KANYE WEST AND MURAKAMI TEAM UP
Japanese artist Takashi Murakami has teamed up with hip-hop star Kanye West for a variety of projects centering around West’s upcoming album Graduation, due to be released on Sept. 11, 2007. The first two singles from the album, Can’t Tell Me Nothing and Stronger, already feature Murakami artworks as covers -- the former a grimacing head made of neon coils, and the latter a rendering of West’s bear mascot with two helmeted robots floating nearby (representing the band Daft Punk, which is sampled on the track). West told MTV.com that Murakami also did a three-minute animation for one of the songs on Graduation.
Though he’s living the life of a Grammy-winning hip-hop star, West seems to have a real admiration for Murakami’s lifestyle, describing him as "a god in the art world." During a recent tour of Japan, West visited the artist’s Kaikai Kiki studio and took his own souvenir snapshots of Hiropon, Murakami’s life-sized sculpture of a bosomy anime pinup. The two men had their photo taken posing in front of the work, an image that is part of an illustrated report by Akiko Kato on the Kaikai Kiki website.
"Murakami, his work has been stunning to me," said West in an MTV interview. "Every single that’s coming out for my album, he did the artwork for the covers. . . . And all the merchandising for the new album is Murakami."
The admiration, apparently, is mutual. During his stop at the studio, West showed off a diamond-encrusted crucifix that he had designed himself -- "Breathtaking," wrote Kato, "Christ’s eyes shined blue" -- and then went on to sketch an idea for another amulet design. West asked Murakami to add eyes to the drawing, and "an unexpected collaboration was born!" The sketch was clearly the inspiration for the neon creature from Murakami’s Can’t Tell Me Nothing cover, and the necklace West wears in the Can’t Tell Me Nothing video looks like the Kaikai Kiki drawing.
"We think that he [West] and Takashi share this eerie ability to concentrate and approach everything with utmost seriousness," Kato concludes. The report also hints at another common interest between the two superstars -- Louis Vuitton, whose brand Murakami famously revitalized several years ago. West entered Murakami’s studio wearing a colored Vuitton pouch. Both of the rapper’s new singles refer to the luxury handbag maker (Can’t Tell Me Nothing includes the words "And what’d I do? Act more stupidly/Bought more jewelry, more Louis V;" and Stronger includes the lyric "I’m caught up in the moment, right?/This is Louis Vuitton dime night.")
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment