무라카미 타카시의 미술계 구조개혁: 예술가의 생존 문제를 중심으로

The existing evaluation of Takashi Murakami was formed around two axes: commercial success and critical/artistic value, and these two axes have been regarded as sharply opposed. However, Murakami himself did not see the two as conflicting or incompatible. As he entered the art world as an artist, the speculative nature of the art market accelerated, and the Japanese art world was in crisis as the Japanese bubble economy collapsed under the power of globalization, which forced Murakami and contemporary artists to experience an unprecedented survival crisis. Although the issue of artist’s survival become a critical one penetrating the art market and artistic value, the mainstream art world in Japan was almost indifferent to it. As such, even in criticism or research on artists like Murakami, the artist’s survival was rarely mentioned. Therefore, this study tried to reexamine Murakami’s thoughts and activities from the perspective that it is impossible to evaluate Murakami’s commercial success or artistic achievement without discussing the artist’s survival problem. Rather than hastily condemning Murakami as a commercial artist, I wanted to scrutinize more carefully how the global art market changed the conditions of artist’s survival and commercialized art world, and how artists thouhgt and acted in such a market. To this end, I examined more extended artistic activities rather than analyzing Murakami’s works. This encompasses Murakami’s omnidirectional activities, that is, as an artist, curator, writer, critic, art educator, entrepreneur, etc., and includes Murakami’s remarks made through various media. By doing this, I tried to reveal that he has seriously questioned the survival of the artist as a collective subject, not as an individual, and practiced structural reform the art world in multifaceted ways under the conditions of globalization and structural changes in the art market.