Trailer for Takashi Murakami's first feature film, Jellyfish Eyes

A version of Takashi Murakam's feature film Jellyfish Eyes has been circulating on the internet since 2012, but Vanity Fair has just premiered a new trailer ahead of the film's arrival in the United States for an eight-city tour from 1 May to 5 June. View Trailer
Image: film still from Takashi Murakami's Jellyfish Eyes

Takashi Murakami launches new gallery in Berlin

Takashi Murakami has opened a new space in Berlin, his first one outside Japan. The launch of Hidari Zingaro Berlin coincides with the Berlin Gallery Weekend and will feature a live painting event by Kaikai Kiki artist Mahomi Kunkata.
Image: Takashi Murakami

Murakami v. conservatives at Versailles

The Art Newspaper reports the director of the Palace of Versailles denies he has caved in to the demands of traditionalist protest groups opposed to his contemporary art programme by agreeing to no longer use the chateau's royal apartments as an exhibition space. Jean-Jacques Aillagon has decided, instead, to mount future shows in other areas of the the 17th century site, following the furore over the current exhibition of works on show there by Takashi Murakami.

Over 12,000 people have signed two anti-Murakami petitions initiated by conservative factions opposed to the "Disneyfication" of the former residence of Louis XIV, a trend they say was kickstarted by the Jeff Koons show launched there in 2008.

And Murakami? He says in an official press statement: "I am the Cheshire Cat who greets Alice in Wonderland with his devilish grin, and chatters on as she wanders around the chateau."

Image: Takashi Murakami at Versailles, installation view

A collision of cultures at Versailles

Takashi Murakami is facing as much resistance for his Manga-inspired exhibition at Versailles as Jeff Koons did two years ago. Agence France-Presse reports a number of petitions are circulating against Murakami's exhibition at the former royal residence of the "Sun King" Louis XIV. According to the President of the public castle, Jean Jacques Aillagon, the protesters come from "extreme right fundamentalist groups and very conservative groups" who want make Versailles into a "reliquary of nostalgia for France of the Ancien Regime, or a France withdrawn into itself and hostile to modernism".

Murakami says the exhibition is "a face-off between the Baroque period and postwar Japan" and that he hopes it will "create in visitors a sort of shock, an aesthetic feeling".

Images: Takashi Murakami at the Chateau de Versailles, France