Takashi Murakami’s Biography and Artistic Work Essay

In 1962, Takashi Murakami was born in Tokyo, Japan. Murakami was raised by a single mother and a taxi driver for a father who worked long hours at the roadside ¹. To a large extent, Murakami’s interest in the arts can be traced back to his mother, who was an accomplished needle pointer and textile designer. Often, he was required to write a review of an art show he had attended. He would be compelled to skip dinner if he did not comply. As a result of his upbringing in such a high-stakes environment, Murakami honed his analytical and creative thinking skills. As an art critic, he gained notoriety for his scathing critiques of contemporary art. When Murakami was a child, his mother told him that if the United States detonated another nuclear bomb, he would not exist. Murakami’s artistic progress was shaped by the damage and subsequent American occupation of Japan following World War II. Japanese calligraphy courses, Buddhist rituals, and visits to the museums of Renoir and Goya were all part of Murakami’s childhood.

However, Japanese animation had the most important effect on him throughout his formative adolescent years, even though he had an early affection for traditional Japanese culture and contemporary European art ². Because of this, most of his work is targeted toward both the otaku audience (a fandom fascinated with end-of-the-the-the-the-the-the-world imagery) and the general public. Otaku’s inability to interact with others in the real world or their failure to apply social skills in everyday settings are reflected in these repeating motifs in manga and anime. Japanese society and the otaku subculture directly connect through Murakami’s work. He remained for master’s and doctoral degrees in traditional Japanese painting styles (which he completed in 1988). (Completed in 1993). It was not just in the classroom where he learned about the art world; he also visited exhibitions, and took part in the school’s visiting artist program, among other things, while studying ancient techniques.

In 1984, Murakami met Joseph Beuys, and the encounter was both enlightening and frustrating at the same time. When confronted with students’ questions, the artist said nothing, dismissing the students’ concerns “No one can answer these questions. I prefer a more in-depth question rather than this one.” Murakami was annoyed by Beuys’s dismissive attitude, while the famous artist was enraged by what he perceived as unsophisticated Japanese art students. When Murakami was a junior in high school, he developed a critical view of the Western art market. His early writings focus on the post-World War II relationship between Japan and the United States. Plastic soldiers and an atomic weapon appear in Polyrhythm’s 1991 sequel Sea Breeze (1992). A light-hearted style that always hints at a more profound pessimism.

In 1994, Murakami moved to New York City to participate in P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center’s International Studio Program on a fellowship from the Asian Cultural Council³. On the final night of his leaving from New York while having to play a late-night word game with friends that used non-sense words like “robotize,” Murakami came up with the estimate Mr. DOB, which would go on to be the artist’s iconic character across his vast range of artistic media⁴. Mr. DOB-shaped inflatables were displayed for the first time in New York just at Angel Orensanz Foundation in 1995 but did not attract considerable critical notice.

To create his otaku-inspired sculptures, Murakami opened the Hiropon Factory in 1996. Taking inspiration from both ancient Japanese art studios and Andy Warhol’s Factory, Murakami created his factory in his studio⁵. Hiropon employs specialized support for large-scale, mass-marketed projects. In 2001, the Hiropon Plant changed its name to Kaikai Kiki Co., a very well company with fifty Tokyo employees and twenty New York employees. Art fairs, collaborations with fashion and music corporations, and animation software and films are all part of the company’s portfolio of services. The financial value is no longer determined by the artist’s physical involvement in its creation; the symbolic value is determined by the designer’s relationship with the craft created in his profit-driven factory. The company employs over 20 people in New York and over 60 people in Tokyo.

In a show of the same title, Murakami first introduced the concept of “Superflat” in the year 2000. There were pieces by Yoshitomo Nara, Shigeyoshi Ohi, Aya Takano, and others on display at the exhibition⁶. The Superflat theory swiftly became one of the most significant trends in contemporary Japanese art, following the Gutai movement’s footsteps in the 1950s. Murakami’s most significant declaration of his early scorn for the art establishment is “A Philosophy of Super Flat Japanese Art” (2000). This essay outlines his intention to develop a Japanese art style representing postwar Japan’s traumatic experiences. As a foundation for his artworks, this article takes the post-war Japanese culture’s lifeblood from it. To paraphrase Pico Iyer, “is indeed a realistic historian of the flight of the real. Murakami provided Japan the visuals it sought, the cutesy and the aberrant forms adored by otaku, much like Andy Warhol gave current America the overflow of mass production and stardom it craved.” In contrast to his English translations, the Japanese version of this story exhibits a fiery anti-Americanism. The concept of “Superflatness,” as Murakami describes it, “is an original idea of the Japanese, that has been thoroughly Westernized,” is explained in both forms.

