Wearing art is the new fad

There were winding lines all over the museum, as there are at any exhibit. The people queued to get into the rooms holding artwork were relatively tame, as the museum can only hold so many people at a time. Yet the line to the Louis Vuitton store, housed on the upper level of the museum, felt different. People weren't just lining up; they were herding themselves into a virtual mouse maze - a line you'd sooner expect to see in front of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.

While Disneyland guests waiting to board the wildest ride in the wilderness do so in the middle of a miniature old west town, the Museum of Contemporary Art guests, waiting for a chance to spend hundreds of dollars on Takashi Murakami's designed luggage, did so in the middle of another art exhibit. Except no one seemed to be interested in the art hanging on the wall. I'm not going to pretend that I was any different. While the walls were adorned with work as fascinating as anything else hanging in the museum, the risk of losing my spot in line reduced me to a lemming mentality.

The feeling of walking passed art on the way to commerce was only cemented by the giant letters sprawled out across the wall behind the line. Art can rarely be boiled down to one single word, but ©MURAKAMI does a good job of summing up the work that's on display. More than anything, the work of Murakami highlights the divide between art and commercialization by walking its thin line.

In the center of one room were "Hiporon" and "My Lonesome Cowboy," ©MURAKAMI's signature works. Dozens of visitors, both the aimless and educated, gathered around the two statues and their comical representations of sexuality. "My Lonesome Cowboy" stands tall, firmly clutching his erect genitalia, which has released a swirling torrent of semen that he seems to be manipulating around his person. Equally exposed stood "Hiporon," playfully milking her nipples, which are poking out of her tight two-piece, so they too could produce an undulating stream that wraps around her in a smoothly rippled loop.

A more literal piece might have been more provocative, as it can be seen as a very crude representation of sexuality. And yet, its cartoon influence dulls the impact, leaving it as something else, something sillier. Here, a sculpture of a man (a term used loosely, as "The Lonesome Cowboy" comes off childlike) surrounded by his own fantastical and glorified orgasm has been put on exhibit at a major metropolitan museum, and yet the sexuality doesn't bother those who see it.

That's kind of weird.

Nearly 90 works by innovative artist Murakami are hung at the Geffen Contemporary at the MOCA, projected, propped up on stands and sold in the form of Louis Vuitton luggage. While Murakami is innovative, his technique is nothing new. Evoking the spirit of the master of pop art, Andy Warhol, Murakami mass produces his art in ways Warhol never explored, actually selling art to be carried around and displayed.

While Warhol called his studio "The Factory," Murakami's art is manifested in an actual factory, aptly named the "Hiropon Factory," with workers to produce his art (or products as the case may be.)

"Hiporon" and "MY Lonesome Cowboy" aren't the only examples of Murakami's work that prey on the preconceptions of "high-art" that museum-goers bring with them. Another piece, a simple painting, embodies the factory, pop art style: Murakami's "Mr. DOB." To the casual observer, it looks less like a work of art than it does a corporate logo - exactly what Murakami is trying to convey. (It's no coincidence that this hangs in the same museum that houses a miniature Louis Vuitton store.)

It's easy to throw the sell-out label onto Murakami, as his work's been put on everything from high-end handbags to pop music. But when compared to the work of other artists, Murakami's mass production, factory style seems less like a betrayal than a logical step in the progress of the art movement.

T.S. Eliot is considered one of the great writers of the twentieth century and his seminal work, "The Waste Land," is regarded as one of the definitive pieces of literature of its time. And yet there was a time when Eliot's work served as nothing more than fodder for greeting cards. College courses would later be built around his "The Waste Land" and "Love Song for J. Alfred Prufrock," but his "Journey of the Magi" was one of his many poems that would be used by everyday people to say what a great poet can articulate better than they could.

His commercial work, writing greeting cards for Faber & Faber, does not take away from the work created by Eliot. If anything, it serves as a testament to his versatility and the same can be said for Murakami. The differences between "My Lonesome Cowboy" and Louis Vuitton's line of handbags may be obvious, while their similarities are subtle - they're all the work of one man.

The same artist who created the work worthy of hanging in its own gallery is the same artist who created the work worthy of hanging on your arm.