It's hard not to be impressed with all the things Takashi Murakami has done. Still shy of 40, he enjoys a level of international recognition shared by perhaps no more than a dozen of the world's leading contemporary artists.
No surprise, then, that Murakami has now breezed into the Tokyo Museum of Contemporary Art with a solo exhibition -- a big, bright and bold extravaganza featuring some 100 paintings and three-dimensional works, numerous explanatory texts and documentary videos, and a schedule of events that includes an art competition, a sideshow for Murakami's stable of assistants and associates, and a rock concert.
Perhaps the best way to introduce Murakami's work is through Mr. DOB, the character at the center of almost everything he has done during his seven-year ascent to art stardom. Murakami's little leitmotif, the mouselike DOB is a cartoonish and clueless creation whose name derives from the slang expression "dobojite," meaning "why?"