His superb Superflat theory aims to link Japanese art history from the Genji and Heiji scrolls to the present pop culture in Japan. Many people are drawn to his art due to its apparent superficiality and spectacular explosion of characters and colors. The tension between the message’s profundity and the audience’s enjoyment is a superb example of the Superflat concept’s fluidity⁷. Murakami’s current work is more commercial, and he has experimented with new kinds of art in animation and video. This role reversal reflects Murakami’s attempt to rethink contemporary global artistry.

After meeting with designer Marc Jacobs, Murakami established a long-term association with Louis Vuitton in 2002. Murakami maintained his unique style while incorporating elements of the LV brand’s iconic design. For example, he paired LV’s monogram with his own jellyfish eyes or overprinted it with his cartoonish cherries. When Murakami joined this organization, he became a household name in Japan and a sought-after artist globally. His work is currently widely sought.

Takashi Murakami’s Artworks

Hiropon

Takashi Murakami has contributed to the field of arts by producing several artistic works. Below are some of his works discussed, compared, and contrasted with each other. One of his artistic works is the 1997 Hiropon. Hiropon is an anime-inspired sculpture of a bikini-clad woman depicting her bare breasts and nipples in full view. These enormous breasts protrude from her tiny bikini top, spraying a jet of milk all around her bare form in this intensely sexualized sculpture, complete with a tiny waist and long, thick pink pigtails. Although she seems like a cartoon figure, the sculpture’s massive size and placement atop a crisp white vitrine serve as a reminder that this is “fine art.” Murakami’s fascination with the otaku society and its erotic underbelly, referred to as “loli-com” (short for “Lolita Complex”) is evident in this sculpture, which combines feminine delicacy with frightening wickedness.

Hiropon is among Murakami’s anime-inspired characters and a masturbating sculpture of a kid named My Lonesome Cowboy⁸. Despite its cartoonish and superficial appearance, this sculpture serves as a devastating critique of post-World War II Japanese culture. In his interviews and writings, Murakami frequently claims that Japan was “infantilized” by the United States post-WWII presence, becoming the “little boy” in comparison to the United States. The word “hiropon” is the Japanese phrase for crystal methamphetamine, subject to the film’s title. This link to the drug culture in the book’s literal sense reveals Murakami’s evaluation of otaku culture as an illegal form of entertainment.

Aston Martin DB5 1999

Another of Takashi’s artistic work is the Aston Martin DB5 1999. This multi-package painting of mushrooms, termed Supernova, is performed in Murakami’s signature Superflat style, which combines references to historical Japanese painting with contemporary pop culture⁹. However, their mutated eyeballs, fang-like peaks, trippy colors, and contorted forms hint at nefarious undercurrents. The song “Champagne Supernova” by British band Oasis is referenced in the work’s title. It’s possible that these fantastical images could be understood as hallucinogenic mushrooms because the song alluded to drug culture. The centerpiece is a massive mushroom with an eyeball-covered cap, and teeth resemble shards. Mushrooms of all shapes and sizes cover its seven panels. Inspired by Ito Jakuchu’s Compendium of Vegetable matter and Insects (1761), an eighteenth-century painting of mushrooms, the piece explores the cultural significance of edible fungi in Japan.

However, to the post-WWII Japanese, the mushroom serves as a menacing wake-up call of the mushroom cloud created by the 1945 US nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nuclear radiation has horrifying and long-lasting side effects, as evidenced by the mutant mushroom. Mushrooms frequently appear in all of Murakami’s works. For their playful demonstration of glossy joy, they are a subtle assessment of Japan’s youngsters’ culture, where both blamelessness and cuteness are prized. By way of its use of bold colors and cartoonish shapes, this piece demonstrates this theme.

