Pop Go the Usual Boundaries

TOKYO — It takes three subway trains, two taxis and an hour and a half to reach the suburb of Saitama and Hiropon Factory, the studio of Japanese artist Takashi Murakami. Jeremy Strick, director of L.A.'s Museum of Contemporary Art, MOCA curator Michael Darling, and Paul Johnson, the museum's new director of development, have been en route on this hot October day, with the help of Murakami's L.A. art dealer, Tim Blum, who is--happily--fluent in both Japanese and the Tokyo public transport system.

The journey's goal is a Quonset hut in the middle of a bamboo field, where Murakami, 38, offers warm greetings at the door. His round face is accentuated by round glasses, and he wears the goatee and many-pocketed sports clothing favored by film directors.

After requesting the removal of all shoes, he ushers the group into the tidy studio to gather around a tabletop model of the smallest building at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood. Murakami has transformed the exterior of the model into a boxy, crazed creature by attaching vinyl banners that depict cartoon-like rolling eyes and pointed teeth--signature images that appear in much of his work.

Strick is enchanted. "That's fantastic!" he says.

Murakami, who lived for many years in New York City and still keeps a studio there, speaks fairly fluent English. "Fantastic" is definitely in his lexicon, and he is clearly relieved.

The artist, who is also the curator in this instance, is unveiling his ideas for "Superflat"--an exhibition of provocative Japanese work that will open the Museum of Contemporary Art's newest outpost: the MOCA Gallery at the Pacific Design Center. In a space donated by the center owner Charles Cohen, and with support funds from the same source, the gallery will give the museum a desirable Westside presence. In Strick's words, it will be devoted to "the full range of MOCA's programming with an emphasis on architecture and design."

Which is where "Superflat" comes in. The term is Murakami's own, his manifesto on the way various forms of graphic design, pop culture and fine arts are compressed--flattened--in Japan. The term also refers to the two-dimensionality of Japanese graphic art and animation, as well as to the shallow emptiness of its consumer culture. Murakami first used it to label an exhibition he organized for the Parco department store museums in Tokyo and Nagoya, Japan. Now an expanded version of that show will inaugurate MOCA's new venue.