So last night I went to last night’s celebration of @Murakami, the retrospective of internationally acclaimed Japanese artist - and Kanye West cover-art guy --Takashi Murakami. It was at the Brooklyn Museum and the party was capped with a performance by the Louis Vuitton Don himself (mostly for investment bankers and big money folks), which was great.

Many Kanye fans have heard Murakami’s name a lot, but few have actually heard from the man himself. I got to chat with him for a little bit (we were seated next to each other at the Nobu-catered dinner at the Museum, so it was an easy score) and talked about his collaborative efforts with Kanye. While Murakami is ecstatic about the results of their combined creative energy, the process of working together was not without a few bumps in the road.

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I did have a couple of interactions with Kanye, but they didn’t really go as planned. See for yourself after the jump.

We did our best to chat Kanye up. At first, we were rather unsuccessful, as Kanye approached the event on his phone. He ignored me, I persisted, and was ultimately pulled back by one of Kanye's team.

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Later in the night, however, I was able to talk to him for a few minutes about his admiration for Murakami. Kanye even had something to say about Murakami's typically colorful outfit, expressing particular love for the artist's bright-orange bowtie. I tried to talk to Kanye about the election, but that pretty much fell flat, as Kanye's only response to a question about whether or not he would support Senator Barack Obama was "WOWZERS!!!" Hmmm. I took the hint, and let him finish his dinner.