Modern & Contemporary Artists Codexery

Takashi Murakami

Japanese artist who blurs boundaries between high art and commerce.

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Takashi Murakami

Beulagpinkeu · CC BY-SA 3.0

Takashi Murakami is a Japanese contemporary artist who works across fine arts and commercial media, known for blurring the line between high and low arts.[1] His work draws on Japanese artistic tradition and postwar culture, and he founded the art trading company Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd.[1][2] Time magazine's 2008 list of the "100 Most Influential People" included Murakami as its sole visual artist.[3]

Life and work

Murakami was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan, and as a fan of anime and manga he hoped to work in animation.[4] He attended Tokyo University of the Arts, majoring in Nihonga, and earned a Ph.D. in that field in 1993.[4] He became disillusioned with Nihonga's insular world and began exploring contemporary styles, often as social criticism and satire.[4][5] In 1996, he launched the Hiropon Factory production workshop, which was incorporated as Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. in 2001.[6]

He began a long-lasting collaboration with Louis Vuitton in 2002, designing handbag artwork that was a huge commercial success.[7] In 2007, he provided cover artwork for Kanye West's album Graduation and later for West and Kid Cudi's Kids See Ghosts.[8][1] Murakami's 2000 "Superflat" theory, introduced in a group exhibition catalog he curated for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, argues that manga and anime inherit a tradition of flat, two-dimensional imagery from Japanese art history.[1] Between 2007 and 2009, the traveling retrospective ©Murakami started at MOCA Los Angeles and then visited the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, and concluded at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.[9]

What the cited sources add

In a 2006 interview, Murakami stated that in Japan the line between art and commerce is less defined, and that Japanese people accept the blending of art and commerce.[10] The Widewalls account notes that My Lonesome Cowboy, a sculpture of a naked anime character with a spiral trail of semen, sold for $13,500,000 at Sotheby's New York in 2008.[11] The same source states that Murakami introduced his Mr. DOB character in 1993, a hybrid cartoon-like character combining Western and Japanese animation elements.[11] The Kaikai Kiki website states that in 2008 the company converted its Tokyo office basement into an art gallery, with all exhibitions curated by Murakami.[12]

References

  1. Wikipedia, "Takashi Murakami" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Hebdige, "©Murakami", Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles/Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 2007 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  2. Wikipedia, "Takashi Murakami" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd.", Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  3. Wikipedia, "Takashi Murakami" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Jacobs, "The 2008 TIME 100 - TIME", May 12, 2008 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  4. Wikipedia, "Takashi Murakami" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Schimmel, "©Murakami", Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles/Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 2007 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  5. Wikipedia, "Takashi Murakami" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "A Message: Laying the foundation for a Japanese art market", Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  6. Wikipedia, "Takashi Murakami" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Yoshitake, "©Murakami", Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles/Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 2007 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  7. Wikipedia, "Takashi Murakami" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Rothkopf, "©Murakami", Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles/Rizzoli International, 2007 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  8. Wikipedia, "Takashi Murakami" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Lu Stout, Kristie, "Interview with Japanese Artist Takashi Murakam", CNN, January 11, 2013; Kim, "Kanye and Kid Cudi Unveil Cover Art for New Album Kids See Ghosts", Pitchfork, June 6, 2018 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  9. Wikipedia, "Takashi Murakami" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Home", www.moca.org (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  10. Perez, "The AI Interview: Takashi Murakami", Artinfo, June 9, 2006. facts only, no text reused. web.archive.org
  11. "My Lonesome Cowboy, 1998", Widewalls. facts only, no text reused. web.archive.org
  12. Wikipedia, "Takashi Murakami" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "About Kaikai Kiki Gallery", Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Takashi Murakami (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.

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Sources

Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.

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