Proof of Concept

This is the second in a three part response to

©Murakami the Brooklyn Museum.

After passing the sculpture S.M.P.ko² in the rotunda (see previous post) we are introduced to Mr. DOB, a character featured in Murakami's work as early as 1993. As the wall text explains DOB's name is a reflection of his form. "d" and "b" are inscribed in his ears, while his round head forms the "o". Arthur Ludbow in his 2005 New York Magazine article sights the success of fellow Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara's infantile characters and Japanese obsession with kawaii (a Hello Kitty flavor of cuteness) as the rational around Murakami's shift from the critical satire of utako, emblematic in Lonesome Cowboy, to the com modification of it. Mr. DOB is later joined by Mr. Pointy and Kaikai and Kiki, who become the stars of Murakami's animated shorts.

In Mr. DOB's early appearances he is surrounded by happy face flowers. He has an unctuous smile and the work he dominates is so disappointingly benign.

I find it refreshing to think that Murakami can't keep up his charade of Kawaii. The evidence of this is seen in the complex and terrifying transformations that effect our friend Mr. DOBs.
After a few appearances as a smiling, be-lashed ingenue, Mr. DOB's begins to bear rows of razor sharp teeth. Like a greek god, Mr. DOB possesses many manifestations, many on canvas, occasionally as three dimensions. He transmutates to have several "d" and "b" protrusions, multiple eyes, and many more teeth.

Murakami's PO + KU Surrealism phase is most injurious to Mr. DOBs who becomes stretched, distorted, and endlessly repeated as if he was the victim of some terrible teleportation experiment. Perhaps the impulse that birthed Mr. DOB becomes his undoing, as he is over mediated, reproduced, altered, until he becomes only a motif; a wallpaper of eyes, sharks teeth and colors.

In “Tan Tan Bo Puking” (2002), all the qualities of kawaii have disappeared from Mr. DOBs. In this enormous painting our friend is at death's door as he spews bile and breaths his last few breaths. Despite the overwhelming motifs of smiling flowers and the insufferable cuteness of KaiKai and Kiki, one no longer thinks of Hello Kitty, or Yoshitomo Nara's characters when standing in front of "Tan Tan Bo Puking." I like to imagine, that after several years of living with Mr. DOB's Murakami can help but abandon his "cuteness" charter, and the anxiety, violence, and refreshing criticality that helped him produce Hiropon has bubbled back up, much like the bile that spills from Mr. DOB's blackened, dying, mouth.