Takashi Murakami's works include Flowerball Flowerball, Sunflower, Mr DOB, and Hiropon.
Takashi Murakami (b. 1963) is one of the most thoughtful and thought-provoking Japanese artists of the 1990s. His work includes cartoon drawings, quasi-minimalist sculptures, giant inflatable balloons, performance events, factory-made watches, T-shirts, and other products, many of which bear his iconic character, Mr. DOB.
Born in Tokyo in 1963, Takashi Murakami received his B.F.A., M.F.A. and Ph.D. from Tokyo National University of the Arts. He recently had a solo exhibition at the Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York (2003).
Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris (2002); Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (2001); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2001); and Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris (2001).
Early life
Born in 1962 in Tokyo. In 1993, he received a doctorate from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Tokyo University of the Arts. After eleven years of traditional Japanese art education, he left all that behind and began his own distinctive contemporary art creations.
Born in the post-war period and raised in downtown Tokyo, where the economy took off and supplies were plentiful, this artist was heavily influenced by Japanese animation and manga.
The works are graphic, appearing on the surface to be both dolls and model toys, combining cuteness, sexual fantasy, and extreme violence, with a strong cartoonish manga coloring, but actually alluding to Japanese cultural connotations. As works of art, they are difficult to separate from the commercial, modern and traditional, and accessible to all.
Whenever he held an exhibition, he was seen by rebellious kids in their early twenties and old men and women in their seventies, and no one stood in front of his work looking puzzled, but rather happy.