Takashi Murakami

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

Pairs, Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain; London, Serpentine Gallery, Takashi Murakami, June 2002 - January 2003, cat. no. 62, illustrated in color (and illustrated in color on cover of Serpentine Gallery, London catalogue)

Flower Ball (3-D) is a stunning example of how skillfully Takashi Murakami, Japan’s foremost contemporary artist, can merge his traditional Japanese training and background with contemporary culture.  The brightly colored flowers smiling out at the viewer create a visual and cerebral amalgam of High (fine art) and Low (popular) art.   Although this concept was originally conceived by Andy Warhol and other Pop artists in the 1960’s, the 1990’s brought about a different sentiment.  Not only does High Art begin to be absorbed by popular culture, but commercial enterprises, such as cartoons and video games (called Anime and Manga in Japan) begin to reach a culturally high status. Murakami and other Japanese anime artists have found a new way to elevate, yet again, the use of logos and commercial marketing images that, at the same time, have become the cultural norm. 

Murakami started painting flowers when he began to prepare for his entrance into the University of Fine Arts, Tokyo.  After getting his PhD in Nihon-ga, a traditional Japanese style of painting in which flowers are a constant motif, he started to teach painting and drawing at a local preparatory school.  In his own words, Murakami explains how flowers became a part of his oeuvre: “When I was preparing for the entrance exams for the University of Fine Arts, I spent two years drawing flowers.  I drew some every day.  And the entrance exam in the Nihon-ga section also involved flower drawing.  Afterwards, to earn a living, I spent nine years working in a preparatory school, where I taught the students to draw flowers.  Once every two days, I would buy flowers for my lesson and make compositions for the students to work on.  At the beginning, to be frank, I didn’t like flowers, but as I continued teaching in the school, my feelings changed: their smell, their shape – it all made me feel almost physically sick, and at the same time I found them very 'cute'.  Each one seemed to have its own feelings, its own personality”  (Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Takashi Murakami, Paris, 2002, p. 84).   The dozens of googly-eyes in Flower Ball (3-D) seem to stare out at the viewer from a happy, yet extremely crowded frame.  Murakami continues “...I really wanted to convey this impression of unease, of the threatening aspect of an approaching crowd...” (ibid p. 85)  By using his reoccurring motif of eyes, the ever present gaze coming out of the painting does at once feel slightly unnerving but also somewhat joyful.

Murakami began using flowers as a core, central motif in 1995.  By 2002, when Flower Ball (3-D) was executed, the paintings had achieved an aesthetic jolt.  Personalized flower faces stare out at the viewer in a barrage of color and form. The use of a flattened image, called “superflat” by Murakami and critics alike, harkens back to an Eastern aesthetic as well.   Instead of using the Western technique of having one focal point, Murakami instead uses the traditional Eastern method of a multiplicity of points of entrance.  The viewer can enter the canvas from any angle.  This is not to say that the painting appears flat though, just because the flowers are painted in an Eastern influenced “superflat” technique.  By executing the center, larger flowers with a stronger, bolder outline, the canvas appears to achieve volume.  The flowers get smaller and stretched out as they reach the edge, and the outlines become lighter.  The very flat canvas suddenly appears to become convex.  Murakami’s use of bold outlines is a direct outcome of Japanese anime influences and the silver background also alludes to ancient Japanese screen paintings, which were often painted upon metallic backgrounds. 

Although heavily influenced by old Eastern traditions, Murakami was also profoundly influenced by more modern art masters, most notably Andy Warhol.  Just as Warhol created a ‘Factory’ from which most of his works were created, so too did Murakami.  The Hiripon Factory, later to be named the Kaikai Kiki Corporation, employs a multitude of assistants who specialize in color mixing, painting, and computer drawing, among other things.   A notable similarity between the artists, which can be seen in Flower Ball (3-D), is the common use of the flower motif.  Although Murakami’s is a repeated motif which results in unique paintings differing in imagery and Warhol’s is the direct repetition of a single image, they are both coming from essentially the same thought patterns.    And though Warhol used a source image of a flower from a mass produced advertisement, and Murakami used his own drawing, they both achieve the same end product – paintings which appeal to all and succeed in merging high and low art in ways contemporary to each of their own individual eras.