake. So my guests had to go around in the air for three hours. And then couldn’t touch down in Tokyo. They had to go to Nagoya, Osaka, anywhere. A few of my guests already came to Tokyo, and these people were crying because it was the first time with the shaking for them, big something. ‘I want to go back to my home.’ You want to make this experience? No. Maybe not, right? So now is the best timing. Please come. And please spend your money. Right? So maybe like we can, make a very big, nice something. But in the near future, we have to spend money on renovation for the earthquake. This is our destiny. Japan has many huge disasters. And then this story is in Shogun. So please watch the Shogun movie, it’s the best. for you to understand our situation right now. Okay, let’s open it up to questions from the audience. I think we have some people walking around with microphones. Does anybody want to…? Raise your hand high if you want to ask a question. Here in the front. The economy is not very rapid growing now. So how do you think the background economy things will do the influence to the artwork… art world? So how do you think of that? I am a PR manager of an art gallery in Hangzhou. It’s like a very beautiful city in China, and it has a long history. We have a lot of young artists, they are in the very fresh start-up stage. So do you have any advice for them to encourage them, or for their career? Okay. Nike said a good thing: ‘Just do it’, right? That’s it! That’s it, right? Because, I told you today, when I was debut, the bubble economy was crashed after that. The economy was a disaster. Nobody was buying art. But we were looking for how to survive. This is nice training. That was a nice training. That’s why I can survive a long time in this world. A bad thing is sometimes a good thing, right? A good thing in the future is a bad thing, I don’t know. So… That’s why, just do it. The thought that occurred to me was this. At an exhibition the other day, a young girl asked me to look at her art. She immediately took out her phone and started tapping away. As far as I’m concerned, I was just looking at a phone, but from her perspective, she was showing me her art. Anyway, she said she was concerned, and the reason, she told me, was because the works she posted weren’t getting ‘likes’. But in my case, back when I was her age, I would’ve seen even a single ‘like’ as the kiss of death. So, I suppose… Making art with the hope that people will like it is the complete opposite to how I work. This is just my personal opinion, so I don’t know if it counts as advice, but I’d say stop caring what others think. Praise is the last thing you should want. To quote Murakami-san, ‘Just do it.’ Forget about winning people’s approval and just focus on creating. Who cares what others think? Think of praise as a bad sign. That’s how I felt when I was younger, and nothing’s changed. Another question. Over there in the back. Yeah, right in front of you. Thank you, Mr. Murakami and Mr. Ohtake. I have a question. So I was wondering, what is the moment when you guys know you are an artist, and whether… And when are you the most creative? And what is the advice you have for someone who wants to become an artist? Thank you. Okay. I recognized that I’m an artist by setting a time limit, So I have to debut before 30 years old. That’s why at 29 years old, I recognized myself: ‘I’m an artist.’ This is a job, right? I don’t know, and also what is a very creative moment… For example, every day I’m watching YouTube or social media. Over five hours. And then in the studio, maybe my young assistant, just I’m laughing and I’m just watching the iPhone. But when I get a very new idea, it’s something like that time. So watching a very new word, or a stupid TikTok video, and cats, very cute videos. So, I got some idea. ‘Oh, now they are very popular, cats.’ And then I’m making a cat illustration or something like that. Something like that. I don’t really think of myself as an artist all that much. How to put it… Even to this day, I still feel strongly that I’m not even close to the level of those I consider to be true artists. I try to work without thinking too much about what I am. I don’t really have an awareness of myself as an ‘artist’. To tell the truth, I don’t really create work for the purpose of exhibitions. It just depends on how I feel when I wake up, whether I have the desire to create something or not. Whether I feel motivated. So I suppose… There are periods when I’m able to create two or three pieces consistently every day, and those are the times I’m able to feel… I wouldn’t exactly say ‘creative’ per se, but in a groove. That’s how I look at it. For me, the process of creating an artwork is a means of trying to make sense of something. So I suppose… I’ll keep going for as long as I have questions about things. For that reason, the question of whether what I make constitutes art or not doesn’t factor into my thinking. Murakami-san, you of course work with other artists through Kaikai Kiki and you also helped, supported… You actually helped to launch the careers of some now established artists through your Geisai festival. So maybe you could just add a little bit about how you work with other artists. Do you give them a lot of advice or are you pretty hands-off? I want to use the translator. Okay? I spent about 15 years supporting younger artists, but as far as they’re concerned, we oldies just get in the way. They think ‘screw you’. So I thought… You put money and effort into nurturing people and it still turns sour, so I gave up. Well, that’s all the time that we’ve got. So, thank you for your questions. And thank you to Murakami-san and Ohtake-san for such a stimulating discussion. I’d just like to remind everyone: Drop by the pop-up AWT Bar at Ronin, tonight and tomorrow, anytime from 6 p.m. to 1 a.m. You can experience a taste of Art Week Tokyo through special artist cocktails, while listening to artist-curated playlists and seeing select artworks, presented by Art Week Tokyo galleries. And Art Week Tokyo’s 2024 edition kicks off with two days of VIP events in Tokyo on November 5 and 6. I’d also like to thank our interpreters for today. Our Japanese-English interpreters were Meri Joyce and Tomoko Momiyama. And our Mandarin Chinese-English interpreters were Tan Siyu and Ma Xinhui. Otsukaresama deshita. Thank you.

