Murakami x MoCA x Barney$ New York

Museum of Modern Art, LA
But I'm looking forward to the Murakami show at MoCA Downtown LA. The last show I saw was at the Serpentine, Hyde Park, London in 2003. Hopefully the LA show will be a larger and a more comprehensive collection. May be with some video installations as featured in the Venice Biennale 2001. That was a great, great holiday organized by TYP for the family. And the contemporary art wasn't bad either, except this journalist kinda hated it in his long, but very entertaining article:

"...In San Marco, too, a waiter will not answer merely because you call. First he must walk around the other tables, then he must open his little calf-skin wallet and rearrange some slips of paper in it, then he must notice objects in the sky he has never seen before. But in the end, once the decision is clearly his and not yours, he will come. He will. And in the meantime, at least, you can listen to the orchestra playing Strauss."

He also noted how commercial the Biennale was. Yes, may be that's why I liked it...Absolut exhibitions and Louis Vuitton rooms featuring Murakami acid trip animations. See it here. It's cute, it's menacing, it's Murakami! Or as the Brits like to say: "naughty, but nice..."

"As seen in Venice, Italy": Murakami anime

But commercial art has taken a step further. The MoCA show curator, Schimmel, has added a LV boutique?! Jeez. All those LA beeatches are gonna be in full effect. Hmmm..."Uh, Can I get your digits?" Hahaha!

MoCA vs Barneys New York
Officials say the store is necessary to convey Murakami's work, melding commerce and art. "People have touched base with the play between the commercial arena and high art, but this is a little more confrontational," MOCA Chief Curator and show organizer Paul Schimmel told the Times. Schimmel said a museum mock-up of Murakami's commercial items would not have worked. "I felt that the experience could only be achieved by having an operational one, rather than a fixed, embalmed replication".

"One of the key elements of his work is the way in which he melds commercial practice and fine art and really makes no distinction between the two," MOCA Director Jeremy Strick said.