The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg

dfinney (65)in #art • 7 years ago (edited)

Art Adventures

This weekend my husband and I visited the Takashi Murakami exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Takashi Murakami is a contemporary Japanese artist with a 30 year career in fine arts and commercial media. Born in Tokyo in 1962, Murakami received his BFA, MFA and PhD from Tokyo University of the Arts. Murakmi’s art is best known for blurring the lines between high and low culture and is heavily influenced by both traditional Japanese painting and modern anime/manga.

Takashi Murakami Source

The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg is a touring exhibition featuring over 50 pieces of artwork spanning Murakami’s three decades long career.

The exhibition’s name comes from an ancient Japanese parable in which an octopus eats its own leg to survive. Murakami sees himself as the octopus, consuming history, culture and his own fame in order to feed his art. Source

The exhibit is stunning. Each piece of artwork is impressive both for it’s enormous size and incredible detail. The largest paintings seemed to contain hundreds of little painting each telling their own tale. We walked through the exhibition three times just to absorb it all.

“Tan Tan Bo Puking” Wide shot

“Tan Tan Bo Puking” Close up

69 Arhats Beneath the Bodhi Tree - 2013

Embodiment of “Um” and “Embodiment of “A” - both 2014. These “demons”, whose names are derived from the first and last letters of the Sanskrit alphabet, symbolize the beginning and end of the universe.