Takashi Murakami’s Probably Sending Me Priceless Art

TAKASHI MURAKAMI

KAIKAI KIKI CO., LTD.

{Secret Address I Found}

The Country of JAPAN!

TAKASHI!

On Twitter (or X or whatever it’s called), you said you’re a “horrible, crazy, stupid person” who creates MONSTERS, sleeps in a cardboard box, keeps his beard hair in a jar, and “pees every hour”?

Nice TRY!

In that March 5 video you were trying to scare off the constant stream of people asking to tour your studio, or take you to dinner and make you smile and say ART THINGS. But it backfired because it made you even more endearingly HUMAN. 

It’s like you tried to paint yourself as one of your monsters, but you forgot this: even though they’re monsters, people all over the world still really want to HANG OUT with them. 

Don’t worry! I have an idea for how to keep admiring fans at a distance PLUS greatly reduce your GARBAGE bill! 

I’ll explain. But first …‍ 
‍
(I apologize—I wish I could write in Japanese because I’m not sure this is going to make sense to anyone who didn’t grow up soaking in weird English. Maybe you can take this to your cardboard box next time you’re having trouble SLEEPING.)

THREE BACKGROUND STORIES:

1. When I was 6 (in 1974), I tried to bounce a Claes Oldenburg sphere sculpture around the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art like a playground ball. I wrote to the great pop artist and confessed, sending him a picture of me patting the white sphere after dislodging it from its ring holder. See? >>>
   
   It only rolled a few inches before a nearby guard, who had spent every other moment of his guarding career 50+% asleep, flipped out and my mom stepped in (I think it’s interesting that the guy who took the photo didn’t stop me, btw). Back then, and presumably to this day, museums frown upon the dribbling of priceless artworks out of their institutions.
   
   UNDERSTANDABLE!
   
   Anyway, Claes (I assume we were on a first name basis) sent me back a postcard. On it, he wrote that he was pretty sure mine was the best possible reaction to the piece—after all, art should be INTERACTIVE! That guy was a GEM! He had FUN. He also made fun.
   
   Here’s the bummer. I lost the postcard at some point. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to being, or even meeting, a great artist. And it’s gone. I should have written him back years later and sent him the picture again to see if he would replace the postcard. But I just now thought of that and, sadly, Claes passed away in 2022. He probably died having not thought about that postcard after 1974, whereas I think about it ALL the time.
   

2. I don’t know if you watch the American sketch COMEDY show Saturday Night Live over there in Japan. But many years ago there was a skit that imagined how Picasso never actually had to pay for anything in life because everything he touched was GOLD. Like, at a restaurant, they’d bring him the bill and he would scribble a happy face on it, or blow his nose on it, and then yell “I’m Picasso DAMMIT!” and hand it back and the waiter would know the paper was now worth far more than the bill owed. Nowadays, just his credit card signature’s worth 1000 times the bill he’d pay with it.
   
   I bet your jar of beard hair is worth, like, THIRTY free meals!
   

3. Which brings me to Takashi Murakami—that’s YOU! At the San Francisco Asian Art Museum’s “Murakami: Monsterized” exhibit in December, I had an epiphany. I decided that every 50 years I will write to a great artist. Guess who’s next!
   
   You will be glad to know, I just LOOKED at your art, I didn’t try to bounce it. The guards are still sleepy, if I’m being honest. It’s kind of a dull job. You just try and stay alert year after year in case all of a sudden some awful child gets a notion to bounce a sculpture.
   
   But I’m pretty old now—not as old as you, but close. And responsible. And BORING. It sucks, right? So much PEEing.
   
   And my children are even OLD and I can’t show their whole faces or they will KILL me, but that’s them on the left. <<<<
   
   But I did imagine how I would’ve reacted if I’d seen it all 50 years ago. See, your  art’s like a TIME machine!
   
   Here’s the big secret: the best stuff in that show, the stuff I spent the most time with, is the unfinished stuff. The stuff that shows PROCESS. The stuff that made me feel INVOLVED. This one even looks like MY FAMILY! >>>>

   
   Artists are always killing themselves trying to create the complete and the PERFECT—maybe you have to do that so people know where it all leads—but people love to see behind the scenes and be part of the STORY.
   
