Welcome to Arts Radar, a new monthly column by Marc Spiegler breaking down key developments in contemporary art and the wider worlds of design, music, cinema and television.
Facing market headwinds, LVMH megabrand Louis Vuitton last month returned to the safe haven of its historic tie-up with Japanese artist Takashi Murakami. The push was driven by re-editioned pieces from the Marc Jacobs-era collaboration between Vuitton and Murakami, which remains the gold standard for art-fashion alliances: the project was wildly successful, reportedly generating over $300 million in sales in year 1 alone, and ran for a dozen years, ending only when Jacobs exited the brand in 2015.
The re-release was launched in early January with seven experiential pop-ups all over the world. Fashion insiders noted the rollout was lower key than Vuitton’s mega-scale 2022 campaign for its Yayoi Kusama collaboration (which drew artworld critique for its towering statues of the artist, who has lived in a Tokyo mental-health clinic for almost 50 years). But early results look promising: at last week’s LVMH earnings presentation, chairman Bernard Arnault said Vuitton drove double-digit growth in January, which Bernstein analyst Luca Solca attributed, in part, to the Murakami campaign.
As a rule, when luxury brands work with contemporary artists, the very artistic legitimacy that the brand aims to leverage typically gets torpedoed as painters “design” purses and perfume bottles. More often than not, both parties end up looking somehow diminished. One would have thought, for example, that Vuitton’s collaboration with an artist as famous, glossy and perfectionist as Jeff Koons would have yielded similar results to its Murakami tie-up. Yet Koons’ 2017 Renaissance-inspired purses were panned by the art world and never achieved anything near Murakami’s commercial success.
So what makes Murakami so bankable?
The product sells out, but he never feels like a sellout. Partly that’s due to the very specific way that his “Superflat” aesthetic heavily references commercial production, inspired by imagery ranging from traditional Japanese screens and kimonos to post-War anime. It collapses the West’s culture versus commerce dichotomy, while also flattening the gap between high and low culture.
While many artists get coy about their work for brands, Murakami has always owned it, even placing full-service Vuitton pop-stores for his creations in the middle of his major retrospective when it toured the Brooklyn Museum, LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art and Frankfurt’s Museum für Moderne Kunst in 2008.
His gallery, Kaikai Kiki Co. Ltd, has since staged shows for other star artists and scouting emerging talent, while also producing collabs with brands such as Crocs and Billionaire Boys Club, whose founder Pharrell Williams reportedly rebooted Vuitton’s Murakami relationship. (It’s also worth noting that the artist works extensively with mega-gallery Gagosian, where LVMH scion Delphine Arnault sits on the board).
Today, Murakami is a very different artist than he was in 2003. After the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, he withdrew, shocked, into the studio, working alone for the first time in decades. But he returned to the stage with what many critics consider his strongest body of work, creating characters equally emotive as those of his Superflat era, but with oozing sores, rheumy eyes and amorphous features, echoing the hellscapes of Matthias Grünewald and Hieronymus Bosch. It’s amazing work, but also the stuff of nightmares, which likely explains why Vuitton is only really updating the endeavor by enlisting Zendaya, in Shibuya-style blonde cornrows, to front the communications. Working with artists is always tricky, so despite the neophilia of both the fashion and art worlds, remixing old Murakami rather than embracing his new dark side was a safer bet for Vuitton.
As the embers of the Los Angeles fires cooled, a burning controversy engulfed the staging of local art and entertainment industry events including the Grammys, the Frieze LA art fair and, of course, the Oscars. Opponents of moving forward called it tone-deaf to stage glamorous cultural events in the wake of enormous destruction, while advocates countered that the events were essential to the city’s rebuilding process. Having faced similar scenarios while running Art Basel, I can relate. These are not easy decisions, especially given the enormous financial losses entailed if you voluntarily cancel having already spent 90 percent of your budget. Not surprisingly, then, the show must go on — but differently. Frieze has taken the opportunity to co-launch the LA Arts Community Fire Relief Fund, while the Grammys refocused the show’s program on wildfire aid. Music-industry mainstays such as Spotify, Sony Music, Warner Music Group decided to cancel their Grammy parties. But Vanity Fair is moving forward with its famous Oscars bash, while simultaneously supporting relief efforts.
As Silicon Valley CEOs fell, literally, into line behind Donald Trump at the inauguration, Hollywood seemed to head the opposite direction last month. First, there was Hollywood’s mainstreaming of women as vibrant sexual beings past age 50, countering the trad-wife notions of the podcast manosphere that helped drive the GOP victory. The media’s prime focus was the success of two woman-directed feature films: “Babygirl,” with 57-year old Nicole Kidman as a CEO playing sub/dom games with her low-level, much-younger employee, and “The Substance,” a gory meditation on female beauty and aging, starring Demi Moore looking great at 62 and winning a Golden Globe for her role. Then came the 13 nominations of “Emilia Pérez” plus two more for “The Apprentice,” widely read by the media as Hollywood trolling Trump. A week later, “Emilia Pérez” star Selena Gomez streamed a tearful response to the ICE raids that went viral in both political camps. In the wake of the LA fires, the Oscars was always going to be a more serious affair. But now it feels like it might turn into a left-wing counter-punch moment fuelled by movie-star clout. One big difference between Hollywood and Silicon Valley: Studio heads are much less exposed to government regulation and contracts than the tech CEOs. And as they say in politics, where you stand depends on where you sit.
In what could prove to be a paradigm shift for the music world, Spotify premiered its “Billions Club Live” in early January, streaming a two-day platform-exclusive preview of the 45-minute concert film that the Weeknd taped in Santa Monica before 2,000 of his top Spotify fans just before Christmas. In November, Spotify had announced that it was going deep on video in the podcast realm by streaming the video that podcasters have pivoted to taping over the last few years. But creating full-scale original material around major music stars definitely positions the platform in a whole new context, like when Netflix started making its own shows and movies more than 15 years after it started as a movie-rental business. Yes, original content is a very crowded field, but when it comes specifically to the tastes of music-listeners, Spotify has more data than anyone.
Drake Federally Sues Universal Music Group Over Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Defamatory’ Diss Song [Pitchfork]
Why the Road to the Sale of Frieze Is a Winding One [The Art Newspaper]
Read This Before Buying That Video Game [The New York Times]
The Entire Justin Baldoni vs Blake Lively Feud, Explained [Forbes]
‘The Brutalist’ Sparks Backlash After Editor Reveals Use of AI in Dialogue and Buildings [Variety]
As Art Sales Fall, Auction Houses Pivot to Luxury [The New York Times]
Having led Art Basel from 2007 to 2022, Marc Spiegler now works on a portfolio of cultural-strategy projects. He is President of the Board of Directors of Superblue, works with the Luma Foundation, and serves on the boards of the ArtTech and Art Explora foundations. In addition to consulting for companies such as Prada Group, KEF Audio and Sanlorenzo, Spiegler has long been a Visiting Professor in cultural management at Università Bocconi in Milan and recently launched the Art Market Minds Academy.