Takashi Murakami, one of the most imaginative artists in the world today, was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1962. His father was a taxi driver and his mother was a homemaker. His mother studied sewing and designed textiles, which had an enormous influence on Takashi and his interest in the arts. His parents even had him write reviews on exhibitions he had seen in museums. He wouldn’t refuse because if he did he would be forced to go to bed without dinner. From the beginning, Takashi Murakami was raised in a strict, highly competitive environment. From the constant pressure, he was able to think and write quickly which became two skills he would utilize when he would later gain employment as an acerbic art critic.
Murakami grew up in a time when nuclear tension between the West and Japan was an ongoing threat. His mother would always tell him that if the United States dropped a third nuclear bomb then he would have never been born. This fact might lead some to believe Murakami had a lot of built up anger towards the world and the United States government so he turned to art as an outlet. After the bombings and the widespread devastation they wrought, there was more and more U.S. presence in Japan for a few decades. This influenced Murakami’s artwork immensely because he was surrounded by war and suffering. As a child, Murakami attended Buddhist rituals and was taught traditional Japanese calligraphy. To maintain his cultural roots, Murakami revived traditional Japanese culture and put pressure on the Japanese workforce to compete with the West economically and culturally.
Murakami’s early appreciation of both traditional Japanese culture and modern European art helped shape him into the contemporary artist he is today. In his early years, Japanese animation, known as anime, was a chief interest of his. Anime had the greatest impact on him in his formative years. That is why he has such a huge otaku fanbase. Otaku is a subculture that revolves around the fervent consumer of anime, manga, games, or other personal pop culture obsessions. These recurring motifs in anime and manga coincides with otaku followers’ inability or refusal to interact in the real world or apply social skills. Murakami relates the otaku subculture directly to the experiences of Japanese people in post-WWII Japanese society.
Murakami was influenced by leading Western contemporary artists such as Anselm Kiefer and Jeff Koons. Murakami is trained in the Nihonga style of painting, which is a Japanese style that utilizes mineral pigments for powerful color and ink and a brush. His earlier work in the 1980’s began with animal imagery that had a spiritual earthiness to it. This later evolved into pure abstraction.
In this period, Murakami created a painting called Nuclear Power Picture, which is interesting to consider, as it’s different from what Murakami is typically known for today. The painting was created in 1988 and uses straw, cardboard, and silver and gold pigments on canvas as the media. This painting is relatively large, measuring 77 x 102.75 inches, which is taller than the average human. The painting depicts three humans that have their faces blurred out and is just an outline. You see no facial features or details as to what they are wearing other than long sleeves and pants. The three figures stand in this foreboding landscape with a nuclear power plant in the background. The smoke is billowing out from the top of the plant and is engulfing the sky. The texture of this piece is tactile and unavoidable. Murakami uses straw throughout the smoke clouds to add a sense of three-dimensionality. The work is so textured, that it is almost in low-relief.. There are many horizontal lines and diagonal lines in the piece. They are sharper than some of the other lines in the piece which make them stand out more. These lines make you feel a sense of terror. There is a huge crease going down from the top left across the smoke which leads the viewer’s eye to the nuclear power plant. This piece is made using two panels that Murakami made using washi paper. Washi paper is paper that is locally produced in Japan and is made by hand.
He got the inspiration to create the vivid color fields from Jeff Koons, Mark Rothko and Aselm Kiefer. In the article Describing Art, an artist describes Kiefers use of medium and how it affects the viewer. “Kiefer’s large fields of scorched earth—His most-often-recurring image—look like slabs of blasted heath itself, danced over by devils, driven over by panzers, tortured by the weather, then screwed to the wall. They seem plowed as much as painted. Many of the furrows have straw embedded in them. Some visibly blackened with a welding torch. Others have things attached to them—bits of old farm equipment, sheets of lead, charred fence posts, mysterious numbers.” This is a perfect example showing how the two have comparable work. When Murakami was still young an art supply company saw his potential and lent him a large sum of money so he could afford a lapis lazuli, which is the most prized and expensive color blue used by Nihonga painters. This piece is significant because it depicts life after World War 2. It shows how terrible the bombings were on their country by showing how dark and smoky the skies are. After the bombings, The United States and the Allies occupied and help with the rehabilitation of the Japanese State. What they didn’t realize was that they were forcing them to adopt Western Ideas and to forget their culture and heritage. The United States tried to break up whatever businesses Japan owned and started industrializing Japan at a faster rate. The Nuclear Power Plant in the background of this piece shows how the U.S took over.
