Takashi Murakami: Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow

Discover an incredible new exhibition of works from a Japanese artist known for his unique style that simultaneously honors the rich tradition of Japanese art and deploys the cultural energies of anime, manga, otaku, and kawaii in singular contemporary artworks. Visitors can explore how—after shared historical events and trauma—art can address crisis, healing, outrage, and escapist fantasy. In addition to works more than 30 feet wide on view, the centerpiece of the exhibition is the re-creation of the Yumedono, or Dream Hall, from Nara’s Horyuji Temple complex in the Cleveland Museum of Art’s magnificent atrium. The museum’s deep holdings of Japanese art lead you even more profoundly into the exhibition’s themes. Originating at the Broad in Los Angeles, Takashi Murakami: Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow is presented with expanded scope at the CMA.

The artwork presented in this exhibition was made in response to three events: the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States in 1945 during World War II; the March 11, 2011, Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan, which also caused the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident; and the COVID-19 pandemic, which began in 2019. Murakami uses his art to interpret these historical events and their lasting effects. The works explore topics such as how people may change when they are experiencing trauma, how historical events may have caused outpourings of creative and religious fervor, and how art addressing contemporary obsessions as diverse as gaming, the metaverse, trading cards, street fashion trends, anime, and manga can be an entry point to engaging the past.

Art can respond to disaster. Like religion, it can work through crisis and register experiences expressed (and sometimes coded) by and through form. Like religion, art can be a mass phenomenon, a gathering around compelling ideas. It can address crisis directly, offering healing, outrage, or catharsis. It can also offer escapist fantasy. Murakami’s likening of gaming and other forms of entertainment to religion speaks of a spirit of a sort, of collective activities where societal energies are expended, developed, and ritualized.

In the wake of the pandemic, through planning an exhibition at the Kyocera Museum of Art, Murakami turned the lens of his artwork onto the city of Kyoto as both the keeper of many of Japan’s cultural traditions—including ikebana, Kabuki theater, geisha and teahouse traditions, and monumental screen painting—and a site of shifting power structures of religion and politics, both imperial and warrior. Selections of this new work join the exhibition and, newly aligned with Cleveland’s deep holdings of Japanese art, allow the exhibition to go even deeper into its original themes. 

The Yumedono in Nara is believed to occupy the same location as the home of Shōtoku Taishi, who converted his father, Emperor Yōmei, into accepting Buddhism after calling for the intercession of Buddha to cure the emperor of an illness. Shōtoku plays a profound role in the history of Japan and has been the focus of powerful religious cults throughout Japanese history. The Yumedono houses the Kuse Kannon (a likeness of Shōtoku), believed to have the power to save people from suffering. Murakami’s re-creation of the Yumedono houses four paintings—Blue Dragon, Vermillion Bird, White Tiger, and Black Tortoise (all from 2024)—that directly present and mine the city of Kyoto through its many overlapping mythologies and traditions.

While it may seem counterintuitive to house four paintings addressing the founding of Kyoto in a historic building from Nara, in doing so, Murakami is creating a powerful meditation on the connection between mythology and art to political power, as well as the hybridity and pliability of Japanese cultural traditions. In moving the imperial capital of Japan to Kyoto in the eighth century, Emperor Kanmu intended to extricate his court from the clerical power structures of Nara. However, to do so, an emphasis was placed on Shōtoku’s role in the area, a necessary alignment with one of Japan’s central figures and heroes. In Kyoto, the Rokkaku-dō Temple—also founded by Shōtoku and said to enshrine the Nyoirin Kannon, an amulet found by Shōtoku as a child, which is also said to have healing powers—would become an important site of religious pilgrimage, and Kyoto would go on to become both a political and importantly a religious center of Japan. 

In placing his Kyoto paintings in the Yumedono, rooting them in Shōtoku’s legacy of healing through the veneration of devotional objects, Murakami testifies to the nature of art and its capacity to align cultural energies, both for individuals and for Japanese society.

Starting on Friday, May 30, docents are available on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. throughout the exhibition to answer questions and provide background information on the artworks. This service is free to all visitors in the exhibition.