なぜ東京国立近代美術館は村上隆「Ko²ちゃん (プロジェクトKo²) 」を購入しなければならないのか？ それは私、亜 真里男がそう言ってるからだ。 Why should the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo purchase MURAKAMI Takashi's "Miss Ko² (Project Ko²)"? Because I, Mario A, say so.
USD 1,800,000 – USD 2,500,000)
こちらART+CULTUREで、2018年に発表させていただいた：
美術館の館長たちへ、1日も早く、目を覚ませ！Japanese museum directors, quickly, wake up!
https://art-culture.world/art-world/japanese-museum-directors-quickly-wake-up/
の続編です。
お陰様で、怯えていた日本の美術館の学芸員たちは考えを改め、それ以来展示内容は格段に向上しました。
今日は、ちょっと傲慢で挑発的なジェスチャーをしてみましょう。笑。
だって私は日本の美術が大好きだから。❤️
そして、腹が立つから。笑。
間違いなく世界美術史を形作ってきた村上隆。(1)
東京国立近代美術館 MOMAT には、私の（我々の）税金を使って、村上隆の象徴的「Ko²ちゃん (プロジェクトKo²) 」傑作 (aka ココちゃん、ミス・ココ)を購入してほしい。
大したことじゃない。軍事再軍備予算からも分かるように、我が国にっぽん、そして「GDPで世界一豊かな都市」と称される東京 (2)、日経平均株価51,000という状況下で、MOMATの日本企業スポンサー、支援者、ダイヤモンド・プラチナ会員、ご贔屓様、いわゆる「芸術のパトロン」たちには資金がある。
ご存知の通り、MOMATは村上のマイナー作品をいくつか所蔵しているが (3)、代表作であるキー作品（Schlüsselwerk）を未だに所有していない。
とはいえ、この中途半端美術館は対応が鈍いので、クリスティーズでの入札にはおそらく参加しないだろう。
この場をお借りして、国立近代美術館の建物を取り壊してほしいとお願いしたい。I’m serious。
これは、日本のアーティストであり、世界中の数多くの美術館を訪れるアート愛好家としての私の意見です。毎日Xで荒らし、太った体で座布団にオナラをする、傲慢な口臭いにっぽんのサロン知識人として言っているのではありません。
あの古びた空間を見るたびに、胸が締め付けられます。今や世界一の国際都市である東京にしては、情けない建物です。
ぜひとも、風通しの良い、開放的で知性的な建物に建て替えてほしい。
東京国立西洋美術館の入口にロダンの裸体彫刻があるなら、村上隆のアイコニック「ココちゃん」彫刻も東京国立近代美術館の入口に相応しい。
それはわが国の文化的誇りの源泉となるべきだ。
にっぽん美術家として、今日という日を「カルペ・ディエム」のように捉え、声を上げます：私（僕・俺・ワシ）と同じようにあなた（キミ・お前・御宅）の愛国心を見せなさい！
東京、令和7年11月12日
亜 真里男
USD 1,800,000 – USD 2,500,000)
This is a continuation of my ART+CULTURE article from 2018: Japanese museum directors, quickly, wake up!
https://art-culture.world/art-world/japanese-museum-directors-quickly-wake-up/
Thanks to this, the scared curators at Japanese art museums changed their minds, and the content of their exhibitions has improved considerably since then.
Today, let’s indulge in a slightly arrogant, provocative gesture. Lol.
Because I love Japanese art. ❤️
And because I’m angry. Lol.
MURAKAMI Takashi, who without doubt, has shaped the history of world art.(1)
I want the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo MOMAT to use my (our) tax money to buy MURAKAMI Takashi’s masterpiece “Miss Ko² (Project Ko²) (aka Coco-chan, Miss Coco).”
It’s not a big deal. As you can see from the military rearmament budget, our country, Japan, and then Tokyo, “ranked world’s richest city by GDP,” (2) and with the Nikkei average at 51,000, the MOMAT’s Japanese company sponsors, supporters, Diamond-Platina-Members, “the patrons of the arts” have the money.
As you know, MOMAT holds several of Murakami’s minor works (3), but still doesn’t own a truly representative work, Schlüsselwerk.
That being said, this shoddy / half-hearted museum is slow to act, so they probably won’t be doing a bit at Christie’s.
