Takashi Murakami
Takashi Murakami (村上 隆 Murakami Takashi, born February 1, 1963) is a Japanese artist. He studied at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. He is the founder of the Superflat movement, a postmodern art style influenced by anime and manga which comments on otaku culture and lifestyles. His inspiration for starting the movement was in a variety of eccentric Ukiyo-e artists and Yoshinori Kanada's dragon sequence in the anime film Harmagedon (1983).
Intro
Takashi Murakami is a prolific contemporary Japanese artist.
Takashi works in both fine arts media, such as painting; as well as, digital and commercial media. He attempts to blur the boundaries between high and low art. He appropriates popular themes from mass media and pop culture and turns them into thirty foot sculptures, “Superflat” paintings, or marketable commercial goods such as figurines or phone caddies.
Murakami was born in 1963 in Tokyo. He attended the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. Murakami started as a student of more traditionalist Japanese art. While at the University, Murakami pursued a doctorate in Nihonga, a mixture of Western and Eastern styles dating back to the late 19th century. However, at this same time, Japan experienced a rise in mass popularity of anime and manga. Japanese styles of animation and comic graphic stories. Murakami became disillusioned with Nihonga as a result and became fixated on otaku culture. Otaku culture is most often an unfavorable reference to a “nerd” society, boys and girls that take an obsessive interest in either manga or anime, watching or reading for days at a time without rest. He felt that otaku were more representative of modern day Japanese life.
This resulted in “Superflat” the style that Murakami is credited with starting. Superflat is a style developed from Poku,(Pop +otaku), Murakami has written that he aims to represent Poku culture because he expects that animation and otaku might create a new culture. This new culture being a rejuvenation of the contemporary Japanese art scene. This is what it is all about to Murakami, he has expressed in several interviews in the last five or six years the frustration that his art has risen from. It is a frustration rooted in the lack of a reliable and sustainable art market in post-war Japan, and the general view of Japanese art in and outside the country as having a low art status. He is quoted as saying that the market is nothing but “ a shallow appropriation of Western trends”. His first reaction was to make art in non-fine arts media, but decided instead to focus on the market sustainability of art and promote himself first overseas. This marks the birth of KaiKai Kiki, LLC.
KaiKai Kiki LLC
In 1996, Murakami founded the Hiripon factory. The factory was originally just a group of assistants that helped him to produce his sculptures and paintings. However, as new projects came in and the need for a dramatic increase in the volume of his work arose, the Hiripon factory gradually grew to a point in 2001, at the same time as his solo show at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, into a professional art production and artist management organization. That same year he registered it as Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. Today it is an internationally recognized, large-scale art production and artist management corporation, employing over 100 people in the US and Japan. Kaikai Kiki LLC has two main objectives. The first is the successful marketing of Murakami’s work, and the second a supportive environment for the teaching and fostering of new young Japanese artists. Murakami has been quoted many times as saying Bill Gates is one of his greatest influences. He has said that some of KaiKai Kiki’s success and efficiency can be attributed to ideas and practices Murakami gained after reading Gates’ Speed of Thought. “I set out to investigate the secret of market survivability- the universitality of characters such as Mickey Mouse, Sonic the Hedgehog, . . .” this is the thriving notion behind what
Signatures
His signature and most infamous works are "Hiropon" and "My Lonesome Cowboy". "Hiropon" is a fiberglass sculpture of an anime-style female, taller than average, with gigantic breasts and wearing an undersized bikini top which fails to cover her adequately. A stream of milk, which she is squeezing from one of her nipples, wraps behind her to into her other nipple being squeezed by her other hand, resembling a jump-rope. "My Lonesome Cowboy" is a similar of a nude male holding his penis as he ejaculates a stream of semen which he guides with his other hand to swirl upward, resembling a lasso. "Hiropon" prompted Gainax producer Toshio Okada to dub Murakami the "Ota-king" after the character in his own Otaku no Video. Both pieces of work are said to be a comment on the rate of overly-sexed anime.
Murakami typically conscripts artisans whose backgrounds run closer to model and kit-based hobbyists rather than fine-arts craftsmen to design and execute his works. Another "low-art" aspect of Murakami's oeuvre is the decidedly commercial spirit in which his works are presented to the public, as his pieces are sold as mass-produced consumer items.
In 2004, "Mr. Pointy," otherwise known as Tongari-kun, took the form of a 28' sculpture installed at Rockefeller Center in New York. File:0909.3.jpg
In 2003 he collaborated with Marc Jacobs at the luxury brand Louis Vuitton and masterminded Louis Vuitton's Monogram Multicolore canvas range of handbags and accessories. Which is the monograms of the standard Louis Vuitton Monogram Canvas, but in 33 different colors, on a white or a black background, instead of gold monograms on a brown background. As well as inspiring the "cherry blossom" logo; which can be found as smiling faces in pink and yellow flowers sporadically placed atop selected pieces, in Monogram Canvas by Louis Vuitton. In 2005 he inspired the creation of the cherry monogram "cerises monogram". Which are cherries with faces on them logos placed over selected Monogram Canvas pieces by Louis Vuitton
See also
- Kaikai Kiki - an artist's collaborative started by Murakami