>
Article snippet: Takashi Murakami rocketed to international fame in the art world for his Pop Japanese anime-inspired characters and motifs that proliferate playfully and menacingly across paintings, sculptures and a line of commercial products. He entered high-profile collaborations with the luxury retailer Louis Vuitton in 2002 and later the rap star Kanye West that slyly navigated the avenues of consumer culture. In 2007, his major traveling retrospective opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and he joined the Gagosian Gallery poised at the pinnacle of the art market. But in the decade since, Mr. Murakami, 55, has retrenched. Beginning a sustained dialogue in 2009 with the Japanese art historian Nobuo Tsuji, three decades his senior, Mr. Murakami has found a mentor who has brought him into deeper engagement with historical Japanese art that has fueled the artist’s prodigious imagination and marked a profound shift in his work. “Professor Tsuji has given me the chance to have this breakthrough,” Mr. Murakami said recently at the Long Island City branch of Kaikai Kiki, his studio headquartered in Tokyo that employs some 70 people in the production and promotion of his artwork. “He kicked my butt.” A tribute to their friendship and its creative fruits has just opened at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. “Takashi Murakami: Lineage of Eccentrics,” on view through April 1, 2018, puts 13 of the artist’s paintings and sculpture, as well as multiple studies, in conversa... Link to the full article to read more