Takashi Murakami: Biography & Artwork

Takashi
Murakami

Takashi Murakami is an international staple of contemporary art and culture, from his noteworthy alter-ego Mr. DOB to his inimitable Flowers that make him synonymous with all things bright and kitsch. If you are looking to buy or sell a Murakami original print or edition, browse artwork available from our network and enquire to speak to the team. We offer free and confidential valuations and market advice on any Murakami print, with zero obligation to sell.

Biography

Dubbed the ‘Andy Warhol of Japan’, Neo-Pop Art luminary Takashi Murakami draws from traditional Japanese painting to create his unique, kitschy characters and works. Working in traditional media, like painting and sculpture, as well as commercial media, including fashion and animation, Murakami has a history of blurring the lines between high and commercial art, East and West, past and present.

Murakami's biography follows in the footsteps of a traditional Japanese upbringing and shaped the distinctively Japanese nature of his art. Interested since a young age in becoming an animator, Murakami brought his passions into his art. Manga, anime, international animated film and otaku culture became central to his work and led him to develop his 'superflat' aesthetic. Emblematic of Murakami's work, the term superflat was coined by Murakami to refer to the flattened quality of Japanese visual culture which his works embrace, as well as to describe his attempt to blur the boundaries between popular art and high art.

Murakami's Characters and Collaborations

Since his beginnings in Japan, Murakami’s cute characters have taken over the global art market. His trademark characters are undoubtedly his Mr. DOB and his smiling flowers. Created within the context and aesthetic of glaring, colourful consumerism, Mr. DOB is Murakami’s alter ego as well as an iconic example of a Takashi Murakami artwork at play. Over the years, Mr. DOB has taken many forms but is mostly recognised as a cute ‘kawaii’ character. Together with Mr. DOB, Murakami’s predilection for cartoons is evident in his appropriation of the flower motif. Recast as emoji-like characters with smiling faces, Murakami’s Flowers made their first appearance in 1995, and have since populated the colourful universe of the artist.

Known for his celebration of the commercial nature of his art, Murakami has also not been a stranger to the market, where his works fetch sky-rocketing prices. For instance, in 2018 his six foot Dragon in Clouds - Red Mutation, executed as part of a challenge by his professor, Nobuo Tsuji, fetched over ￥55.8 million (£6.4 million) at Council auction house in Shanghai.

The success of Murakami’s work has led to many international exhibitions and high-profile partnerships. Not only has he caught the attention of collectors like Kanye West, but Murakami’s success led to collaborations with Pharrell Williams, Virgil Abloh, and Louis Vuitton. While nearly everything about Murakami’s artwork feeds into the world of celebrity and branding, it also appeals in a more critical and traditional sense, with works displayed at Perrotin and Gagosian, and Versailles.

Murakami’s first solo show was at Tokyo’s Ginza Surugadai Gallery in 1989, around the same time that he began travelling to and from New York after finishing his Nihonga studies. His rise to success came in line with the Nipponese Neo-pop movement and Japan’s economic crisis of the late 1980s, both of which can be seen reflected in both the ‘pop’ elements and materialist focus of his works.
Mr. DOB emerged at this point in his career, first as a DNA helix in ZaZaZaZaZaZa (1994), before going through a series of evolutions until he became a monstrous symbol of society’s addiction to consumerist culture in Tan Tan Bo Vomiting (2002).
Throughout the late 90s, Murakami worked in his self-made POKU style (a portmanteau of ‘pop’ and ‘otaku’), and works such as Miss Ko2 (1997) and Hiropon (1997) emerged. These pieces are examples of how his work began to deal with more explicit content in conjunction with commercial pop culture themes.
Murakami’s influences are myriad. It was Bob Flanagan’s work at the New Museum in 1994, illustrating the needle fetish that had resulted from a lifetime of necessary medical injections, that taught Murakami that art was about much more than conventional beauty. It was Katsuhiro Otomo (who wrote Domu: A Child’s Dream (1980-1981)), animator Yoshinori Kanada, animation director Hayao Miyazaki, and George Lucas, who influenced his own bold, cartoonish style.
Other influences come from the likes of Horst Janssen’s drawings, Buddhist iconography, Zen painting, and 18th century Edo composition techniques. Murakami cites every exhibition he visited in SoHo when he first began exploring New York as an influence because of how cutting-edge the art was in comparison to what he had been exposed to in Japan.
Murakami’s artistic career came from hard work and determination. While he knew that he loved to create art, he was never told he had talent as he was growing up. As a result, his skill was self-taught. When Murakami first travelled to New York in 1989, it was because he saw the city as one of the most important artistic centres in the world. He rented a small apartment in Brooklyn and struggled to make ends meet, before acquiring a career-changing residency position at the PS1 International Studio Program. Since then, he has turned his artistic vision into a brand that stretches across fashion, technology, entertainment, and beyond. Today, he runs a factory-like studio outside Tokyo of technicians who help him create his perfect works of art.

“The title comes from an Andy Warhol film called Lonesome Cowboys. The work shows someone masturbating and smiling. It doesn’t have a meaning,” Murakami has said of My Lonesome Cowboy. Despite the artist’s claims, My Lonesome Cowboy and its companion sculpture Hiroponare two significant works in Murakami’s “body fluids” period and seen as his early attempt to represent manga (Japanese comics) and otaku (nerd) culture using Western fine art techniques.

The important piece achieved US$15.1 million against an estimate of US$3-4 million when it was offered at Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Auction in New York on 14 May 2008, and remains the most expensive work by Murakami at auction today.