![Takashi Murakami and Hans Ulrich Obrist](https://gagosian.com/media/images/quarterly/interview-takashi-murakami-conversation-hans-ulrich-obrist/IVzoTvfiG2UJ_300x300.jpg)
In Conversation
Takashi Murakami and Hans Ulrich Obrist
Hans Ulrich Obrist interviews the artist on the occasion of his 2012 exhibition Takashi Murakami: Flowers & Skulls at Gagosian, Hong Kong.
What is Art?
For those of us born in Asia, it remains an ever-important question. The reason is that what we today define as Art represents the path followed by Western art history, and yet here in the East, we have our own history. To survive as artists, we must learn to resolve the collision of these two cultures.
My own personal position is drawn from how well I can arrange the unique flowers of Asia, moreover the ever strange blossoms that have bloomed in the madness of the defeated culture of postwar Japan, into work that will live within the confines of Western art history.
—Takashi Murakami
This exhibition, Takashi Murakami’s first in Hong Kong, explores one of the central dichotomies of his art—between joy and terror, his optimistic magnanimity as an artist and his pessimistic perspective on postwar Japan. Here, this dichotomy is symbolized by the stark contrast of bright smiling flowers and disturbing, menacing representations of skulls. Whether depicted as single iconic “portraits” or in complex clusters of virtuoso composition and paintwork that combine painstaking traditional artisanal techniques with the pop and fizz of manga, the flower and the skull stand as eternal motifs in the history of art and popular culture. Both oppositional and parallel, they are reminders of the fragile vibrancy of life and the inexorable passing of time.
A lightning rod between different cultural valencies (high/low, ancient/modern, oriental/occidental), Murakami has stated that the artist is someone who understands the borders between worlds and who makes an effort to know them. With his distinctive “Superflat” style and ethos, which employs highly refined classical Japanese painting techniques to depict a super-charged mix of Pop, anime, and otaku content within a flattened representational picture-plane, he moves freely within an ever-expanding field of aesthetic issues and cultural inspirations. Parallel to utopian and dystopian themes, he recollects and revitalizes narratives of transcendence and enlightenment, often involving outsider-savants. Mining religious and secular subjects favored by the so-called Japanese “eccentrics,” nonconformist artists of the Early Modern era commonly considered to be counterparts to the Western Romantic tradition, Murakami situates himself within their legacy of bold and lively individualism in a manner that is entirely his own and of his time.
Hans Ulrich Obrist interviews the artist on the occasion of his 2012 exhibition Takashi Murakami: Flowers & Skulls at Gagosian, Hong Kong.
Bridging the digital and the physical realms, the three-part presentation of paintings and sculptures that make up Takashi Murakami: An Arrow through History at Gagosian, New York, builds on the ongoing collaboration between the artist and RTFKT Studios. Here, Murakami and the RTFKT team explain the collaborative process, the necessity of cognitive revolution, the metaverse, and the future of art to the Quarterly’s Wyatt Allgeier.
The Summer 2022 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, with two different covers—featuring Takashi Murakami’s 108 Bonnō MURAKAMI.FLOWERS (2022) and Andreas Gursky’s V & R II (2022).
Takashi Murakami writes about his commitment to the work of Japanese ceramic artists associated with the seikatsu kōgei, or lifestyle crafts, movement.
In a conversation recorded at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Takashi Murakami describes the process behind three major large-scale paintings, including Qinghua (2019), inspired by the motifs painted on a Chinese Yuan Dynasty porcelain vase.
Join us for an exclusive look at the installation and opening reception of Murakami & Abloh: “AMERICA TOO”.
Following their artistic collaboration in London, Takashi Murakami and Virgil Abloh, the recently appointed Louis Vuitton menswear designer, spoke with Derek Blasberg about how they met, their admiration for each other, and the power of collaboration to educate and impassion new audiences.
From 2009 to 2011 the eminent art historian Nobuo Tsuji and Takashi Murakami engaged in a reimagined e-awase (painting contest). In this twenty-one-round contest, newly published in Battle Royale! Japanese Art History, Tsuji selects historical works and Murakami responds creatively. Round 6 centers on the Edo Eccentric painter Soga Shōhaku and his monumental Dragon and Clouds (1763).
The Spring 2018 Gagosian Quarterly with a cover by Ed Ruscha is now available for order.