The dA-Zed guide to Takashi Murakami

Takashi Murakami is one of contemporary art’s most recognisable figures. Since emerging in the 1990s, the (mockingly) self-proclaimed ‘Japanese Andy Warhol’ has become an artistic superpower spanning fine art, merchandise, animation and fashion. Through his theory of ‘Superflat’ – which connects traditional Japanese aesthetics to postwar pop culture – he has developed a striking visual language and changed how we think about art and commerce in the 21st century.

From his early years studying nihonga (traditional Japanese painting) to running his Kaikai Kiki corporation and collaborating with the biggest names in fashion and music, Murakami has masterfully straddled high art and mass culture. He’s both celebrated and criticised for his commercial savvy, while his exploration of Japan’s postwar relationship with America through cute yet disturbing imagery continues to provoke debate about art and commerce.

As an exhition of new work, Japanese Art History à la Takashi Murakami, opens at London’s Gagosian gallery, we present a dA-Zed guide to the artist who helped define a key aesthetic of the era and built a creative empire in the process.

In the early years of the animation industry, while Disney focused on fairy tales, Japanese animation tackled deeper themes like nuclear apocalypse and existential alienation, which Murakami believes openly addresses Japan’s postwar trauma. Growing up in the 1970s with shows like Gundam and Galaxy Express 999 (to which his feature-length film Jellyfish Eyes is a tribute), Murakami originally dreamed of becoming an animator before turning to fine art at age 26. His ‘Superflat’ style draws directly from anime’s aesthetic language with its bold colors and clean lines, transforming them into works that function in both galleries and popular culture. Even now, he continues to embrace animation, working on projects like his 15-episode magical girl series Six Hearts Princess.

Murakami’s 2002 Louis Vuitton partnership – the iconic rainbow monogram bags – marked a turning point in art-fashion crossovers, spawning countless knockoffs. Working with everyone from Kanye West to Billie Eilish, Murakami has turned his studio Kaikai Kiki into something closer to a fashion house than a traditional art practice, with seasonal collections and product lines that deliberately blur the line between art object and consumer product.

The kawaii aesthetic in Murakami’s work operates as a cultural commodity, a critique, and a mask for darker intentions. His cute characters can harbour violent or sexual elements, like the infamous “My Lonesome Cowboy” sculpture (1998) – made during his so-called ‘bodily fluids phase’.

His signature smiling flowers and characters might seem sweet at a glance, but there’s always something unsettling lurking beneath the surface. When his character Mr. DOB morphs from cute mascot into a fanged monster, or when his anime-inspired figures display an uncanny sexuality, Murakami is playing with the Japanese ability to flip between kawaii and kowai (scary) – a reflection of the culture’s repressed social psychology. Murakami’s work has helped develop kawaii into a visual language that can express everything from joy to trauma, often simultaneously.

Mr DOB, created in 1993 by Murakami, blends elements from Disney and Japanese manga, evolving from a cute mascot to a complex figure with many mutations, reflecting both Murakami’s artistic journey and Japan’s cultural shifts. The character’s name, derived from the nonsensical phrase “dobojite dobojite” (“why? why?”), embodies his role as the artist’s questioning alter ego and a metaphor for the Japanese populace. Through DOB, Murakami depicts how Japanese culture oscillates between adorable and ominous, maintaining a polished exterior throughout its transformations.

Murakami’s ‘Superflat’ theory connects Japan’s early modern Edo period (1603-1867) to contemporary anime and manga, drawing inspiration from the era’s ‘eccentric’ artists who blended high art with popular culture through non-human representations and a flattened visual perspective. He began to revisit his roots through traditional Japanese motifs after the 2011 earthquake. By integrating the flat perspectives and decorative styles of ukiyo-e prints into his work, Murakami positions contemporary Japanese pop culture as a continuation of a centuries-old artistic tradition, highlighting its resilience against Westernisation.

Murakami’s flowers, omnipresent on everything from paintings to Louis Vuitton bags, smile with a deceptive simplicity which conceals a deeper emotional complexity and their dual nature of repulsion and endearment. Embedded in works featuring mushroom clouds and skulls, the flowers’ cheerful grins contrast with darker undertones, while at the same time drawing on an age-old Eastern and Western artistic motif.

