It’s been officially confirmed that a corporate LOUIS VUITTON shop will be situated smack dab in the middle of TAKASHI MURAKAMI’s forthcoming retrospective exhibit at LA’s MoCA (Oct 29—Feb 11), the appropriately named “© Murakami.” A first for an American museum, the company owned and run shop will offer limited-edition handbags and small leather goods featuring Murakami designs including the ones shown below at prices ranging from $875 to $920. The rub? The nonprofit museum receives absolutely no cut of the bag sales or space rental fee from LV, who will run the booth as an autonomous company mini-store. It turns out the decision to grant the luxury retailer a license to kill was a curatorial one, made by the show’s organizer, MOCA Chief Curator Paul Schimmel in an effort to highlight the inherently commercial aspect of Murakami’s work, as expressed by his personal “Superflat” manifesto. In the eyes of Schimmel, it seems, the act of viewers buying Murakami’s bags in the midst of a formal museum exhibition helps “break down the boundaries between low and high art” (a key concept of Murakami’s philosophy) and allows the viewer to interact with the artist’s work firsthand. How a museum constantly in need of funding taking a cut of those sales interferes with that “creative process,” we’re not sure, but then we’re not the ones leaving a couple million bucks on the table here. The good news? It looks like that Murakami bag you bought two years ago is about to get a second wind. As for us, we’ll be getting our “souvenirs” from the show in NYC on Canal Street…

Read more about it HERE.

The official Louis Vuitton Murakami shop as it will appear in Murakami’s MoCA show...

Samples of Murakami’s branded LV merchandise exclusively for sale in the shop. Unlike the last instantly sold-out wave of collaborative handbags the artist designed for the label, this time LV has guaranteed that enough merchandise will be produced to last the duration of the exhibit. Too bad, it would have been cool to see otaku Beverly Hills housewives camping out in line…

ABOUT THE SHOW:

“© Murakami” is a massive overview of Takashi Murakami’s career as a Pop artist, ranging from the early 1990s to the present. More than 90 works in various media—painting, sculpture, installation, and film—will be installed in three sections, occupying over 20,000 square feet of exhibition space at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. The first portion will be an immersive, theatrically lit environment, recreating the annual “Wonder Festival” comic market convention. It will feature many of Murakami’s acclaimed large-scale otaku-inspired figure projects of the late 1990s, including a new version of Second Mission Project Ko2 (2000-07). The second section will comprise a grid-like shelving display of all of Murakami’s merchandise, including multiples, collectibles, and maquettes, among other items. The final section will trace Murakami’s artistic development since 1991, including early works that engage branding and the evolution of his signature character, DOB. Of particular importance will be the premiere of a new animated film, “Kaikai & Kiki,” and the debut of “Buddha Oval,” an enormous self-portrait sculpture in the guise of a Buddha…

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