2001 Wink

2001 Wink is another Murakami art with giant bubbles decorated with Murakami’s iconic eyeballs, and flowers appear to float around Grand. With this project, presented by Creative Time, a paradoxical and sarcastic coexistence of Japanese Neo-Pop and the formal beauty of Grand Central Terminal’s classical Beaux-Arts architecture is achieved by juxtaposing two opposing aesthetics¹⁰. Curiosity, amusement, and busy pedestrians are all invited into a humorous discussion by the winking eyes of the sculptures.

The difference between Hiropon, Super Nova, and Wink is that; Hiropon is an anime and masturbating sculpture of a lad named My Lonesome Cowboy, which was initialized in 1997. SuperNova is a multi-package painting of mushrooms which combines references to historical Japanese paintings with contemporary pop culture. It was instantiated in 1999. Wink giant bubbles decorated with Murakami’s iconic eyeballs and flowers float around Grand Central in New York City like balloons. In contrast, two centered sculptures appear to rise from the ground. It was set in 2001. In conclusion, Murakami began showing his work in solo and group shows after graduating, earning his European debut in 1995 at the 46th Venice Biennale in “TransCulture.” Murakami’s works of art and sculptures were shown in the second Asia-Pacific Exhibition of Contemporary Art at Brisbane’s Queensland Art Gallery.

Bibliography

Darling, Michael. “Plumbing the Depths of Superflatness.”Art Journal 60, no. 3 (2001): 76–89.

Favell, Adrian. “Resources, Scale, and Recognition in Japanese Contemporary Art:” Tokyo Pop” and the Struggle for a Page in Art History.” Review of Japanese Culture and Society 26 (2014): 135-153.

Fujita, Yuiko. Cultural migrants from Japan: Youth, media, and migration in New York and London. Lexington Books, 2009.

Lisica, Cindy. “Beyond Consumption: the art and merchandise of a superflat generation.” PhD diss., University of the Arts London, 2010.

Murakami, Takashi, and Dana Friis-Hansen. “Portfolio.”Grand Street, no. 65 (1998): 216–21.

Murakami, Takashi. Superflat. Tokyo: Madra, 2000.

Nara, Yoshitomo. “Before and After Superflat.”

Ngai, Sianne. “The Cuteness of the Avant‐Garde.”Critical Inquiry 31, no. 4 (2005): 811–47.

Sharp, Kristen. “Superflatworlds: A topography of Takashi Murakami and the cultures of Superflat Art.” Ph.D. diss., RMIT University, 2006.

Yano, Christine R. “Wink on Pink: Interpreting Japanese Cute as It Grabs the Global Headlines.”The Journal of Asian Studies 68, no. 3 (2009): 681–88.

Footnotes

1. Fujita, Yuiko. Cultural migrants from Japan: Youth, media, and migration in New York and London. Lexington Books, 2009.
2. Nara, Yoshitomo. “Before and After Superflat.”
3. Favell, Adrian. “Resources, Scale, and Recognition in Japanese Contemporary Art:” Tokyo Pop” and the Struggle for a Page in Art History.” Review of Japanese Culture and Society 26 (2014): 135-153.
4. Ngai, Sianne. “The Cuteness of the Avant‐Garde.” Critical Inquiry 31, no. 4 (2005): 811–47. Web.
5. Lisica, Cindy. “Beyond Consumption: the art and merchandise of a superflat generation.” PhD diss., University of the Arts London, 2010.
6. Sharp, Kristen. “Superflatworlds: a topography of Takashi Murakami and the cultures of Superflat Art.” PhD diss., RMIT University, 2006.
7. Murakami, Takashi. Superflat. Tokyo: Madra, 2000.
8. Murakami, Takashi, and Dana Friis-Hansen. “Portfolio.” Grand Street, no. 65 (1998): 216–21. Web.
9. Darling, Michael. “Plumbing the Depths of Superflatness.” Art Journal 60, no. 3 (2001): 76–89. Web.
10. Yano, Christine R. “Wink on Pink: Interpreting Japanese Cute as It Grabs the Global Headlines.” The Journal of Asian Studies 68, no. 3 (2009): 681–88. Web.