I would like to take this opportunity to ask that the National Museum of Modern Art building be demolished. I’m serious.
This is my opinion as a Japanese artist and an art enthusiast who has visited numerous museums worldwide. I’m not speaking as an arrogant, foul-mouthed Japanese salon intellectual who spends his days trolling on X and farting on Zabuton-cushions with his fat body.
Every time I see that antiquated space, my heart sinks. For Tokyo, the No.1 international metropolis today, it’s a pathetic building. I would very much like to see it rebuilt as an airy, open and intellectually stimulating building.
If the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo has Rodin nude sculptures at its entrance, then MURAKAMI Takashi’s iconic Miss Coco sculpture would be fitting at the entrance of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, as well. It should become a source of cultural pride for our country.
As a Japanese artist, today as a kind of carpe diem, I want to raise my voice: Show your patriotic spirit just like me!
Tokyo, Reiwa 7, 12 November
Mario A
USD 1,800,000 – USD 2,500,000)
(1)
参考 reference:
日本のアート界を駄目にした男？ 不幸な村上隆、、、
The Man Who Ruined The Japanese Art World? An Unhappy MURAKAMI Takashi…
https://art-culture.world/art-world/takashi-murakami-kaikai-kiki-japanese-art-world/
(2)
Tokyo ranked world’s richest city by GDP, with Osaka-Kobe also rated highly
Japan Times, Nov 10, 2025
Tokyo has been ranked as the world’s richest city, ahead of New York, London and Los Angeles, in a recently released report. Japan’s capital has a gross domestic product of $2.55 trillion, just ahead of New York’s $2.49 trillion and Greater Los Angeles’ $1.62 trillion, according to CEOWorld’s global wealth index, published Friday. Full text @
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2025/11/10/economy/tokyo-worlds-richest-city-survey/
(3)
MURAKAMI VERSAILLES 2010
STARS: Six Contemporary Artists from Japan to the World
STARS展：現代美術のスターたち ー 日本から世界へ
2020/7/31 – 2021/1/3 @ MORI ART MUSEUM 森美術館
2次元のキャラクターを3次元化した《Ko²ちゃん（プロジェクトKo²）》（1997年）、《ヒロポン》（1997年）と《マイ・ロンサム・カウボーイ》（1998年）では、日本の大衆文化に潜む欲望を誇張して表現することで、その美意識を批評的に解釈することを試みています。
In Miss Ko² (Project Ko²) (1997), Hiropon (1997), and My Lonesome Cowboy (1998), which render two-dimensional characters into life-size three-dimensional figures, Murakami exaggerates the desires latent in Japanese mass culture in an attempt to critically interpret that consciousness.
CHRISTIE’S
https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6559598
New York, 2025, 19 NOV 7PM EST
Address
20 Rockefeller Center
Viewing
7 Nov 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM
8 Nov 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM
9 Nov 1:00 PM – 5:00 PM
10 Nov 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM
11 Nov 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM
12 Nov 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM
13 Nov 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM
14 Nov 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM
15 Nov 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM
16 Nov 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM
17 Nov 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM
18 Nov 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM
19 Nov 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM
LIVE AUCTION 23484
21ST CENTURY EVENING SALE FEATURING WORKS FROM THE EDLIS | NEESON COLLECTION
LOT 40 B
TAKASHI MURAKAMI (B. 1962)
Miss Ko² (Project Ko²)
Important information about this lot
○♦Third party guarantee
Estimate
USD 1,800,000 – USD 2,500,000
DETAILS
TAKASHI MURAKAMI (B. 1962)
Miss Ko² (Project Ko²)
fiberglass, iron, acrylic and oil paint
72 x 25 x 30 in. (182.9 x 63.5 x 76.2 cm.)
Executed in 1997. This work is number one from an edition of three plus one artist’s proof.
PROVENANCE
Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner, 2009
LITERATURE
G. Molinari, “Takashi Murakami,” Flash Art, March-April 1998, p. 106 (illustrated).
M. Asano, “The Readymade Hall of Fame,” Monthly Model Graphix, April 1998, pp. 43-49 (illustrated).
M. Matsui, “Takashi Murakami,” Index, November 1998, p. 49 (illustrated).
Blind Mirror: Selections from a Contemporary Collection, exh. cat., Sao Paulo, Museu de Arte Moderna de Sao Paulo, 2001, p. 109 (illustrated).