   That’s why people are always hassling you for TOURS and DINNERS and SMILES. That’s why the big idea is this…

SEND PEOPLE YOUR JUNK!

You’ve reached a place in life where you can just send people any old JUNK and they’ll be HAPPY. 

For instance, ME. If you sent me a postcard, I wouldn’t lose this one. I learned my LESSON! 

Honestly, the fantasy I had there in the museum with your army of lil’ monsters was I’ll just write old Takashi the cleverest letter EVER and casually mention that I have a prominent wall in my house that is THIRSTY for the weird lovability of a Murakami piece. Maybe he chuckles, snaps his fingers and one of his many helpers retrieves just the thing…and it’s on a boat headed for the US of A! 

But that’s CRAZY. You get commissions for stuff like that. I could never hope for anything you’d bring by armored truck to a fancy gallery or Sotheby’s or The {insert famous museum name here} or wherever people go to procure your work through good and REASONABLE channels. The best I could hope for is if you’ve got a “leftover pile”. A “REJECT bin”. A “Takashi’s Graveyard of Failed Monsters and Not-Flat-Enough Superflat Stuff” kind of thing. Your FLAWED and unfinished works in progress. Here’s the kicker: I will pay SHIPPING! I’m not 6 years old anymore, and I’ve saved up some money, though not enough to purchase a LEGIT Murakami. Just enough to ship one from the scrap heap. I think? I admit I’m not sure how much it costs to ship stuff. Should we DISCUSS?

I’m going to list some dimensions in here just in case: 12’ wide by 3’ tall. On the dot. Right above the fireplace. A place of honor in our home, believe me! Any color is okay because we’ll paint the WHOLE HOUSE around it. We’ll paint the neighbor’s house, if necessary. We don’t like them anyway. We could also probably move the walls or ceilings slightly, I’m not sure how that works.

But let’s suppose, just for argument’s sake, you don’t have an artwork of any quality in exactly that size floating around. And you’re not inspired to create a custom piece to spec for some random CRAZY GUY who writes you a RAMBLING letter.  

I GET IT!

Instead, perhaps you have only 2” x 2” piece in your “smudgy pile of embarrassing errors that you would not even use to line your birdcage”. What I’ll do is I’ll just get a 57” x 60” mat for it (check my MATH) and a frame and call it good! It could even be a little postage stamp-sized Murakamiand I could make up the rest with a wall-sized MAT + FRAME that I procure over here in my neighborhood. I’m FLEXIBLE, is what I’m saying. 

Maybe just send this letter back with a few doodles and corrections, I don’t know. You’re the ARTIST!

The only thing I don’t want is anything from those jars with your hair and such. There’s a BIG market for that, believe me, it’s just not my thing.

See, what’s really going to make the piece is when I tell people “TM himself sent it to me straight from his roomful of misfit murals and amateur slip-ups and NFTerribles.” It doesn’t even need to be GOOD because your BAD is probably pretty good and because what makes it good is the STORY behind it. I do not have your high visual standards anyway (my daughter loved the long Chinese ceramic-inspired paintings with the blue fish FWIW but I’d need one in a smaller SIZE because my house is not as big as a MUSEUM). 

So the idea here is, there are many people out there like me. Empty out your studio of what you may think is WORTHLESS crap. When someone emails for a tour, say “I am crazy busy with the upcoming Brooklyn show…but here is an empty bottle of SAUCE upon which I have scribbled a mutant kitten and a Japanese character which loosely translates as fart… you are INVOLVED my FRIEND! Keep believing in monsters!”

Your team could be sending out 2-3 of these things a DAY. In fact, I can’t even imagine WHY you have a garbage can. You produce no garbage; you produce only ARTIFACTS! >>>

ANYWAY. Cheer Up! Your art seems to be making the world a bit more light, joyful, weirdly lovable, for which you are to be commended. I won’t hold it against you if there’s no old sauce bottle coming. Just had to BOUNCE this idea off you. 

MONSTERS FOREVER!

Phineas Bling
USA

P.S. You’re NOT horrible, you’re EXACTLY why ART will always be in front of ARTificial Intelligence.
P.P.S. my wife says if you send something she’ll crochet you a custom amigurumi MONSTER! And she’s good!