Murakami

Takashi (1962). Japanese artist and designer. Born in Tokyo, he lives and works between Paris and Japan. His artistic début was in the world of “manga” (Japanese comics) and of “anime” (cartoons). He began his career with a well-known animation studio, but immediately decided to return to university to study Nihonga, a traditional form of Japanese painting from the 19th century. In 1991 he obtained a doctorate at TODAI (the prestigious National College of Fine Arts and Music at Tokyo University) and continued by pursuing contemporary art, soon becoming a guru of the Japanese New Wave, and a high profile figure in Neo Pop. His first exhibition was called Takashi, Tamiya. In 1992 he produced his virtual image: This is the famous Mr Dob, a blue puppet resembling Mickey Mouse, with a huge head and eyes popping out of their sockets. The character, despite his demonic appearance, could also be good, and brought to mind the old “manga” characters of the 1970s. Mr Dob (an abbreviation of “dobojite,” which means “because”) lived in his own world, completely divorced from reality, and according to Murakami was meant as an emblem of the anti-consumerist movement. The character then became the trademark with which Murakami branded his products, from T-“shirts to watches. In 1994 a bursary took him to New York, where he was invited by the Rockerfeller Foundation Asian Cultural Council to take part in their International Student Program. The next year, he returned to Japan where in 1996 he founded Hiropon Factory, a clear homage to Warhol and a production studio for his own works, and those of young up-and-coming artists (painters, musicians, and photographers). In 1998 he was invited to teach in Los Angeles at the UCLA Art Department. In 2001 in Tokyo and California he presented the exhibition Superflat — a compendium of his artistic creations. In the essay A Theory of Superflat Japanese Art, he argued that the formal characteristics of classical Japanese art may be found in contemporary cartoon art, and he highlighted the continuity between traditional art and the Abstract Expressionism of Pollock or the Pop Art of Andy Warhol. His works, shown in museums and galleries worldwide, play on the opposition between East and West, past and present, classical culture and pop culture. His style may be described in pop terms by the world of “otaku” (initially defined by the acronym poku: pop + otaku), and is known as “superflat” ( a term first used by the art historian Tsuji Nobuo to characterize the lack of depth and spatial representation in the work of Hokusai and in oriental painting in general). After his success in the United States, Murakami’s art arrived in Europe. In 2002 his touring exhibition KaiKai Kiki opened in Paris at the Fondation Carrier, before transferring in January 2003 to London’s Serpentine Gallery. In the Coloriage section, Murakami exhibited creations which revealed the same provocative ambiguities as the work of Warhol, hovering between classification as commercial or artistic products. The transition from the world of art to that of fashion was the result of the exhibition’s success in Paris: Marc Jacobs, Artistic Director of Vuitton, met him and decided, not without a degree of risk, to have him collaborate in the new summer collection of 2003. And so another new look was created for Vuitton bags to follow the success of Stephen Sprouse’s graffiti, and the fairytale patchwork of English designer Julie Verhoeven. Presented in 2002 at Spring-Summer 2003 womenswear runway show, at the Parc-CitroÍn, the new collection of handbags and totes reflected the highly colored, ironic, and childlike spirit of the Japanese artist, who re-launched the celebrated Vuitton logo in three different versions: a multicolored monogram, pink peach blossom or red cherry blossom (for the classic cylindrical Papillon bag), and, Murakami’s favorite subject, his “floating” eyeballs, with their multicolored lashes and pupils, which for Vuitton become “Eye Love.”