WOW😁#hongkong #exhibition #masterpiece #auction #rauschenberg #1964 #contemporaryart

👉 But I questioned myself what the point of this project would be, to me as an artist, if this was all there was to it. And so I decided that I had to make the newly colorful monograms into art, in the form of paintings. The items introduced at the runway show would be turned into products in the next six months, so I knew I had to do an exhibition of my Multicolor Monogram paintings to coincide with the product release. I also told myself that I had to produce paintings and sculptures featuring the panda and other characters from the collaboration. So one day, half a year after the Paris runway show, I held just such a solo show at a commercial gallery in NY. The works were received and sold well, and Louis Vuitton was kind enough to promote the show. They also supported a major group exhibition curated by Francesco Bonami later that year at the Venice Biennale, titled Pittura/Painting: From Rauschenberg to Murakami, 1964-2003. Now the stage would move to the Venice Biennale, which would eventually lead to this Artforum cover. While artists from around the world were working on presenting elaborate exhibitions for this festival of art, on the streets of Venice, fake versions of the Multicolor Monogram bags were being sold. The then-editorial staff of Artforum, young Scott Rothkopf, now the Senior Deputy Director and Senior Curator of the Whitney Museum of American Art, apparently saw a photo of these fake bags among the many images sent to him and had a proper photographer go and reshoot it (at least I seem to remember hearing such an anecdote). And that was how this photograph came to adorn the cover of Artforum, the foremost art review magazine. Perhaps Scott Rothkopf understood that the fake bags sold on the streets of Venice comprehensively encompassed the twisted relationship between authenticity, fake, art, commerce, and more. I was filled with gratitude! I truly thanked heavens for my incredible good luck. I felt that alas, finally, a Japanese artist has managed to join hands with the Western art world and, if through a twisted contexture, secured a standing in the art historical context. 👉

A day in #lacma ! #art#contemporaryart #artjourney #rauschenberg thanks for touring us!