PREVIEW: Takashi Murakami-An Arrow Through History
Takashi Murakami has stated that the artist is someone who understands the borders between worlds and who makes an effort to know them. With his “Superflat” style, which employs refined classical Japanese painting techniques to depict a super-charged mix of Pop, animé and otaku content within a flattened representational picture-plane, he moves freely within an ever-expanding field of aesthetic issues and cultural inspirations. Parallel to utopian and dystopian themes, he recollects and revitalizes narratives of transcendence and enlightenment, often involving outsider-savants.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Gagosian Archive
In three simultaneous presentations spanning two of Gagosian’s New York galleries, Takashi Murakami bridges the physical and digital realms in his solo exhibition “An Arrow through History”. Murakami’s presentation at 976 Madison Avenue consists of works based on the “Clone X NFT” initiative (2021), which he developed in collaboration with RTFKT Studios. “Clone X” is a series of NFT avatars conceived as three-dimensional figures bearing the artist’s distinctive motifs. The works at Gagosian translate the digitally modeled NFTs into meticulously detailed, hand-painted portraits and full-scale figurative sculptures—physical manifestations of art created for the metaverse. As Murakami explains: “When I work on a creative production, I make no distinction between digital and analog. I’m always working in the context of contemporary art, and that context is all about whether I can be involved in events that manage to trigger a cognitive revolution”. The fifth floor of 980 Madison Avenue is devoted to paintings related to the Murakami. “Flowers NFT” project (2021–22), including pink-and-white works based on his initial designs for the series, along with others that translate selections from their final, multihued iterations into paintings. The artist’s newest interpretation of his iconic flower motif, “Murakami.Flowers” combines his influential Superflat aesthetic with a style that evokes nostalgia for the pixelated graphics of 1980s video games, especially those played on the Nintendo Famicon console. This body of work was conceived in multiple permutations with a base of 108 flowers, corresponding with the number associated with the Buddhist principle of bonnõ*.The sixth floor of 980 Madison Avenue is dedicated to new paintings inspired by the fish motif depicted on a Qinghua blue-and-white porcelain vase—a masterpiece from China’s Yuan dynasty (c. 1279–1368)—from the Museum of Oriental Ceramics in Osaka, Japan, and by Murakami’s childhood memories of riverside journeys with his father, during which he observed anglers fishing for carp. To make these works on circular canvases, he translated the single brushstrokes used to decorate ceramics into subtly colored, multilayered paintings of the fish, an auspicious symbol of abundance that also establishes a link to the past.
Takashi Murakami earned a BA, MFA, and PhD from Tokyo University of the Arts, where he studied traditional Japanese painting. In 1996 he established the Hiropon Factory, a studio/workshop that in subsequent years grew into an art production and artist management company, now known as Kaikai Kiki Co. Ltd. Since the early 1990s Murakami has invented characters that combine aspects of popular cartoons from Japan, Europe, and the US—from his first “Mr. DOB”, who sometimes serves as a stand-in for the artist himself, to various anime characters and smiling flowers, bears, and lions. In 2000 Murakami curated “Superflat”, an exhibition featuring works by artists whose techniques and mediums synthesize various aspects of Japanese visual culture, from ukiyo-e (woodblock prints of the Edo period) to anime and kawaii (a particular cuteness in cartoons, handwriting, products, and more). With this exhibition, Murakami advanced his Superflat theory of art, which highlights the “flatness” of Japanese visual culture from traditional painting to contemporary subcultures in the context of World War II and its aftermath. Murakami’s work extends to mass-produced items such as toys, key chains, and t-shirts. In 2002 he began a multiyear collaboration with Marc Jacobs on the redesign of the Louis Vuitton monogram. Murakami then took the radical step of directly incorporating the Vuitton monograms and patterns into his paintings and sculptures. While Murakami’s imagery may appear to present unprecedented characters and forms, many contain explicit art historical references, and some are even direct contemporary updates on traditional Japanese works. Following the Tōhoku earthquake of 2011 and the subsequent nuclear crisis at Fukushima, Murakami began deeply exploring the impact of historical natural disasters on Japanese art and culture.
* The basic cause of our suffering, Shakyamuni Buddha taught, is our bonnõ -our base passions or worldly desires. bonnõ is often referred to as “blind passions.” They are called “blind” because although we may often see these pas.
Photo: Takashi Murakami, Chinese Perch After Kitaoji Rosanjin, 2022 Acrylic on canvas mounted on wood panel 59 x 59 in, 150 x 150 cm, © Takashi Murakami/ Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd, All Rights Reserved, Courtesy the artist and Gagosian
Info: Gagosian Gallery, 980 Madison Avenue & 976 Madison Avenue, New York, NY, USA, Duration: 11/5-25/6/2022, Days & Hours: Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, https://gagosian.com/
