Takashi Murakami’s delirious collages of grinning flowers – their contours inspired by the art of anime and manga – have become a leitmotif of the Japanese artist’s work, adorning walls of galleries, Louis Vuitton handbags, and even the cover of Wallpaper* (evoked in the manner of a vintage video game, one of his flowers appeared on the limited-edition November 2023 Art Issue to celebrate the opening of an exhibition at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco).

So when it came to the creation of a new footwear line – which was launched in November 2024 at ComplexCon Las Vegas – it was unsurprising that Murakami would place this iconic motif front and centre, seeing a bold rendering of the artist’s classic flower adorn colourful, oversized sliders in soft EVA foam (the brand’s name, Ohana Hatake, translates from Japanese as ‘field of flowers’). According to Murakami, it is the ‘first-of-its-kind footwear brand led by an artist’, as well as marking his own debut fashion label, despite having created a slew of merch and collaborated with the likes of Uniqlo and Louis Vuitton.

Takashi Murakami’s Ohana Hatake arrives at Selfridges

From today, Ohana Hatake is available in a colourful pop-up at The Corner Shop Selfridges, an ephemeral space at the front of the London department store which has hosted recent residencies from the likes of Loewe, Celine and Jacquemus. Promising a full-scale immersion into the Murakami universe – expect boldly-hued displays and subsequent Instagram ubiquity – the store will be open from today (August 4 2025) until August 24 2025.

The pop-up follows a second launch event at the Hong Kong ComplexCon in November, which saw Murakami create a bucolic (faux) garden at the streetwear convention, complete with sprouting grass, flowers and cherry trees in the bloom of sakura blossom. He has also revealed the counterpart to the ‘Ohana Full-Bloom’ slider, another slip-on style in EVA foam which is inspired by the Japanese house slipper (simpler in design, it nonetheless features an embossed flower motif and flower-adorned sole).

Meanwhile, a couple of days ago, a similar installation appeared at Hong Kong’s Pacific Place mall, where a blossom tree is crowned with a perpetually falling confetti of petals – the sort of fantastical world-building that Murakami has long proved adept at.

The Corner Shop, Selfridges. 400 Oxford St, London WIA 1AB, UK. Until August 24.

ohanahatake.com

Japanese artist Takashi Murakami sees the world in kaleidoscopic colour. His art showcases this, with vivid characters and his unique style which unites traditional Japanese art, while also weaving in the playful energy of anime, mango, otaku and kawaii. Now, The Cleveland Museum of Art presents an expanded version of Takashi Murakami’s ‘Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow’ filling the the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Exhibition Hall and Gallery with his paintings and sculptures.

Takashi Murakami 'Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow'

The exhibition was originally displayed at The Broad in Los Angeles in 2022. Now in Ohio, visitors can explore how – after shared historical events and trauma – art can address crisis, healing, outrage, and escapist fantasy. This is something that curator Ed Schad wanted to achieve, telling Wallpaper*, ‘Visitors will find a great survey of Takashi Murakami that they know and love – with his emphasis on popular culture, vibrant design, and exciting collaborations – but they will also find themselves tumbling back in time, into the artistic and historical precedents (whether found in Japan, China, the United States, or beyond) of what they are seeing.

I am especially excited about Murakami exhibiting early drawings and self-portraits which have rarely been shown, alongside new works made in the last couple of years that American audiences have not yet seen. Of great emphasis is Murakami's direct engagement with classical Japanese art and we have many loans that dialogue with Japanese artists like Ogata Kōrin, Kitaōji Rosanjin, and Itō Jakuchū. The most notable element is the Yumedono project, a re-creation of the Dream Hall at Hōryū Temple in Nara, Japan, which was a collaboration with the team of the FX series Shogun. The Yumedono is a staggering achievement and easily one of the most ambitious projects in the recent memory of contemporary art.’

Born and raised in the United States, Schad wanted to immerse himself in Japanese culture in order to bring the exhibition to life. ‘For someone who grew up in the United States, the learning curve of Japanese history is severe,’ shared Schad. ‘However, Murakami has been an excellent guide. I have found myself in video game shops in Tokyo, temples in Nara, and in Shogun castles in Kyoto, all to try to unify and interpret Murakami's work. It has been a rich and satisfying experience, but it has also been a steep climb.’

In addition to the re-creation of the Yumedono from Nara’s Horyuji Temple, the exhibition also features works some of which are more than 30 feet wide. Murakami’s work, albeit colourful and vibrant, also nods to political and environmental issues, along with generational trauma. Schad explains, ‘Murakami looks to the energies that different eras release after massive upheavals. In this exhibition, three will be directly legible: the end of World War II, the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster, and the COVID 19 pandemic. Each of these periods resulted in different cultural reactions.'

