Takashi Murakami (村上隆) is a Japanese artist known for his works in both paintings and digital media. The artist is from the city of Itabashi, Japan and was born on February 1, 1962. His arts involve sculptures, paintings and he still works as a film director.
His most prominent works are My Lonesome CowBoy and Super Nova. And the styles of their works are usually Superflat (inspired by the world of anime), PopArt – The Videos, pop art. Takashi Murakami often mixes traditional art with modern art.
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educational institutions
Japan is a good place to train artists of various styles, and it was no different with Takashi Murakami. University of Tokyo and Hongō Junior and Senior High School, the University of Tokyo (東京藝術大学) also called Geidai (芸大) is located in Ueno Park. It also has other campuses in Adachi and in the cities of Toride and Yokohama.
Other well-known artists graduated from this university besides Takashi Murakami such as musicians Ryuichi Sakamoto and Masashi Hamauzu and filmmakers Hiroshi Teshigahara and Takeshi Kitano and many others.
Takashi Murakami graduated in Nihonga (traditional Japanese painting). Hongō Junior and Senior High School is a junior high and high school, founded in 1923 in Tokyo.
history with art
Takashi Murakami began his career in 1990 under the guidance of Japanese musician Masato Nakamura. In 1993, he was recognized in and outside of Japan as Mr. DOB
Takashi Murakami was the creator of the term Superflat, which refers to a postmodernist art movement. The term refers to an artistic movement in the 1990s to criticize Japanese consumer culture. This style also applies to other artists who were influenced by it, and it features subjects of relevance to the Japanese, as well as culture, society, and others.
The artist has his exhibitions spread all over the world and in places famous by artists such as the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain and the Palace of Versailles in France. Takashi Murakami's arts include various types of artistic styles such as anime, painting, sculpture, industrial design and fashion.
Time magazine of the year 2009 elected Takashi Murakami as the most influential artist to represent contemporary culture. In 2011 the Google company asked him to make the Google Doodle (temporary change of the logo) for the winter solstice in the southern hemisphere. And in 2019 Takashi Murakami made the music video for singer Billie Eish titled “You Should See Me in a Crown”.
Main works
Takashi Murakami's most important works are the sculpture entitled '' My Lonesome '' and the painting '' Super Nova ''. They are very different arts and represent different moments in the life of the author.
My Lonesome Cowboy is from the year 1998, the superflat-style statue measures 288 centimeters and depicts an anime-inspired figure. The statuary symbolizes a naked male figure, with spiky hair and smiling, ejaculating a large semen ligament that circles his body as if it were a noose.
The period of this piece marked the phase of bodily fluids for having many sexualized images inspired by the otaku culture. So much so that the sculpture is based shunga (depiction of exaggerated genitalia) and hentai (anime and manga pornography).
Takashi Murakami's inspirations were from the 1968 Andy Warhol films, Lonesome Cowboys and 1957's Loving You. The latter was starred by Elvis Presley who sang the song “Lonesome Cowboy” in a pose that similarly emphasizes his thighs and pelvis.
In 2008, the fourth numbered edition of My Lonesome Cowboy was sold at auction by Sotheby's for US $ 15.1 million, nearly four times the value for which it was valued. The sale made Murakami one of the most expensive living artists in the world that year.
The work Super Nova from 1999 is in the Museum of Modern Art Place San Francisco. This work contains 7 panels highlights the quintessence of Takashi Murakami. He takes things from everyday life and renders them with kitsch cuteness, which is very common in Japanese culture.
The curiosity is that Takashi Murakami doesn't even touch his works, he comes in with creativity and hires technicians to execute them. In Super Nova it is possible to see a giant mushroom full of eyes among several smaller ones. The mushroom conveys the idea of hallucinogenic, magical, atomic.
The inspiration for this Superflat artwork is a critique of the bombing of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the year 1945, when large cities were literally razed to the ground. The painting, therefore, refers to this turbulent history of Japan. Therefore, the monstrous mushrooms pictured are made human by radiation.
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Current works
Takashi Murakami's most recent work is a shirt and mousepad collection in partnership with FaZe Clan. They already worked together in June 2021 by releasing two models of shirts and mousepads in various colors. The models are very much the artist's style focused on anime and manga. The last partnership is for the Black Friday 2021 edition. For this collection, the shirts are in black and white, with a limited edition. The prices of the two items will vary between US $ 75- $ 100.
Another collaboration, also in early 2021, was between the artist and Perrier, carbonated natural mineral water, part of the Minalba Brasil brand portfolio. The labels came screen-printed with the artist's original work, and featuring his popular characters Kaikai and Kiki.
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