Takashi Murakami Exhibit at the Gagosian

After our Vietnamese sandwiches at Nicky’s, Chris and I headed to the Takashi Murakami exhibit at the Gagosian on the Upper East Side.

Takashi Murakami is probably best known for his smiley flowers, like these:

He also worked with Louis Vuitton (do you remember those white bags with all those smiley flowers?!):

For this exhibit, he did portraits of Daruma, the founder of Zen Buddhism. From the Gagosian website, I learned that Daruma achieved enlightenment by “sitting in meditation before the wall of the Shaolin monastery for nine years, without blinking his eyes. During this process, his arms and legs atrophied, withered and fell off. In today’s Japan, Daruma’s continuing popularity as the embodiment of resilience and determination has given rise to an entire industry of good luck charms in the form of armless, legless and eyeless dolls, available in endless variations.”

Here are the pictures of Daruma:

My favorite is the one on the far left – the background, if you look closely, is actually black with glitter! Interesting, huh? The exhibit runs through June 9th and I posted pictures of all of the art from the exhibit (in case you’re too lazy to go), but it’s fun to see if you have the time (it only takes 20 minutes, I swear).