Takashi Murakami Outline

Birthday: February 1,1963
Place of Birth: Tokyo, Japan
Art Movement: Contemporary Art/Pop Art
Mediums: Digital Media, Painting, Installation, Animation, Sculpture, and Drawing.
Personal Movement: Superflat (bridging the gap between High-Art and Low-Art)
Schooling: Tokyo National University of Fine Arts
Company: KaiKai and Kiki co., LLC.

Takashi Murakami originally studied 19th century traditional art in college, but after a couple years of study, he ended up wanting his art to reflect the culture of modern Japan. He created the superflat movement which made pop-art extremely accessible and "flattened" out the barriers between High and Low art. His work is seen as the opposite of famous Pop-Artist Andy Warhol. Instead of appropriating common goods and making them into high-art, he creates work that is a form of high-art and then sells them to a mass audience. He created KaiKai and Kiki Co, an art studio wherein he creates a majority of his work. He has offices in both New York and Japan. He is the head creator of all of his work, but has his employees finish his work. He created a fair in Japan called Gesai. where he invites young Japanese pop-artists to show their work. He does this to promote pop-art in Japan, because it is still currently shunned by the Japanese art community. One of his most famous collaborations was with Luis Vuitton, wherein he not only designed one of their most successful handbags, but also created a 5 minute commercial for the company, entitled 'Superflat Monogram.' Takashi Murakami devises a lot of his character's shapes from natural objects such as cacti and mushrooms. Another trade-mark in his work is his extensive use of eyes on characters. He is currently working on the film KaiKai and KiKi; an official release date has not been set. He recently finished collaborating with Kanye West, where he created his album cover for his latest CD as well as animated a music video for one of his singles. Although the video has yet to be released, it was leaked online and can be found on youtube.

Below is a clip from the BBC 'Japanorama.' It's quite possibly one of my favorite shows, so be sure to check it out!

Here is the link to Takashi Murakami's official site:

KaiKai and KiKi


-Jason