Tickets to see 'Takashi Murakami: Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow' are available to book here. On show at The Cleveland Museum of Art from 25 May until 7 September 2025

It's not exactly been a slow start to the year for our editors. The second week of January marks the launch of the annual Wallpaper* Design Awards, celebrating the best of the best across design, interiors, fashion, beauty, travel, architecture, art and watches. After months of prep, it's finally here, which has allowed us to breathe a collective sigh of relief.

In snatched moments of downtime, here's how the editors have been spending the first days of January.

A colourful pop-up

'Being a fashion-obsessed teenager in the early 2000s, Marc Jacobs’ blockbuster tenure at Louis Vuitton was my lodestar, and in my mind always epitomised by two collaborations: the Speedy bag scrawled with the signature of 1980s designer Stephen Sprouse, and Takashi Murakami’s multi-coloured take on the house monogram (the white canvas version was a perennial favourite with the 2000s it-girl). The latter, which first appeared in Jacobs’ S/S 2003 show, is being revived in a new ‘re-edition’ series for 2025, seeing Murakami’s best-known collaborations with the label (which would span 2003-2015) available to purchase once again.

Launching this January, the highlight of my week was being immersed in the pop-up the house has opened on London’s Brewer Street – a Murakami-filled cartoon wonderland inspired by Tokyo’s modular hotels, complete with fluffy flower cushions, a vending machine and a café filled with satisfyingly branded treats. It’s open until February 9.'

Louis Vuitton x Murakami pop-up. 39 Brewer Street, London, W1F 9UD.

Jack Moss, Fashion Features Editor

A Knightsbridge Italian

'I took the opportunity to visit the recently refurbished Sale e Pepe - a Knightsbridge restaurant that first opened its doors in 1974 and is a much loved institution on the London dining scene. I was expecting sexy 70’s glamour and old-school Italian dishes and I wasn’t disappointed. The classics are all there, perfectly made, generous, and delicious - (which is what I want from an Italian restaurant.) We tried the Beef Carpaccio, theatrically presented Salt-Baked Sea Bass, and a stand-out Pacheri Pasta with Vodka Tomato sauce. The difficulty was in deciding what to eat, as everything was a contender, so I will be returning to enjoy the rest of the menu.'

Melina Keays, Entertaining Director

A glass of guilt-free fizz

'For anyone attempting to live a little cleaner this month, may I recommend LA Brewery's sparkling English white rose: a non-alcoholic blend of Assam and kombucha. It's wonderfully refreshing and good for your gut. Give it a pop, pour in a flute and feel the January blues lift a little.'

Charlotte Gunn, Director of Digital Content

Illustrations of the underground

'This week, I wandered into the prefab sprawl of Boxpark to see Ben Jomo’s illustrations. His work dives into underground fashion, queer nightlife, and the characters who light up those worlds. Freedom of expression pulses through every line—faces stretch, colours clash, and you can almost hear the thrum of a dance floor in his digital strokes. It’s 2025, and we’re still trudging through pop-ups, but Jomo keeps it dazzling.'

Gabriel Annouka, Senior Designer

A pawfect day out

'The arrival of the New Year, following much at-home downtime ensconced in an oodie (gifted to me by my children for winter WFH days, and not deliberately to upset the Wallpaper* fashion desk), spurred plans for 2025 outings. Have I booked a ski trip to a chic Alpine retreat? Or cultural outings to the latest London art exhibitions? Sadly no, my first booking of the year is a debut trip to Crufts in March (only partly for the kids), for which I am getting in the mood by reading Ali Morris’ article on the latest in architecture for dogs, the subject of a Milan exhibition curated by Muji artistic director Kenya Hara.'

Bridget Downing, Executive Editor

The return of a cult series

'I have been waiting for season 2 of Severance with bated breath and it's finally arrived on Apple TV+! I have started watching this week - for its mind-bending plot, powerful minimalist aesthetic, superb acting and of course, its location, Bell Works. The site is the contemporary reimagining of the 1960s former Bell Labs building in Holmdel, NJ, which includes an Eero Saarinen structure and has since been redeveloped into a workspace and housing campus.'

Ellie Stathaki, Architecture & Environment Director

A director deep dive

Since I haven’t had the chance to watch Luca Guadagnino’s Queer just yet, I decided to delve into his archives to satisfy my craving. While browsing, I stumbled upon his early feature, The Protagonists (1999) on Mubi. The surreal faux-documentary stars Tilda Swinton and follows an Italian film crew in London reconstructing a real-life murder case that took place there a few years before. Riotous and disturbing, yet highly stylised, The Protagonists is an interesting glimpse into Guadagnino’s early creativity and how his signature style has grown since his directorial debut.