A later work more colorful work of Murakami’s, entitled My Lonesome Cowboy, is more representative of the artist’s signature style that he is known for today. Murakami isn’t just a painter, but he also is a sculptor. Examples of Murakami’s sculptural work include DOB in the Strange Forest (Blue DOB), and Panda, which was a collaboration with fashion designer Louis Vuitton, but nothing stands out more than My Lonesome Cowboy, created in 1998.
This piece Stands at almost 8 feet tall and is made of fiber-reinforced plastic resin, fiberglass, steel tubing, steel plate, oil and acrylic paint. The piece screams sexuality and is one of the most talked about works Mr. Murakami has created. It depicts a young man with a spiky, yellow anime style haircut holding onto his penis. There is semen shooting out forming the shape of a lasso. The young man has sparkling green eyes and a big smile this is that otaku kawaii style that is known in Japanese anime. This sculpture is significant because it’s sexualizing the anime characters that people enjoy watching every day. Japanese art is known to sexualize their anime characters and in video games you always see the girl characters having big boobs and a large butt. You can see this clearly in the female counterpart to My Lonesome Cowboy. Hiropon is the name of the female humanoid that is a match to this one. She has huge breasts that have milk coming out of the nipples. It shows that these characters in Japanese culture like to flaunt their sexuality. This is part of Japanese pop culture and manga and this is a better illustration of Murakami’s other work because it has a big inflatable-like head and large eyes which portrays a sort of innocence and cuteness.
The Western World didn’t accept these highly sexualized anime characters because some don’t consider it “high art.” Since it is related to cartoons and childhood memories the people in the western art world don’t see it as being highly sought after. They don’t see it as art like Pablo Picasso or Monet. This has definitely changed because of big stars like Kanye West supporting Takashi.
Takashi Murakami’s work is so important today because he merges the Western and Japanese cultures beautifully. He’s inspired companies like Louis Vuitton to work with him because they know it is what the people want. He is the only artist that was able to have a 13-year collaborative relationship with the brand. His work is so influential and important because it was able to merge fashion with art and that turned out to be extremely lucrative.
Murakami coined the term Superflat which is taking a jab at the Western art world because it flattens compositions and makes them look 2 dimensional. He does this because he wants to bring together Japanese history and contemporary pop culture. Superflat was created in 90’s and fused Japanese aesthetics with post-war Japanese culture and epitomized Japanese art. The Superflat theory was published in 2000 and the theory posits that there is a legacy of flat, 2-dimenstional imagery from Japanese art history in manga and anime. The style is much different than the western approach because of its emphasis on surface and use of flat planes of color.
Superflat is also used as a commentary on post-war Japanese society this is because Takashi argues that Japanese social class and popular taste have been “Flattened” producing a culture with little distinction between “high” and “low”. This is how Takashi is able to use the superflat concept and make merchandise that would be considered “low” and sell it as “high art”. He further flattened the playing field by repackaging his high art works as merchandise, such as the plush toys and t-shirts which are affordable to the average person.
Takashi created Mr. DOB in 1993 and is short for dobozite which is Japanese slang for why? He started this series because he wanted to create a great icon for the contemporary world that can be compared to Micky Mouse or Hello Kitty. Mr. Dob is Mr. Murakami’s signature character who constantly changes form and is in different backgrounds. His plush figures of Mr. Dob that are stuffed with fur sell for a decent of money. These images of Mr. Dob are always colorful with big eyes and large spiky teeth. Sometimes he can be happy sometimes he can be sad. Takashi knows that Japan accepts art and commerce as being blended but in the Western World a lot of people are pretentious of their “high art”
Overall, Takashi Murakami is an artist with plenty of outputs whether it be paintings, sculptures, drawings, animations or collaborations with brands such as Louis Vuitton. He is ready with his hard hat on for whatever the Western World throws at him. Not only is Takashi Murakami an artist he is also a businessman. He is the founder and President of Kaikai Kiki Company through which he manages several younger artists like graffiti artist, Madsaki.