Louis
Vuitton

Throughout the works in the Louis Vuitton collection, Murakami takes the brand’s iconic monogram pattern, characterised by the brand’s initials, LV, entwined in a classic font, and adapts it using his distinct visual language and artistic style.

Murakami’s take on the Louis Vuitton monogram is fun and exciting. The artist injects the patterns with bright colours such as hot pink, turquoise, yellow and green. He also adds some of his signature cartoon icons, such as jellyfish eyes, as seen in Eye Love Superflat (black). Murakami invigorates the classic pattern with a distinctive Pop Art palette and takes a symbol of high-end luxury which he then adapts in a popular style. In doing this, Murakami blends elements of ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture in the Louis Vuitton collection, something the artist often does throughout his artworks.

Murakami is known for mixing high art with popular culture tropes. The artist studied ‘nihonga’, traditional Japanese painting, at the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music. Murakami excelled at studying this lauded painting style, which incorporates traditional Japanese artistic conventions, techniques and subjects. After his BA, Murakami went on to obtain an MFA (1988) and PhD (1993), both of which were focussed on nihonga. The artist gradually became disillusioned with the insular and highly political world of fine art, which led him to explore more contemporary artistic styles.

Murakami was very interested in the Japanese ‘otaku’ subculture which was rooted in computers and popular culture. As a long-time lover of anime and manga (Japanese cartoons and comics), Murakami also wanted to incorporate his passion for this popular art, which was generally considered to be part of Japan’s ‘low culture’, into his personal artistic aesthetic. Incorporating otaku culture, anime and manga into his artworks meant that Murakami was able to successfully blur the lines between ‘high’ art and ‘low’ culture, as he does in the Louis Vuitton collection by rendering the classic monogram in a Pop Art style.

Murakami’s desire to bring ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture together in his artworks resonates strongly with the work of Andy Warhol, the father of the Pop Art movement. Andy Warhol was famous for taking everyday objects and consumer goods, such as Campbell’s soup cans, and making them into works of fine art that would sell for high sums on the art market. While Murakami is similar to Warhol in this sense, the artist remains unique as he maintains his Japanese heritage and classical art training and is able to fuse influences from the East and West into his art, adopting Western fine art techniques and merging them with Japanese culture and style.

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