Takashi Murakami

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About the artwork

Drawing from traditional Japanese painting, sci-fi and anime, Takashi Murakami creates paintings, sculptures, and films populated by repeated motifs and mutating characters of his own creation. This striking work explores the dichotomy of joy and terror, through the contrast between the numerous beaming flowers and the menacing skulls that are interspersed throughout the painting. Both oppositional and parallel, these two symbols are reminders of the fragile vibrancy of life and the inexorable passage of time. This theme is further encapsulated in the word, ‘Death’, that spans across the canvas, with its humongous scale serving as a further reminder of the inevitable last stage of life.

About the artist

Takashi Murakami was born in 1962 in Tokyo and is a prolific contemporary Japanese artist of international renown. Working with fine art mediums (painting and sculpture) as well as conventional commercial mediums (fashion, merchandise, and animation), the artist is known for blurring the line between high and low art. He coined his style 'superflat', which describes the aesthetic characteristics of the Japanese artistic tradition and the nature of post-war Japanese culture and society. Murakami’s works have been exhibited all over the world, including prestigious institutions such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Fondation Cartier pour l'art Contemporain, Paris, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.