Chapter 6: The Studio Visit

In this chapter the author travels to the studios of very prosperous artists, mainly in Japan. She explores how the artists operate within their studio and how they produce art. The one artist the author visits, Murakami, has his staff arrive at 8:50am then begin the day with warm up exercises. To me this just sounds like the action of the typical eccentric artist. This artist in particular is said to be very angry and hard to please, he explains that this is a method he uses to make the assistants work harder, for if they easily receive praise they will not try as hard. As strange or cruel as this method sounds I think it's genius. The studio is kept very clean and so are the assistants. Typically there are as many as 40 projects going on. The artist will jump from one to another depending if he gets bored with one and wants to work on another. As an artist I do the same thing, except it's not 40 projects, more like two, three or four at most.