For Murakami, gallerists play a crucial role that extends far beyond dealing art. His first significant relationship with a gallerist was with Hudson from Feature Inc, who enlightened him on the potential functions of galleries as not simply venues for selling art but are vital in nurturing careers, supporting artistic development, and helping build enduring legacies.

Leading galleries like Gagosian and Perrotin represent him, but he also operates his own, Kaikai Kiki, which focuses on promoting emerging Japanese artists. His experiences with major galleries have shaped his approach to mentoring younger artists, creating a conduit between Japan’s art scene and the broader international market. At art fairs, Murakami is actively involved both in exhibiting work and scouting for new talent, opening up more global opportunities for Asian artists.

Japan’s postwar relationship with America runs deep in Murakami’s work. His 2005 exhibition Little Boy (named after the Hiroshima bomb) explored how Japan processed trauma through pop culture.

“I love the fantasy world,” Murakami was quoted as saying on Artnet, “going through the iPhone is much more real because we can record it. That makes it much better than real life.”

The artist’s Instagram account features selfies with Pharrell Williams at Paris Fashion Week alongside studio shots of works in progress. With 2.6 million followers, his philosophy of art-as-accessory is pure spectacle. He’s both fascinated and troubled by social media’s impact on society, noting how platforms have made the world itself “superflat”.

Murakami’s relationship with his homeland is complicated. For years, the Japanese art establishment gave him the cold shoulder. This tension stems from his willingness to commodify Japanese culture for Western audiences, mixing sacred artistic traditions with commercial pop imagery.

Yet Murakami‘s work is profoundly rooted in Japanese identity – from his training in nihonga (traditional Japanese painting) to his exploration of post-war trauma through anime aesthetics. The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake marked a turning point in his practice, making him understand why Japan is polytheistic, why it worships nature, and how complete Westernisation is aessentially antithetical to these concepts.

Kaikai Kiki Corp does more than produce merch – it’s a full-blown art-industrial empire. Named after two characters who take their names from traditional Japanese terms for ‘bizarre’ and ‘delicate’, Kaikai Kiki manages artists, runs galleries, produces merchandise, and organises art fairs. Unlike the lively social scene at Warhol’s Factory, however, it operates as a structured corporation modelled on Japanese manga and anime studios.

His 2002 collaboration with Louis Vuitton rewrote the rules of luxury fashion. By plastering his smiling flowers and characters across monogram bags, Murakami erased the boundary between art and accessory once and for all. The 13-year partnership spawned a string of must-have items and allowed his work to be flipped by Hypebeasts as well as traditional collectors.

The moé aesthetic – characters so cute they evoke an emotional response – is at the heart of Murakami’s creative world. His studio works like a manga house, producing endless variations of these characters in interconnected narratives. This approach reflects Azuma Hiroki’s idea of otaku as “database animals”, consuming infinite variations of cute characters for that dopamine hit of moé without searching for any deeper narrative meaning, an early sign of today’s fragmented media habits.

Before the smiling flowers, Murakami spent his PhD at Tokyo University of the Arts studying traditional Japanese painting. The archaic style might seem worlds away from his pop art, but they gave him roots in Japanese art history and provided the theoretical basis for Superflat. While in graduate school, he links the “strange style of timing structure” of Japanese animation to the quirky expressionism in Edo art. After reading Nobuo Tsuji’s book on the “eccentricity” of six Edo artists, he was “surprised” to discover that all of the artists he liked “fell into this ‘lineage of eccentricity”.

In Japanese, otaku is similar to the English word “geek” or “nerd” and refers to obsessive young people who are obsessed with anime and manga to the point of becoming social outcasts. The term gained broader recognition in Japan after 1989 when a notorious crime by an otaku, Tsutomu Miyazaki, sparked intense media coverage and public debate about social alienation. Despite these negative connotations in Japan, Murakami deliberately studied otaku culture and production methods, seeing a creative force in their obsessive attention to detail and knowledge of media.

At one point, he tried to create a movement out of otaku aesthetics and pop art through the notion of “Poku” (a portmanteau of “pop” and “otaku”), but considered it a failure due to lack of acceptance from the otaku community.

