Born in 1962 in Tokyo, Japan, Takashi Murakami grew up in a family where art played an important role. Murakami wanted to be an artist. He was particularly interested in Japanese animation and comics, and wanted to improve his drawing skills by studying at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. He earned his bachelor of fine arts degree in 1986 and continued his studies to earn a master's degree in 1988 and a PhD in 1993. While searching for his own style during the early 1990s he began to teach drawing, working in the traditional style he had studied at the university. Meanwhile he became increasingly drawn to the world of manga and anime, and was fascinated by the concept of "kawaii", a Japanese term that translates roughly to "cuteness."
In 1996 he founded the Hiropan factory in Tokyo, a studio with assistants to produce his work, which later evolved into Kaikai Kiki Co., his large-scale art production and art management corporation. In addition to the production and marketing of his work, Kaikai Kiki Co. functions as a supportive environment for the fostering of young Japanese artists. Today he employs over 100 people in the US and Japan.
Takashi Murakami is popularly known as the next Andy Warhol. Like the American pop art icon, he fuses high and low, He merges fine art with popular Japanese anime films and manga cartoons. His works are often decorated with smiley-faced flowers. Others of his recurring characters are DOB and Mr. Pointy and several more candy-colored cartoon-like characters with large eyes and exaggerated body parts. Murakami seeks ways to incorporate popular trends into his works to create something of lasting value, as he explained in a 2001 article in Wired magazine: "I set out to investigate the secret of market survivability-the universality of characters such as Mickey Mouse, Sonic the Hedgehog, Doraemon, Miffy, and Hello Kitty." Murakami's goal is to create works that appeal to a broader audience than most fine art.
Murakami's methods produce paintings that have no depth or perspective; the images seem flat and two-dimensional. Murakami has dubbed this style "superflat," which is a tribute to the two-dimensional style of Japanese cartoons and a reference to high-tech devices as flat-screen televisions or computer monitors.
Murakami makes a clear brand, with his signature round glasses and wispy goatee. He is vigorously, ingeniously self-promotional. In the past few years, Murakami has swept across the US and Europe, receiving fawning media attention and exhibiting at big-name museums (among which the Louvre in Paris). In 2003 he teamed up with the fashion house Louis Vuitton to create brightly colored versions of the classic LV monogram on Vuitton handbags. They sold like hot cakes, generating millions of dollars. Some of Murakami's works are extremely high-priced creations intended for galleries or art collectors, but he also impertinently mass-produces merchandise, such as mugs, mousepads and T-shirts, featuring the characters he has created. Murakami states that art is "more about creating goods and selling them than about exhibitions."
You can follow Takashi Murakami on twitter: http://twitter.com/takashipom_en
Joke Vermeiren is co-creator of Artinthepicture.com, an art history site. You can find Takashi Murakami prints at Artinthepicture's webshop.
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