6: the studio visit

"Dealers are editors and consiprators. We help determine what gets shown and hot it gets shown, and we hel put art in production. At the end of the day, our business is to sell symptoms articulated as objects,' he declared, 'I like to think that I have a more honest relationship with our artists than some other dealers, but I don't want to be anyone's shrink."(pg.186-187)

"He is always angry', she explained with a shrug. 'The atmosphere is usually intense."(pg.188)---
---"They have a frustration with my high expectations, so when they get my 'yes' for their work, they feel like they've won a level.-Murakami"(pg.197)

"To experience Takashi, you have to experience the commercial elements of his work."
"Art bloggers will no doubt be appalled by the inclusion of a fully functioning Louis Vuitton boutique within the MOCA show, but it's Murakami's version of institutional critique, and Schimmel defended it." (pg.203)

"Murakami is an unusual artist among artists in acknowledging the collective labor inscribed in his work. For example, with Tan Tan Bo (2001), a three panel painting of the ever mutating DOB character, which MOCA is using for its magazine advertisements, the names of the twenty-five people who worked on the piece are written on the back of the canvas. Other paintings credit up to thrity-five names."

"Murakami then turned the tables on the big brand by pulling it into his own oeuvre with a series of paintings that consist of nothing but the multicolor LV pattern. 'The Vuitton paintings are going to be important later on. People just dont realize it yet" They look at them as branding and that's boring , but they are superflat as anything he's done'... refering to the jargon to the way the artist's works flatten the distinctions between art and luxury goods, high and popular culture, East and West."(pg.186)

"Everywhere I looked, there was Murakami, not only did we have two magnetic works in the 'Painting from Rauschenberg to Murakami' exhibition at the Museo Correr, but you could see the Murakami handbags through the window of the Louis Vuitton store, and African immigrants were selling copies on the street. Collectors were carrying real ones;tourists carried fake. Murakami had taken over." (pg.211)

murakami's studios seem like an intense work environment. i still have trouble accepting the fact that artists have assistants that carry out a lot of the execution of the work that is produced, i know this is not a new thing, but i feel like there is such a detachment from the artist and the work. at least he is crediting these artists. i just seems a little insane to me for an artist to want to be producing a huge amount of work and be so demanding (rightfully so) but not be producing the work themselves.