Takashi Murakami

Takashi Murakami is one of the highest selling artists in the world today and in 2008, made Time Magazine's list of the "100 Most Influential People". Murakami has been compared to Andy Warhol because he is somewhat of a pop artist with a strong interest in mass culture. A key difference; however, is that Warhol basically searched popular culture for iconic imagery, which he subsequently signed with his name and put into the realms of high art. Murakami creates his own imagery. Subsequently, he spreads it through popular culture in the form of paintings, sculptures, key chains, hand bags or anything else that a trademark can be put on.

Murakami is credited with developing the style of Superflat. Some people believe Superflat is a style defined by flat planes of colour and a character style borrowed from manga (Japanese comics) and anime (Japanese cartoons.) These people have misundertood by what Murakami meant by Superflat. In truth, Superflat is is a marketing concept borrowed from Andy Warhol that states that it aims to flaten the difference between high end art and popular culture. Murakami's version of Superflat involves designing imagery in a manga aesthetic and selling it as singular works in a high ended gallery, and  as branded imagery on designer hand bags or on t-shirts bought by everyone.

Takeshi Murakami - Army of Mushrooms (2010)

Aside from having his Superflat style ironically recognised as a high art form, Murakami has built his credentials as a high art producer with his personal story of surviving Japan’s nuclear holocaust. Apparently, the bomb dropped on Nagasaki was originally destined for the city Murakami’s mother had lived in. If it had been a cloudy day, his mother would have died and Murakami would never have been born. The narrative of being born in a post-apocalyptic landscape somehow builds Murakami's credentials as a social commentator dealing with the emotional pain of a horrific personal event. His art is somehow an artistic version of Godzilla commenting about vague social issues that are not really defined, but are important.

In truth, like the pop art of Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst, Murakami's appeal is almost purely on its ability to be recognised and the dissonance provoked by putting average art in a high end gallery. Like that of Hirst, Murakami's work will never inspire a complex thought to be debated by the great minds of the world. Like that of Warhol, Murakami's work will never fill an audience with an appreciation for human capability, nor will it act a medium of empathy to share an artist's experience with the world. Admittedly, there is something to be learnt in his marketing, but the art itself is less intellectual and less emotional than most Japanese mangas.

For kids and mass culture, Murakami's work acts a bit like the Hello Kitty trademark in that it provides them with a bit of fun and a smile. There is great value in that. For his investors in the world of high art, Murakami provides a recognisable image that should ensure its resale value or build the credentials of an art collector wanting to sprout names known by others. The Superflat ideology is a paradox that the buyers have found intriguing, and they can't quite get their heads around its philosophical ramifications. In a hierarchical world, art can never be flattened. Those who need to maintain the hierarchies simply find a genius in Murakami’s work that is not there.

To say that Murakami’s work fails to show the potential of humanity is not a criticism of his work, but a criticism of a high-end market that is concerned with recognisability and social stratification, not arts potential. Murakami himself seems perfectly comfortable with the fact that he creates for commercial reasons. In her book, Seven Days in the Art World, Sarah Thornton wrote how he freely admitted that he changes his work to suit what sells, like a marketer changing the product after feedback from a focus group. Likewise, the theory behind the Superflat style proposes that no distinction be made between high end and average art. Like Warhol, it seems trying to be average is the unique and recogniseable position in a world were people are trying to be anything but average.

Murakami's only regret is that, as a Japanese person, he feels his work must be of exceptional quality in its craftmanship. He demands high standards from those who he commissions to make his art and he is meticulous about quality control. He envies that Warhol made painting easy while his production team makes it complicated.