Takashi Murakami’s cherished dog POM, who passed away in 2020, was a muse in his life and art. Born on the remote island of Yoron, Murakami first met POM as a newborn puppy in a small hotel, where he was captivated enough to bring her and three of her siblings back to Tokyo. POM featured prominently in Murakami’s sculptures and paintings, and had dedicated studio staff meticulously tracking her care on detailed charts.

As a conceptual artist, he no longer applies his hand to his own work. But every piece that leaves Murakami’s studio goes through intense scrutiny, from massive paintings to phone cases. Each colour is checked against standardised guides, and detailed production charts track every stage.

His shows have transformed the world’s most prestigious venues. The 2010 Palace of Versailles exhibition juxtaposed his anime sculptures with baroque masterpieces, while his © MURAKAMI retrospective (2007) traveled from MOCA Los Angeles to Brooklyn and Frankfurt. His work commanded New York’s public spaces through installations at Rockefeller Center (2003) and Grand Central Terminal (2001). Major shows at Hong Kong’s Tai Kwun Contemporary (2019) and The Broad in Los Angeles (2022) showcased his evolution from traditional art objects to augmented reality.

Murakami’s theory is a joint reference to the traditional flat appearance of Japanese visual art and to the Japanese tendency to flatten or disregard the boundaries between artistic genres. The term has become foundational in contemporary art discourse, inspiring a generation of Japanese artists to embrace their pop cultural heritage.

The theory connects centuries of Japanese visual culture through a single conceptual thread. The flat composition style links 12th-century Yamato-e painting to ukiyo-e prints and modern anime, revealing a distinctly Japanese way of seeing that has persisted despite Western influence. Murakami argues that Japan’s post-war trauma created a “flattened” society where serious themes are processed through seemingly superficial pop culture. This flattening extends to social hierarchies – art gallery pieces and merchandise hold equal cultural weight. The theory encapsulates Japan’s erasure of boundaries between production and consumption, original and copy, art and commerce. When Murakami collaborates with fashion brands or produces merchandise, it’s therefore an extension of his Superflat philosophy.

His hometown remains central to his work, especially the Akihabara district with its anime, manga, and gaming culture. The city’s blend of aestheticised tradition and cutting-edge pop culture mirrors his own artistic approach. He maintains major studios here alongside his global operations.

Before he was a global art star, Murakami was part of Tokyo’s alternative art scene. His early 1990s works like Polyrhythm and the controversial Randoseru Project were far more politically charged than his current output. His experience of New York’s underground scene in the early 1990s – poetry readings in small bookstores and shows at the Knitting Factory – would later inspire his creation of GEISAI as a platform for emerging artists. “That was a kind of education for young creators,” he recalls of the NYC scene, “I got many, many new information, and very fresh.” This commitment to nurturing underground talent continues through his company and initiatives.

The 2010 show that put his cartoonish sculptures in France’s most famous palace caused quite a stir. But for Murakami, placing his work in such a historically loaded space wasn’t so much about shock value as it was about challenging the aesthetic hierarchy between East and West – a move which has shaped his career.

Both Warhol and Murakami transformed their studios into factories producing art at an industrial scale. Both embraced commercial collaborations and celebrity culture while maintaining art world credibility. Both created iconic characters that work equally well on museum walls or merchandise, and reflected mass consumer culture back at itself.

Of course, Murakami encourages it by claiming, as Warhol would, that there is “no difference between them” but elsewhere dismisses the comparison as “easy”. He owns only two works by the American Pop artist: “One is a sketch, a drawing of a penis. A Warhol penis sketch.” He also stated in Interview that he is “very sad to be compared with Warhol and The Factory, because I have no drugs, you know. We have no drug culture in Japan! Maybe it’s because our attitude toward labour is totally different.”

His early sculptures like “Hiropon” (1997) and “My Lonesome Cowboy” (1998) shocked audiences with their explicit hentai anime-inspired forms, exploring how otaku invest intense libidinal energy, and with it their hopes, fears, and dreams, into their seemingly simple drawings – a tension between surface and meaning that runs throughout his practice.

Few artists capture their moment like Murakami. His work has anticipated major cultural shifts, from his early exploration of otaku subculture to establishing the blueprint for art-fashion partnerships, and recently moved into the NFT space.

Takashi Murakami’s Japanese Art History à la Takashi Murakami is running at London’s Gagosian gallery from 10 December 2024, to 8 March 2025.