Bright paintings that mix traditional Japanese art motifs with modern anime and manga – that is the unmistakable style of Takashi Murakami.
The 61-year-old is one of the most renowned Japanese contemporary artists. He has sold paintings for millions of dollars and had fashion collaborations with the likes of Louis Vuitton and Kanye West.
Murakami has regular exhibitions across the world from New York to Seoul. The Gagosian gallery at Le Bourget, just outside of Paris, is hosting the latest one.
‘Understanding the New Cognitive Domain’ has a few monumental paintings, one of which is on display for the first time: ‘2020 The Name Succession of Ichikawa Danjūrō XIII, Hakuen, Kabuki Jūhachiban’, the 5-by-23-meter painting based on the iwai-maku, or stage curtain, that Murakami produced for the Kabuki-za theatre in Ginza, Tokyo.
Alongside his monumental works, the artist is also exhibiting works with a pixelated look, strongly influenced by the Japanese video games of the 1970s.
The exhibition also includes several “lucky cat” paintings that reference the artist’s recent NFT projects, and other works featuring Murakami’s iconic smiling flower motif.
The artist has always embraced new technology and was an early adopter of crypto and NFTs, but even he admits fearing what AI might do to artists like him.
“The artists who created things that are familiar to us will be overtaken and replaced by engineering techniques that will succeed in making the most bizarre things familiar. I myself work with a certain fear of one day being replaced,” says Murakami.
The exhibition is open until 22 December 2023.
