Takashi Murakami

Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris
Acquired by the present owner from the above

 

Takashi Murakami is the most important contemporary Japanese artist working today and his extraordinary body of work, a meeting of Pop Art and anime cartoons, has been celebrated in prestigious museums all over the world, including the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and a recent solo retrospective exhibition at the Bard College Museum of Art, Palazzo Correr, Venice.

Through his work, Murakami engages with the polarities of East and West ; past and present ; high art and low cultural references. At the same time, the work remains consistently amusing and accessible. His work thus morphs the worlds of popular contemporary Japanese cartoons and historic Japanese painting (the artist is classically trained, with a Ph.D. in the traditional nihon-ga style).

Nega Mushroom is considered an important work by the artist as it combines his most renowned motifs of mushrooms and eyes. These motifs are catalogued on the surface, representing a litany of possibilities as much as forms. They were used on on several supports of different sizes, forms and colors. Only two paintings with this specific composition exist : the present example, on a gold background, and one on a silver one.