Hasta La Ideas

Artist Takashi Murakami is thirsty for a new challenge: his own brand of bottled water. “My dream is to be in the water business!” he tells curator Allison Gingeras in a terrific Q&A published in the August issue of Interview. Like Murakami bottled water? “Exactly. It’s a natural concept because I realized the U.S. is really big, so maybe I’ll be able to find a good spring,” he says with a laugh. “It will be my original type of Evian or something like that. So this is my dream. It’s like having a garden for the lotus plants. I am super-focused on the lotuses all the time.” In his Tokyo studio, Murakami breeds lotus plants, beetles, and “very small guppies,” with the help of dedicated staff. As for the water, he wouldn’t have to look far for a test audience. Murakami says that he is planning to open a bar in Los Angeles, maybe. “It’s supposed to be like a Japanese-style social thing—like sake and shochu,” he says, explaining that he has already begun experimenting with making shochu, an alcoholic drink distilled from sweet potatoes, in his studio. It’s all part of his dream. “Every time I start a new business, I’m looking for the niche market,” he says. “The sake market is already fixed, but nobody knows shochu in America…Almost nobody.”

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