Takashi Murakami

Takashi Murakami (村上 隆) is a Japanese contemporary artist.

He works in fine arts (such as painting and sculpture) as well as commercial media (such as fashion, merchandise, and animation) and is known for blurring the line between high and low arts.

His influential work draws from the aesthetic characteristics of the Japanese artistic tradition and the nature of postwar Japanese culture.

He is credited for designing the album cover for Kanye West's third studio album Graduation.

Murakami is the founder and President of Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd., through which he manages several younger artists.

He was the founder and organizer of the biannual art fair Geisai.

Murakami was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan.

From early on, he was a fan of anime and manga (Japanese cartoons and comics respectively), and hoped to work in the animation industry.

He attended Tokyo University of the Arts to acquire the drafting skills necessary to become an animator, but eventually majored in Nihonga, the 'traditional' style of Japanese painting that incorporates traditional Japanese artistic conventions, techniques and subjects.

He earned his master's degree in 1988.

Efforts from this period include performance art (Osaka Mixer Project, 1992), parodies of the "message" art popular in Japan in the early '90s, (Dobozite Dobozite Oshamanbe, 1993), and conceptual works (e.g. Randoseru Project, 1991).

He also began developing his own pop icon, "Mr. DOB", which would later develop into a form of self-portraiture, the first of several endlessly morphing and recurring motifs seen throughout his work.

Though he garnered attention, many of his early pieces were not initially well received in Japan.

Though he would go on to earn a Ph.D. in Nihonga (1993), he gradually became disillusioned with its insular, highly political world and started to explore more contemporary artistic styles, media, and strategies.

Murakami was dissatisfied with the state of contemporary art in Japan, believing it to be "a deep appropriation of Western trends."

Thus, much of his early work was done in the spirit of social criticism and satire.

On an article naming and explaining all of Murakami's pieces lies the infamous My Lonesome Cowboy, a companion to his earlier Hiropon.

The sculpture is that of a naked anime character with blond spiky hair with a spiral trail of semen circling him.

In 1994, Murakami received a fellowship from the Asian Cultural Council and participated in the PS1 International Studio Program in New York City for a year.

During his stay, he was exposed to and highly inspired by Western contemporary artists such as Anselm Kiefer and especially the simulationism of artists such as Jeff Koons.

He established a small studio, which, together with the Hiropon Factory in Japan, became the precursor to his company Kaikai Kiki.

After returning to Japan, he would develop the core concepts behind his artistic practice and begin exhibiting regularly at major galleries and institutions across Europe and America.

In 1996, Murakami launched the Hiropon Factory, his production workshop, in order to work on a larger scale and in a more diverse array of media.

His model inherits the atelier system which has long existed in Japanese painting, printmaking and sculpture and is common to anime and manga enterprises, such as Hayao Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli.

In 2000, Murakami published his "Superflat" theory in the catalogue for a group exhibition of the same name that he curated for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

The theory posits that there is a legacy of flat, 2-dimensional imagery from Japanese art history in manga and anime.

This style differentiates itself from the western approach in its emphasis on surface and use of flat planes of color.

Superflat also served as a commentary on postwar Japanese society in which, Murakami argues, differences in social class and popular taste have 'flattened,' producing a culture with little distinction between 'high' and 'low'.

In 2001, Hiropon Factory was incorporated as Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd.

The theory provided the context for his work and he elaborated on it with the exhibitions "Coloriage" (2002, Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris) and "Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture" (2005, Japan Society, New York), which was named after Little Boy.

These helped introduce Japan's lesser-known creative culture overseas and such curatorial projects would become an integral part of Murakami's multifaceted artistic practice.

In 2002, at the invitation of designer Marc Jacobs, Murakami began his long-lasting collaboration with the fashion brand Louis Vuitton.

He began by contributing artwork which was used in the design of a series of handbags.

The series re-envisioned the company's monogram and was a huge commercial success.

Though he had previously collaborated with fashion designers such as Issey Miyake Men by Naoki Takizawa, his work with Louis Vuitton made him widely known for blurring the line between 'high art' and commercialism.

It also elevated him to celebrity status in his home country of Japan.

This piece is Murakami's most expensive piece to date selling for $15,100,000 at Sotheby's New York auction in 2008.

In the past decade, Murakami's curatorship expanded to include Kazunori Hamana, Yuji Uedaa, and Otani Workshop at Blum & Poe, New York (2016) and Juxtapox x Superflat at Vancouver Art Gallery (2016).

In accordance with the Superflat concept, Murakami's practice involves repackaging elements usually considered "low" or subcultural and presenting them in the "high-art" market.

He then further flattens the playing field by repackaging his "high-art" works as merchandise, such as plush toys and T-shirts, making them available at more affordable prices.