BEHIND THE STITCH: ALANI
June 21, 2024
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Japanese contemporary art icon Takashi Murakami has brought his spellbinding visual universe to the Cleveland Museum of Art with the landmark exhibition Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow, running from May 25 to September 7, 2025. Originally organized by The Broad in Los Angeles in 2022, this evolved presentation at Cleveland offers not just a re-staging but an expansion, placing Murakami’s works in direct conversation with pieces from the museum’s permanent collection. This curatorial decision adds emotional depth and historical dimension, allowing viewers to trace a visual and philosophical arc from Japan’s sacred traditions to Murakami’s contemporary aesthetic of saturated chaos and healing.
At the heart of the show is the Yumedono installation, or Hall of Dreams–a sacred architectural structure modeled after the ancient Hōryūji Temple in Nara Prefecture. Within this ethereal space, Murakami unveils four striking new paintings from 2024–Blue Dragon, Vermillion Bird, White Tiger, and Black Tortoise. These creatures, drawn from East Asian spiritual cosmology, represent both guardianship and equilibrium, anchoring the exhibit’s metaphysical undercurrent. Murakami, who often fuses commercial motifs with Buddhist themes, uses the Yumedono to invite reflection, reverence, and reinterpretation of Japan’s spiritual past in the context of a modern, globalized world.
The exhibition also includes two of Murakami’s most monumental and emotionally charged works. The first, In the Land of the Dead, Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow (2014), is an 82-foot-long painting born from the grief and reckoning following the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. In this swirling apocalyptic dreamscape, mythological creatures and Taoist sages traverse a devastated land, echoing both destruction and transcendence. Alongside it stands 100 Arhats (2013), a 32-foot-wide homage to Buddhist disciples depicted in grotesque yet almost humorous forms–symbols of spiritual resilience and collective memory. These works don’t merely impress with scale; they haunt and heal, posing critical questions about faith, trauma, and the role of art as spiritual conduit.
What distinguishes this Cleveland presentation is its thoughtful integration of Murakami’s vivid pop-surrealism with traditional artifacts from the museum’s Asian collection. This interweaving enhances both bodies of work, underscoring Murakami’s philosophical depth beneath the surface dazzle of kawaii characters and neon palettes. The blending of eras–of Kyoto’s spiritual mystique and Nara’s architectural symbolism–further deepens the exhibit’s immersive, almost ritualistic experience. Through this dynamic exchange, Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow becomes less of a conventional art exhibition and more of a transcendental pilgrimage, merging ancient vision with contemporary urgency.
To mark the occasion, the Cleveland Museum of Art is offering exclusive limited-edition prints by Murakami, available for presale via a dedicated email. Additionally, the first 50,000 visitors will receive special Takashi Murakami trading cards, collectible keepsakes commemorating an experience that is both personal and pop-cultural. Tickets are $30 for adults, $28 for seniors, and $15 for students and children aged 6 to 17, while entry remains free for children under five and all CMA members.
In Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow, Takashi Murakami demonstrates once again that his work is not merely spectacle–it is sacred commentary, emotional excavation, and aesthetic rebellion. With this Cleveland showcase, he continues to blur the lines between ancient and modern, between high art and subculture, between the personal and the cosmic. This isn’t just an exhibit, it’s a luminous portal into the dreamworld of an artist who refuses to separate beauty from pain, the sacred from the commercial, or tradition from transformation.