Sofia de la Cruz, Travel Editor

‘A monumental marriage between art and business,’ is how the designer Marc Jacobs, then the creative director of Louis Vuitton’s womenswear line, would describe the collaboration between the behemoth of Parisian luxury and Japanese artist Takashi Murakami. Debuting as part of Jacobs’ S/S 2003 collection for the house, Murakami’s multi-coloured reimagining of the Louis Vuitton monogrammed handbag – most memorably on white canvas – would become the it-bag for the it-girls du jour (and has had something of a renaissance in recent years on resale sites due to fashion’s fascination with all things 2000s).

A slew of Murakami collabs would follow – his playful cherry and flower motifs would appear across the house’s leather goods throughout the 2000s – running until 2015, a year after Jacobs exited the label, replaced by current artistic director Nicolas Ghesquière. The influence of the partnership was immense: not only did it rack up hundreds of thousands of handbag sales for Louis Vuitton, it would also spawn the phenomenon of the art-fashion collaboration, one which shows no signs of abating today (at Louis Vuitton alone, since 2003 the house has collaborated with Richard Prince, Yayoi Kusama, Cindy Sherman, Marc Newson and Jeff Koons, among others).

Inside the Louis Vuitton x Murakami London-pop up

Late in December, Louis Vuitton announced that it would be reinvigorating its collaboration with Murakami with a ‘re-edition’ collection which will be revealed in chapters throughout 2025 (a splashy ad campaign, featuring house muse Zendaya, accompanied the news). Something of a greatest hits, ‘Chapter 1’ will celebrate the ‘Monogram Multicolore’ – Murakami’s original motif for the house – seeing numerous versions of the house’s ‘City Bag’, ‘Malle Wardrobe’ trunks, caps, silk carré scarves, belts and even skateboards adorned in the print, which is made up of 33 different colours. Meanwhile the ‘Supersoft Panda’, a typically Murakami-esque rendering of the animal, appears on necklaces and bag charms. ‘Chapter 2’ will launch in March 2025 with Murakami’s ‘Cherry Blossom’ pattern appearing across a similarly extensive product list.

To celebrate the launch, Louis Vuitton has inaugurated a number of colourful pop-ups in world cities; in London, a new two-storey space opens today (9 January 2025) on Brewer Street Soho. It promises a colourful immersion into the Louis Vuitton x Murakami universe, from fluffy flower cushions and tables adorned with ‘Monogram Multicolore’, to futuristic, chamber-like ‘modules’ filled with pieces from the collection (a note should also given to the staff uniform, a kind of space-age kimono pyjama with an LV pin at the chest). Archival pieces are also on display in the store, which Louis Vuitton says takes design cues from traditional modular Tokyo hotels.

Though arguably the Soho space’s biggest draw is the one-of-a-kind Louis Vuitton x Murakami café on the upper floor, housed in a ‘dedicated sphere module’, where cakes, pastries and drinks will be served from Murakami-branded cups or napkins (it will be the only such café in Europe). Meanwhile a vending machine, which can be played after shoppers purchase something from the collection and receive a special token, sees various Louis Vuitton x Murakami novelties, from stickers to trading cards, encased in plastic spheres ready to be won by the already-queueing aficionados.

Louis Vuitton x Murakami pop-up is open now at 39 Brewer Street, London, W1F 9UD. Until 9 February 2025.

louisvuitton.com

Hublot’s ‘Art of Fusion’ tagline is used to inform and explain almost everything the watch brand does, from researching new materials and designing new watches right through to marketing. According to Hublot’s globe-trotting CEO, Riccardo Guadalupe: ‘It’s what makes us different from any traditional Swiss watch brand and, as a young brand, we need to be able to come out with unique and different products. Fusion, how we connect innovation and tradition is how we do that.’

Sometimes that means developing new ways to machine sapphire, sometimes it’s new movements and sometimes it’s genius marketing moves like the Hublot referee boards flashed up to audiences of hundreds of millions at the FIFA World Cup final. The collaboration with Takashi Murakami, however, is next level.

Murakami is the master of blurred boundaries and shattered limits from his early mixing up of Manga with more traditional techniques through the development of his ‘Superflat’ theory (an idea that covers both the 2D aspect of Japanese art and factory-produced art that ranges from phone rings and stickers to ‘Monogramouflage’ bags for Louis Vuitton via Crocs). He’s created a studio/gallery set-up, Kaikai Kiki, that handles production in the way that Science does for Damien Hirst, but also handles licensing, events and represents other artists as well. And tucked away in Murakami’s back catalogue are watch collaborations with Casio and the independent Japanese maker, Hajime Asaoka (founder of Kurono, whose timepieces feature among our pick of minimalist watches).

