Teacher Tour: Takashi Murakami

About

Looking for fresh ideas for your curriculum?

Join us this June to tour Takashi Murakami: The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg, discuss classroom implications, and connect with colleagues. Teacher Tours are led by MCA Artist Guides who are experts at using inquiry and dialogue to engage students in learning about contemporary art and ideas.

Japanese artist Takashi Murakami (b. 1962) may be best known for his commercial ventures, anime aesthetic, and post-apocalyptic characters. The MCA's major retrospective, which focuses on his paintings, shows how Murakami's art is rooted in traditions of Japanese painting and folklore and influenced by the Tokyo art scene of the 1980s and 1990s and the threat of nuclear annihilation. In addition, the exhibition highlights the artist's careful attention to craft and materials, exploring themes of high and low, ancient and modern, and East and West, which Murakami has pursued throughout his career. The exhibition features fifty works spanning three decades, from the artist's earliest mature works to his recent monumentally sized paintings.

Takashi Murakami: The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and is curated by James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator Michael Darling.