It’s Kyoto, but not as you know it. Forget cherry blossom and golden temples: study one of Takashi Murakami’s vast new paintings and you’ll notice shimmering clouds laid over the embossed outlines of cartoon skulls. It’s a reference, he says, to the city’s ancient Toribeno burial ground – and a key motif for the artist in his evocation of Japan’s postwar ghosts.
“I really wanted to depict a version of Kyoto that is not beautiful or pleasing to tourists,” says Murakami via a translator from his vast studio-cum-factory complex outside Tokyo. “I wanted to show that Kyoto’s arts and culture were nurtured within the context of really gruesome historical and political conflicts.”
Why did the 62-year-old want to explore his country’s brutal history? Part of the reason lies in his most recent obsession: the 10-part TV series Shōgun. The rapturously received tale of warring factions and European meddling in 17th-century feudal Japan was a major influence for Japanese Art History à la Takashi Murakami, his new show at London’s Gagosian gallery.
“[Shōgun was] done from a viewpoint that was very refreshing for the Japanese,” says Murakami. “For example, with the hara-kiri scenes, they really connected with the political and spiritual motivations. The fact they all have their own poem before they kill themselves – a contemporary Japanese director would not put that in. So I realized there are these old themes and stories that can be approached from a really fresh angle.”
A detail from Rakuchū-Rakugai-zu Byōbu: Iwasa Matabei RIP, 2023–24 by Takashi Murakami. Photograph: © 2023-2024 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co, Ltd. All Rights Reserved
Murakami has been trying to find fresh angles on old themes for the last three decades. Born in Tokyo in 1962, he switched from studying animation to classical Japanese painting while at Tokyo University of the Arts, before a fellowship in 1994 led him to MoMA PS1’s year-long international studio program. While in New York, Murakami marveled at the monumentalism of Anselm Kiefer and the sleek simulacrums of Jeff Koons. Seeking to adopt the rules of the western art market, he launched his own pioneering investigation of Japanese art history.
With his Superflat manifesto, published in 2000, Murakami denounced hierarchical constructs of “high” and “low” art as a western import, steamrolling conceptual barriers between revered historical masterpieces and contemporary anime by celebrating their shared aesthetic genealogy.
It brought the artist staggering global success. His cover art for Kanye West’s 2007 album, Graduation, sparked a series of musical collaborations that include Drake, A$AP Rocky and, more recently, Billie Eilish and the late rapper Juice Wrld. Murakami’s mastery of branding obliterated the distinction between fine art and consumer goods, while his embrace of new technologies – not to mention his wacky taste in headgear – ensured continued popularity among younger, online audiences.
In 2002, his pictures first covered Louis Vuitton handbags in a wildly successful collaboration with the French luxury brand that has just been extended – he also works with Supreme, Uniqlo and Crocs. And yet, as one of Japan’s most recognized contemporary artists, Murakami receives most attention abroad. His major solo exhibition at Kyoto’s Kyocera Museum of Art earlier this year was his first in Japan for nearly a decade.
Many of the works at Gagosian have traveled directly from Kyocera, a show in which Murakami provided his own take on some of Japan’s most cherished Edo masterpieces. Chief among them is a designated national treasure: Rakuchū-Rakugai-zu Byōbu (Scenes In and Around Kyoto, c1615), an exquisitely detailed aerial view of everyday life in newly urbanized Kyoto, originally painted across two, six-panel folding screens by 17th-century painter, Iwasa Matabei.
Murakami with his artwork, Gion Sairei-zu Takashi Murakami Ver, at the Gagosian gallery in London. Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images
Murakami’s ambitious response appears to be a mere replica at first, but on closer inspection several of Murakami’s relentlessly serialized zany mascots distinguish it from the original, with the most significant alteration seen in the gold-leaf mist that drifts across the diptych, framing individual scenes as miniature vignettes. Murakami rarely operates in half measures, and this work stretches over 13 meters, almost four times the size of Matabei’s original. It’s here that you’ll find the aforementioned skulls that remind us of Kyoto’s less beautiful past.
This capacity to internalize trauma is a key part of Japan’s otaku subculture. Translated as “your home”, otaku refers to obsessive homebody fans of anime, manga and video games in which a paradoxical proliferation of cuteness (kawaii) and apocalypse embody the simultaneous need to escape and confront postwar trauma. Considered indigenous to Japan, otaku nonetheless has its origins in American cultural imperialism during their occupation of the country.
