NEW YORK -- Murakami-mania hit New York last week as the "Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture" exhibition at the Japan Society opened to much media fanfare.
But the scope of this ambitious project and the "Murakami influence," as the New York Times dubbed it, is not only limited to the confines of the Japan Society. For the next three months the purveyors of what Alexandra Munroe, director of the Japan Society Gallery, calls "Japan's psyche" will infiltrate the New York subway systems and shopping districts with posters and public art and inject a dose of the kawaii (cute) into this least kawaii of cities.
Curated by Takashi Murakami, the bad boy of Japanese "neo-pop" art (he of Roppongi Hills and Louis Vuitton fame), "Little Boy" is the final installment of his "Superflat" trilogy.