All About Artists
Takashi Murakami
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Takashi Murakami is currently one of the world's most coveted contemporary artists due to his distinctive style, his unique take on art and inert understanding of how to best poke at society, simultaneously exposing both its inherent flaws and beauties. He combines different cultural valencies, mixing high art with low, ancient with modern, oriental with occidental. His deep love of Pop, otaku culture is combined with refined classical Japanese painting techniques, revitalising the Japanese art scene and injecting it with a sense of fun and play.
Murakami was born in Tokyo in 1962, where he earned a BA, MFA and a PhD from the Tokyo University of the Arts. He originally studied Nihonga, or traditional Japanese painting. However, he found the genre to be quite stifling, feeling as if he had no room to exercise his talents. He quit studying Nihonga after coming across a major solo exhibition by Shinro Ohtake and quickly became committed to contemporary art, even though this was a time where there was no market for such a thing.
His art therefore reflects this classical training as it seems highly informed by the Japanese art-historical tradition. "Superflat", a postmodern art movement founded by Murakami, shows his love for both the contemporary and the traditional. He utilises the flattening print and painting traditions of the past to depict graphic practices of contemporary Japanese culture, drawing inspiration from popular culture, cartoons and anime.
Murakami was born in Tokyo in 1962, where he earned a BA, MFA and a PhD from the Tokyo University of the Arts. He originally studied Nihonga, or traditional Japanese painting. However, he found the genre to be quite stifling, feeling as if he had no room to exercise his talents. He quit studying Nihonga after coming across a major solo exhibition by Shinro Ohtake and quickly became committed to contemporary art, even though this was a time where there was no market for such a thing.
His art therefore reflects this classical training as it seems highly informed by the Japanese art-historical tradition. "Superflat", a postmodern art movement founded by Murakami, shows his love for both the contemporary and the traditional. He utilises the flattening print and painting traditions of the past to depict graphic practices of contemporary Japanese culture, drawing inspiration from popular culture, cartoons and anime.