Global artistic powerhouse Takashi Murakami reveals his highs and lows
Self-confessed melancholic geek Murakami, famed for his blend of classical and pop art, and numerous collaborations with the likes of Louis Vuitton, is coming to Hong Kong for Art Basel and ComplexCon
Murakami barely needs an introduction, his visual language possibly the most recognisable aesthetic of any living artist today. Mention his name and rainbow-hued flowers and faces plastered with grins drift across one’s inner field of vision.
Murakami is known equally for his prolific collaborations, with brands (Louis Vuitton, Crocs and Supreme), musicians (Billie Eilish and Pharrell Williams), and even an art historian (Nobuo Tsuji), his commerciality frequently clashing with the historically informed origins of his style. Murakami holds a PhD in late 19th century Japanese Nihonga style of painting. But it is his ability to translate classical Japanese aesthetics into the visual language of popular culture that often defines this self-described geek, who holds as deep a knowledge of anime as he does Hokusai.
It’s not difficult to understand why. In 2024 alone, the Japanese artist’s activities included exhibitions at Kyoto’s Kyocera Museum, London’s Gagosian gallery and New York’s Brooklyn Museum. For the latter, Murakami created 121 works in just five months – “In many cases it’s a miracle that the ink’s dry,” Joan Cummins, the Brooklyn Museum’s curator of Asian art, remarked when the exhibition, “Hiroshige’s 100 Famous Views of Edo (feat. Takashi Murakami)”, opened last April. This May will see the opening of two solo shows in the United States, at Gagosian’s New York branch and at the Cleveland Museum of Art.