Crucially for Murakami – a once aspiring animator who remains an avid collector of the genre – otaku’s two-dimensional planar perspective provides a link to the Edo painters. Using his recurring alter ego Mr DOB, a chimerical fusion of Sonic the Hedgehog and manga character Doraemon, Murakami inserts otaku alongside its aesthetic forebear, flattening three centuries of Japanese art into a single plane (hence the name Superflat).
Much of Murakami’s thinking here stems from the influence of renowned Japanese art historian and Edo expert Nobuo Tsuji, who he refers to as “sensei”. With his seminal 1970 book, Lineage of Eccentrics: Matabei to Kuniyoshi, Tsuji was first to expound a shared lineage connecting Edo painters with contemporary animators. Between 2009 and 2011, Tsuji and Murakami honored the aristocratic Japanese pastime of e-awase (painting contest), with Tsuji challenging Murakami with a historical Japanese work for him to respond to.
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En Gagosian, Murakami imita ese llamado y respuesta con sus interpretaciones de Wind God y Thunder God (ambos 2023/24), motivos atemporales previamente pintados en biombos por miembros canonizados de la escuela Rinpa del siglo XVII de Japón: Tawaraya SÅtatsu, Ogata KÅrin y Sakai HÅitsu.
“Cuando el Wind God y el Thunder God fueron pintados, durante el período de los estados en guerra de Japón, el modo artístico chino de cuerpos y músculos exagerados acababa de llegar a Japón,” dice Murakami. “Al pintar esto ahora, tuve que pensar en las tendencias estéticas actuales y pensé en los yuru-kyara, las mascotas lindas que son ubicuas en Japón, porque es un aspecto muy peculiar de la cultura japonesa adorar y apreciar a esos personajes.”
Un detalle de RakuchÅ«-Rakugai-zu ByÅbu: Iwasa Matabei RIP, 2023–24 de Takashi Murakami. Fotografía: © 2023-2024 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. Todos los derechos reservados/© 2023-2024 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co, Ltd. Todos los derechos reservados
Reconociendo los efectos infantilizantes de la cultura kawaii y la sumisión de Japón a Estados Unidos después de la guerra, las benignas y bastante débiles iteraciones de cada deidad de Murakami están muy lejos de sus antecesores musculosos. Sin embargo, en su uso del oro, que abunda en toda la exposición, la obra ofrece un firme guiño a la tradición Rinpa. “Cuando usas pan de oro en la superficie de la pintura, de alguna manera cierra el espacio pictórico,” dice Murakami. “Cuando representas personajes en ese fondo, destacan, así que el equilibrio es realmente difícil de lograr. Los pintores Rinpa siempre estaban pensando en esa relación entre el fondo de pan de oro y el personaje.”
En los ojos de Murakami, la magia de estas técnicas compositivas compresivas ha sobrevivido a través del trabajo de legendarios animadores japoneses como Yoshinori Kanada, Katsuhiro Otomo y Hayao Miyazaki. No solo emulan los estilos excéntricos y no convencionales de la escuela Rinpa y otros pintores de Edo, su tendencia a distorsiones juguetonas y expresionistas de formas humanas y animales refleja una sensibilidad distintivamente japonesa, evidente incluso en los rollos de imágenes ilustradas del siglo XII Heian. Para Murakami, que nunca se consideró un dibujante hábil a pesar de obtener un doctorado en pintura clásica japonesa Nihonga, estos disidentes irreverentes son acogidos como almas gemelas.
“He estado pensando en cómo los artistas Rinpa tenían sus propios libros de texto y pautas en términos de cómo pintar estas obras, que estudiarían y aprenderían,” dice. “Pero aún así, cada artista tenía sus propias rarezas y características que los distinguían, y así es como realmente eran entendidos y respetados.”
Han pasado seis años desde la última exposición de Murakami en Gagosian London, una empresa conjunta con Virgil Abloh, el ex director artístico de la moda masculina de Louis Vuitton, y un compañero pionero de espíritu libre que falleció en 2021. Entrevisté a Abloh en el momento de la exposición y él describió a su colaborador como “la única persona en el mundo que trabaja más duro que yo”. A los 62 años, ¿está pensando el artista en frenar? “Tal vez ya lo esté haciendo,” dice. “Estoy trabajando en más proyectos, así que hay un número creciente de obras en marcha. Pero en realidad, estoy durmiendo mejor que nunca.”