Organized in collaboration with Art Week Tokyo

Takashi Murakami, artist
Shinro Ohtake, artist

Moderated by Andrew Maerkle, Editorial Director, Art Week Tokyo

Japan’s shapeshifting capital city, which has always been a fertile ground for homegrown and international artistic movements, nurtures an exciting array of visual cultures. This talk brings together two of the most significant artists in recent Japanese contemporary art, Takashi Murakami and Shinro Ohtake, to discuss how Tokyo has inspired their practices.

Takashi Murakami graduated from Tokyo University of the Arts in 1993. In 2000, he proposed “Superflat”, a concept/theory of contemporary visual culture that connects traditional Japanese art with the flatness of anime and manga while also referring to the state of Japanese society. In 2005, Little Boy, the exhibition he curated at the Japan Society, New York, was awarded the Best Thematic Show by AICA-USA. In February 2024, he opens Takashi Murakami Mononoke Kyoto, his first solo exhibition in Japan in eight years, at Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art, where around 170 of his new works will be presented.

Shinro Ohtake was born in Tokyo in 1955. His wide-ranging practice encompasses drawing, painting, collage, assemblage, moving image, multimedia installation, sound, architecture, and writing. The engine for his practice is his ongoing Scrapbooks project, begun in 1977, which now totals some 72 works. Ohtake has held monographic exhibitions at institutions including the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (2022); Contemporary Art Center, Art Tower Mito (2019); and Art Sonje Center, Seoul (2012). His work has featured in international exhibitions including the 55th Venice Biennale (2013); documenta 13, Kassel (2012); and the 1st Asia Pacific Triennial, Brisbane (1993). He is a recipient of this year’s 65th Mainichi Art Award.

Andrew Maerkle is a writer, editor, and translator based in Tokyo. He is currently Editorial Director of Art Week Tokyo and, since 2010, Deputy Editor of the bilingual online publication ART iT. From 2006 to 2008 he was Deputy Editor of ArtAsiaPacific in New York, where he helped create the annual Almanac edition. Maerkle is a contributor to international journals including Aperture, Art & Australia, Artforum, and frieze. His book of translations Kishio Suga: Writings, vol. 1, 1969–1979 was published by Skira in 2021. From 2018 to 2023 he taught in the Graduate School of Global Arts at Tokyo University of the Arts.

The Art Basel Hong Kong 2024 Conversations program is curated by Stephanie Bailey.