Takashi Murakami

This work is number 1 out of an edition of 5, executed in 2002

Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris
Private Collection, Europe

France, Paris, Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain; London, Serpentine Gallery, Kaikai Kiki: Takashi Murakami, 2002-
2003, p.26
Austria, Salzburg, Museum der Moderne Salzberg, The Japanese Experience: Inevitable, 2002, p.112

Occasional minor paint loss on the cup of the mushroom. Otherwise this work is generally in good condition.
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TAKASHI MURAKAMI

"They silent watch the world. They know all."
Takashi Murakami

Adding the Palace of Versailles to an impressive roster of prestigious venues at which he has held exhibitions, Takashi Murakami is at his professional and artistic pinnacle. A prolific theorist, a renowned curator, an innovative art fair director, a committed gallerist and most of all, a brilliant artist, Murakami shuttles between his various roles relentlessly, all for the sake of promoting his Kaikai Kiki brand of art into global acclaim. Resulting from his numerous successful entrepreneurial ventures in luxury goods as well as mass-produced objects, his sphere of influence has extended far beyond the confines of fine art into the realms of people's daily lives. Murakami's creations have become instantly recognizable worldwide. Loaded with significance not only to himself, his works have also managed to find a resonance with the postwar generation of Japanese people as well as with the worldwide audience.

Some belligerent, some charming, all mushrooms come together in a calculated supernova of psychedelia. Impossible not to like, Scarlet Heart (Lot 976) Often deemed in popular culture a cursor for fantasy, an element so central to the spirit of Japanese anime and manga, the mushroom fits seamlessly into Murakami's wondrous world of unrestrained hedonism and endless possibilities. this magical fungus is charged with a mutational, hallucinogenic potential. In accordance with the multitude of existing fungal species, Murakami's mushrooms assume all possible shapes and sizes, standing alone or accompanying Mr. DOB.

Beneath the initial impression of a delightful motif, however, lies a much graver allusion that permeates the artist's entire creative premise. "An atomic bomb, Fat Man, exploded over Nagasaki at 1:02 a.m. on 9 August 1945... That morning the B-29 bomber Bockscar had abandoned its initial target, Kokura, because of smoke cover caused by American bombing. Takashi Murakami's mother, who lived in that city, would say to him: 'Takashi, you are very lucky, If Kokura had not been cloudy, you wouldn't be here today.' "1 Leaving behind nothing but a traumatized nation and unapologetic mushroom clouds, Fat Man and Little Boy have plagued and will continue to haunt the Japanese nation for years to come. Conflating the cute with the grotesque, the artist decks the fanciful mushroom with jagged fangs from top to bottom—on the center of the cap, protruding from the top of the stem and then all over the stem itself. Such is a condition that characterizes the work of Murakami—such is a reflection of the postwar Japanese identity. Driven into an unassailable obsession with the kawaii because of inflicting and having been inflicted with extreme manifestations of violence, the national subconscious no longer distinguishes between the two opposing attributes.

Scarlet Heart also flaunts a succession of the artist's signature floating eyes, peeking out from every undulation of the cap, the surface of which is enhanced also by the intersecting, meandering veins that seem to drift freely about. These googly eyes, some half closed and some wide open, address the viewer. By using his reoccurring motif of eyes, the ever-present gaze coming out of Murakami's sculpture does at once feel slightly unnerving but also somewhat joyful, much like the inherent contradiction that characterizes their resident mushroom. Instead of using the Western technique of having one focal point, Murakami uses the traditional Eastern method of a multiplicity of points of entrance. The sculpture engages any onlooker from any angle. Unfettered yet still dynamic in its form, Scarlet Heart is immediately striking to the eye, yet the work retains interpretive depth that shall remain current and fascinating for years to come.

[1] Paul Schimmel, "Making Murakami" in © MURAKAMI (Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art, 2007) p. 52