'That I may time transcend, that a universe my heart may unfold', 2007
Acrylic and silver gold leaf on canvas mounted on board
3 panels: 95-1/2 x 111 inches
It's a bit weird that the most throwaway of the most expensive art forms, pop-art, should be attracted to the most serious of subjects. As Damien Hirst might say, like a butterfly attracted to the flames. In 'Tranquility of the Heart, Torment of the Flesh - Open Wide the Eye of the Heart and Nothing is Invisible' Takashi Murakami tackles spirituality. Murakami takes his subject very seriously. The gallery has been closed off for private tea ceremonies twice so far, once on the installation, again on the first day. And Murakami's work is taken seriously by everyone else: by Gagosian who are showing him in their senatorial uptown space on Madison Avenue (a venue more associated with the likes of Twombly, Ruscha and Warhol), by the punters who filled the space to bursting on the opening night and bought out the entire show before it opened, and by his fellow pros, Jeff Koons putting in a statesmanlike appearance.
Then again success and ambition are alluring and Murakami has both in spades: the king of merchandising (thanks to his collaboration with Louis Vuitton) and a devotee of Bill Gates, he is unabashed about his commercialism or his (and his organization's) productivity. Still, it must be galling for him always to be labeled a contemporary artist. The quest to be taken seriously is also part of the quest to be understood as part of the great Japanese tradition of art, to be taken seriously by serious connoisseurs and traditionalists as well as newcomers like François Pinault.
The gallery is divided between the 6th and 5th floors which are connected by stairs. On arriving at the 6th floor you are greeted by a series of huge, dazzling paintings that, bar one, represent aspects of Daruma, the Indian founder of Zen Buddhism. Based on computer drawings, most of the paintings represent Daruma's craggy face and while there are strong variations in colour from painting to painting, and variations in the interior of the pupils, the differences are otherwise minute.
The one painting that doesn't represent Daruma, or his disciple Eka, is the rigidly geometric (all sorts of number patterns going on here) 'Lotus Flower' which is nevertheless appropriate to the Zen subject as a symbol of the awakening of the spirit. It is also the picture which connects the 6 th floor to the 5th floor showroom which has 50 small, circular flower paintings on display and five larger illusionistic 'Flowerball' paintings of a sort that Murakami has been making for some time (all the flowers with largely the same face as in 'Lotus' but with a slightly different glint in their eyes). One could say, therefore, that the 5th floor connects the new work to Murakami's ongoing project or one could say that it provides Murakami and Gagosian for a great way to cash in ('Flowerballs' have sold at auction from $350,000 to $620,000).
Murakami's original background was in traditional painting. Before he became frustrated with it he even took a PhD. And it is traditional Zen painting, for which Daruma is a key subject, that Murakami references in this exhibition. See for example the late 17th/early 18th century Zen master, Hakuin Ekaku, whose many paintings of Daruma emphasise the core simplicity and power of Zen with brushstrokes of similar qualities. Hakuin's work is direct and immediate. Asked how long it took him to paint an image of Daruma, he said "Ten minutes and eighty years". Different masters of Zen illustration have different styles, even different iconographic approaches but the intentions seem to remain the same: forceful simplicity. Murakami evokes and subverts this tradition. He evokes it in the initial sketches that are presumably made on computers with tools that themselves recreate in digital form the appearance of ink applied with the brush; and you can imagine him creating the colours using computer paint programs' most fun tool, the paint bucket. But he subverts the tradition in the painfully time-consuming recreation of the more spontaneous image made on the computer with acrylics. He subverts the simplicity of the traditional imagery with the richness of his material: silver, gold and platinum leaf backgrounds evoke not Zen painting but trecento Italian gold ground panel painting; and he subverts it with the massive size that operates to reinforce the physical presence of Daruma.
The "type" of Daruma that Murakami depitcs is called hanshinzou, a bust-length. The point about the bust length is not to draw attention to Daruma's body so that the viewer can concentrate on his inner qualities - qualities that should be evoked by the style. As a PhD we can assume Murakami knows all this inside out. But when the icons are 96 x 114 inches, as they are on the 6th floor, there's no getting away from Daruma - he's everywhere. Two huge paintings to left and right as you go in and four slightly less huge paintings (71 x 84 inches) facing you. It may be that the enormous heads don't make you think about his body but they don't let you concentrate on his inner qualities either. That said, there are smaller Daruma paintings, 'Daruma - Jikishi jinshin kenshō jōbutsu' and 'Daruma (close up version)' and from a Zen point of view these work better but the show is really about the large paintings and, I suppose, about creating a new series of icons that Murakami's factory can create and re-create in a dazzling myriad of colours.
Referencing and subverting are all very well but to what end? To promote Zen ideals? Hardly. Even with the tea ceremonies, everything we know about Murakami is, frankly, not very Zen. Rather than direct simplicity what I get from the paintings is a sense of tight control, of a demand for absolute perfection, of megalomania. It wasn't quite what I was expecting. This is not creative, romantic chaos. It is meticulously realized factory production. Daruma is just another image to be appropriated and enlisted alongside the cast that Murakami has already created and and spread around the world.
Jack Wakefield
Takashi Murakami: 'Tranquility of the Heart, Torment of the Flesh - Open Wide the Eye of the Heart and Nothing is Invisible'
Until 9 June
Gagosian
980 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10021
T: +1 212 744 2313
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