SUPERFLAT WORLD - As MOCA surveys the commercially potent aesthetic of Japan's Takashi Murakami, critics and doubters, from his homeland to L.A., question whether this is still a . . .
TOKYO — IT'S the tuft of hair on the chin, the relief of a goatee on the smooth aluminum surface of the face, that gives the character's identity away.
Otherwise, the 17-foot-high statue of a big-eyed "Oval Buddha" could be just another of Takashi Murakami's cute creations: a wandering space alien, perhaps, or a member of a tribe of ghosts. The character sits like Humpty Dumpty on the lip of a flower vase, his oversized head far too big for his tiny torso. He has a potbelly. His spine sags. He is asleep.
He is Murakami.
"Over the years, as I worked on it, it became a self-portrait," says Murakami, the 45-year-old Pop art innovator who will unveil the statue at the retrospective of his works called "Copyright Murakami," opening Monday at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. Sitting in the minimalist boardroom of his Tokyo office, with not a painting or a splotch of color on its white walls, he says the figure borrows inspiration from the darker creations of legendary Japanese cartoonist Shigeru Mizuki. The character has two faces: one facing forward with eyes shut; another on the back of his head that is baring fangs but may be emitting nothing more threatening than a yawn.
"It says I'm getting old and fat and have a big head," he says, a laugh seeming to explode from his belly. "No sports; just sitting every day. A very tired back. Those are the feelings that went into this.
"He's a very honest character," Murakami says.
"Oval Buddha" is Murakami's newest addition to his cast of creatures, an attempt to create another Pop art icon, and one of the few new works among the more than 90 that make up the MOCA exhibition. Five years in the making from conception to creation, the Oval character came to Murakami as he sat on the toilet. ("Sad, isn't it? I wish it was a more beautiful story," he says without a hint of sheepishness.)
The retrospective also comes six years after the 2001 MOCA show that Murakami curated and which loudly announced his Superflat theory of Japanese art to a Western audience. Murakami's big idea was to see postwar anime and manga as the progeny of the 17th and 18th century Edo era's two-dimensional artistic techniques. He merged those flat patterns with modern decoration to create a specifically Japanese postmodern aesthetic.
