Disappointed with your ©Murakami prints? Sue

Clint Arthur bought $12,000 worth of repurposed handbag material sold as prints from the ©Murakami boutique and $2,655 worth of prints from the gift show and is pissed off that the prints from the boutique (Louis Vuitton material stretched over stretchers) were just made from leftover handbag material. Not that I thought that the Louis Vuitton boutique at ©Murakami was well executed in any way (particularly conceptually), but after Duchamp, isn’t every object in the world fair game for a repackaging accompanied by an inflated price tag?

The LA Times has the details, and there’s actually some curious legal business going on in the case regarding the prints from the gift store, mainly that MOCA may have neglected responsibilities under the California Fine Prints Act, selling them as posters, rather than as prints.

“Make you want to quit your art job and become a hermit” quote of the day from the article, from Arthur, referring to the prints – “These are investment-quality art products.” Yeah, but they’re also multiples sold in the thousands, and there are no guarantees on the consistency of taste or value in the art world.

Technorati Tags: LA Times, MOCA, ©Murakami, Louis Vuitton, Clint Arthur, lawsuit, Takashi Murakami, Murakami, art, contemporary art, prints

thesecretlivesofcats

April 23, 2009 at

The prints were 6 thousand bones and the bags were 1 thousand bones. The picture in the article has them framed side by side but the crop really gives you no indication of their size. Are they 6 times larger? If they were that would be about right.

It sounds skeezy to me, but I personally wouldn’t but anything with that print on it. I feel Murkakami too. He is just trying to “blur the line,” and suddenly all these playa haters[somebody please give me a new phrase] poppin’ out from behind the bling. It’s like the he’s playing the video game Columns, but the nightmare fever dream version. Mo money mo problems indeed.