K. Itoi, “Pop Goes the Artist,” Newsweek, Summer 2001, p. 86 (illustrated).
Takashi Murakami: Kaikai Kiki, exh. cat., Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain à Paris, 2002, p. 77 (illustrated).
James Roberts, “Magic Mushrooms,” Frieze, October 2002, p. 68.
J. Huckbody, “Shooting from the Hip,” i-D, February 2003, p. 81 (illustrated).
A. Browne, “When Takashi Met Marc,” V 22, March-April 2003.
F. Bonami and C. Christov-Bakargiev, The Pantagruel Syndrome, Turin, 2005, n.p., center insert (illustrated).
A. Lubow, “The Murakami Method,” New York Times Magazine, 3 April 2005 (illustrated).
C. Knight, “Art Review: Hello, creepy cute,” Los Angeles Times, 29 October 2007, p. E1.
M. Naves, “Warhol, Porn and Vuitton,” The New York Observer, 15 April 2008.
S. Cohen, “Emerging from Desire: Takashi Murakami,” Wynnwood: The Art Magazine (Miami), May 2008, p. 16 (illustrated).
L. Yu-fu, “Special Feature: Takashi Murakami,” Bijutsu, 2010, p. 18 (illustrated).
EXHIBITED
New York, Feature, Murakami: Hiropon, Project Ko², February-March 1997.
Tokyo, Big Sight, Wonder Festival ’98, January 1998 (another from the edition exhibited).
Annandale-on-Hudson, Center for Curatorial Studies Museum, Bard College, Takashi Murakami The Meaning of the Nonsense of the Meaning, June-September 1999, p. 38 and 58-59, no. 15 (another from the edition exhibited and illustrated).
Tokyo, Makuhari Messe, Tokyo Wonder Festival, June-August 2000.
Tokyo, Museum of Contemporary Art of Tokyo, TAKASHI MURAKAMI: summon monsters? open the door? heal? or die?, August-November 2001, n.p. (another from the edition exhibited and illustrated).
Durham, North Carolina, Duke University Museum of Art, Student-Curated Exhibition, XII: Made in Asia?, April-June 2001, pp. 41 and 58 (illustrated).
Los Angeles, The Museum of Contemporary Art; New York, Brooklyn Museum of Art; Frankfurt, Museum für Moderne Kunst and Bilbao, Guggenheim Museum, ©Murakami, October 2007-May 2009, pp. 69 and 85-87 (illustrated).
Paris, Chateau de Versailles, Murakami Versailles, September-December 2010, pp. 92-95, 98, 100-101 and 171 (another from the edition exhibited and illustrated).
Zurich, Thomas Amann Fine Art AG, Verboten, June-September 2011.
Seoul, PLATEAU, Samsung Museum of Art, Takashi in Superflat Wonderland, July-December 2013, pp. 36-39 and 109 (another from the edition exhibited and illustrated).
LOT ESSAY
Standing six feet tall, Takashi Murakami’s Miss Ko2 (Project Ko2) is the artist’s first life-size sculpture, representing the radical reinvention of his artistic project and ushering in his famed fluid period. Miss Ko2 has taken up a totemic position in Murakami’s oeuvre, capturing the seismic moment in which his revolutionary Superflat movement catapulted into the third dimension. Here, we witness Murakami developing this theory, wherein he envisions the dissolution between distinctions vis-à-vis high art and low culture in Japan, made irrelevant in the postwar context as all creative forms were metaphorically flattened into exaggerated caricatures of sexuality and emotion corrupted by a predominant Western cultural influence. In Murakami’s Superflat world, “the maladjusted outsider of the otaku—obsessing over details of comics, games, anime, or other aspects of geek culture—became the true driver of contemporary culture, pushing unrequited desires and unresolved anguished into the hollow shell of cartoon characters” (M. Darling, “Superflat,” in Takashi Murakami: The Octopus Eates Its Own Leg, exh. cat., Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, p. 96). Murakami mimetically critiques the infusion of Western culture into Japanese society and the hypereroticized excesses of the otaku—or geek—subculture. Miss Ko2 magisterially weaves his deep understanding of Japanese society and its traditional artforms into an artwork aping consumerist society.
To create Miss Ko2, Murakami appropriated the character Yuka Takeuchi from the exuberant Japanese fighting video game Variable Geo. She wears an eroticized version of the popular waitress’ uniform of Anna Millers, an American pie restaurant chain then prevalent in Japan. Murakami’s collaborator Bome describes Variable Geo as “an utterly artless pandering to stereotypical otaku fetishism. Nor is it an original—rather it was created with a complete understanding of the tastes of the entire otaku market for uniform fetishism” (Bome, quoted in T. Murakami, “Life as a Creator,” in Takashi Murakami: Summon Monsters? Open the Door? Heal? Or Die?, exh.cat., Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, 2001, p. 139). These aspects made it a perfect subject for appropriation, exemplifying Murakami’s conception of Superflat. By expanding this character into a life-size scale, the artist made legible the absurdity of the otaku subculture. As Murakami writes, “the very idea of making a life-size figure character was taboo within the otaku community. Figure culture began in response to a desire to somehow call the beloved characters of manga and anime forth into the real world, to have them at one’s fingertips. At the root of the figure character was their clear functionality as pornographic statues” (T. Murakami, ibid., p. 138). While paralleling the appropriative strategies of Western artists, including Richard Prince and Jeff Koons, Murakami is simultaneously channeling the traditional Japanese artistic tradition of Mitate, the repurposing of existing objects, where the artist creates something new by adding subtle touches of originality.
Miss Ko2 was able to depict how, within the milieu of the late 1990s, cultural categories of low and high were destabilized as the consumer economy absorbed high art. Using similar strategies of imitating mass culture found in Koons’s simulationisms and the appropriative approach of Prince, Murakami successfully parodies the West while confronting the inherent problems he saw with Japanese society. His Miss Ko2 figure wears a fetishized uniform of an overseas (American) company which had come to dominate Japanese cultural expression, while her life-size scale simultaneously critiques the fetishized obsession with figurines in the Japanese otaku fandom. The sculpture’s revealing bust, slender arms, and anatomically inconceivable proportions—slender arms, anime-doll face, and impossibly long, crossed legs—capture in realistic scale the absurdity of the feminine figurine ideal held by sections of Japanese society. The multilayered valiances held within the sculpture extend through to the work’s very name. Ko can mean child, girl, young woman, or even a fish egg in Japanese, while it also frequently constitutes a part of a female given name. Thus, Miss Ko2, pronounced Miss Ko Ko, can be interpreted with layered simultaneous meanings.
Miss Ko2 was the first of Murakami’s life-size fiberglass figurines, providing the template for celebrated works such as Hiropon (1997), and My Lonesome Cowboy (1997), of which examples of both reside in the Pinault Collection. The foundational importance of Miss Ko2 for Murakami’s broader oeuvre is demonstrated in the work’s extensive exhibition history, appearing in the artist’s celebrated retrospectives at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Tokyo, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, and most spectacularly at Murakami Versailles, where the sculpture was placed in the Salon de Guerre, right at the entrance to the palace’s famed Hall of Mirrors and below an extravagant marble portrait of King Louis XIV. Her position at the precipice of French imperial power, with her outstretched left hand positioned as if beckoning the viewer into the Hall of Mirrors to view the remainder of Murakami’s work, poignantly recapitulates Miss Ko2’s singular importance within the artist’s vaunted oeuvre, representing the inaugural inception of his universally influential Superflat movement.
2025/11/20 up-date
Good bidding. Start @ 1.300.000US$. End @ 2.200.000US$
Incl. fee: 2.759.000US$ (4億3,300万円), probably to a collector in the Americas, US?, via Christie’s Maria Los, Deputy Chairman, Head of Client Advisory, Americas
注意！ATTENTION!
All pictures and texts have to be understood in the context of “Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial-NoDerivative Works.” ここに載せた画像やテクストは、すべて「好意によりクリエーティブ・コモン・センス」の文脈で、日本美術史の記録の為に発表致します。 Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial-NoDerivative Works, photos: cccs courtesy creative common sense
All these texts and pictures are for future archival purposes, in the context of Japanese art history writings.