Hublot MP-15 Takashi Murakami Tourbillon Sapphire

Speaking at the launch of his latest, and most spectacular, Hublot watch collaboration (previous joint projects include 2023’s one-off Hublot MP-15 Takashi Murakami Tourbillon Only Watch, and a watch and NFT collaboration, among others), Murakami recounted how the partnership with Hublot came about and what he aimed to achieve. ‘The first time [I was asked], I said no, because I didn’t want to collaborate and have to produce a kind of “cover” design. That would have been very boring to me. So when Miwa [Sakai, Hublot president Asia Pacific Region] asked me, she was able to guarantee that I was free to do whatever I wanted. I came to the Hublot factory in January 2019; it was just so impressive, the quality, the potential… I love visiting factories! When I first started working with Louis Vuitton, I was invited to the factory and it’s such an incredible environment, I love the smell, the employees, the system. I wanted to express how the world is not 4D but a multiverse. I’m a physics geek – I see time as not linear but multifaceted.’

Murakami also revealed that the new Hublot MP-15 Takashi Murakami Tourbillon Sapphire is the realisation of the first idea he had for the project but is only released now because its technical demands took so long to meet. One area where Hublot is the undoubted leader in the industry is in machining sapphire, a material that’s notoriously difficult to work with, and figuring out how to render the curves of the petals, each being incredibly deep. Alongside that work, Hublot had to develop an entirely new movement with a central tourbillon that sits above the hour and minute hands.

As Murakami intended, the watch works on multiple levels, as an expression of space-time, of craft ingenuity, and of sculpture. Pure fusion.

hublot.com

For the better part of the last three decades, Takashi Murakami has dominated popular culture with his bounty of recognisable symbols. From his now-ubiquitous Flowers to his equally endearing Mr DOB alter-ego, Murakami’s brightly coloured universe has expanded the reaches of art well beyond the canvas. Through his influence, Vans slip-on sneakers, Perrier bottles and T-shirts for Uniqlo, as well as music videos for Billie Eilish, cushions for the Museum of Modern Art and collectible timepieces for Hublot (both IRL and NFT), have all become veritable platforms for art. And while he has made his work available to as many people as possible, Murakami still continues to retain his standing at the pinnacle of the art world.

If it is possible to surpass this peak, Murakami is about to do it with ‘Takashi Murakami: Unfamiliar People – Swelling of Monsterized Human Ego’, a major exhibition that’s currently on view at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco until 12 February 2024. Showcasing more than 75 works, including more than a dozen that have never been seen before, the monumental presentation offers a unique view of where one of the world’s most prolific artists is currently, in both his life and career. 

‘This exhibition came to be by invitation of [the museum’s senior curator of Japanese art] Laura Allen, and in terms of the content, I have been running my own ideas on the rails she has laid out,’ shares Murakami. ‘Her theme has been to push my interests of the moment to the forefront.’ 

Rather than retread familiar ground with Murakami’s smiling and playful characters, Allen chose to focus the show on the artist’s use of monsters as a lens for examining human behaviour against the complex juncture of where we are today: a chaotic present and a virtually limitless digital future. 

‘The show focuses on works from the past decade,’ Allen says. ‘In recent years, Murakami’s work has been evolving at a rapid pace. He has changed his subject matter in reaction to large external events, such as the 2011 Tōhoku quake, the pandemic, changes in the digital world, and internal events, like the isolation and alienation of the pandemic years.’ 

By honing his use of monsters, which has percolated as a theme in the artist’s oeuvre over many years, the show facilitates a probing of Murakami’s darker side, which feels especially poignant against the range of intensities facing the world today. 

Discussions for the exhibition first began in 2018. While things ended up being derailed and delayed due to the global pandemic, what has ultimately emerged is an exciting new body of work that will surprise even the most fervent of Murakami fans.

Takashi Murakami on Unfamiliar People and monsterization

‘Because the exhibition was interrupted by the pandemic, a great deal of time passed between the conception of the exhibition and its completion. Laura repeatedly expressed that she wanted to see my latest works,’ Murakami says. ‘Before the pandemic, we had selected the most recent works at that time. Then, after the pandemic began, I produced the Unfamiliar People series, which expresses the horror of the moment when humans turn into monsters, and new NFT-related works in rapid succession, so eventually, almost the entire show came to consist of the latest works. This is how Unfamiliar People became the main visual of this exhibition.’

In Unfamiliar People, Murakami depicts misshapen, sci-fi-style characters that nod to the world of aliens disguised as people in John Carpenter’s 1988 film They Live, who revealed different and unexpected traits once their surface layers were peeled back.

'When I contemplated what the audience might expect and would like to see, based on this “Monsterized” theme, one thing I thought of was monsters that are not in human form,’ he says. ‘After the pandemic started, some people who used to live normal lives started to loudly voice strong opinions, or turned out to be vaccine conspiracy theorists, or started attacking others out of an astonishingly intense sense of fear. Some who seemed to be absolutely kind had abruptly changed, and
I felt that it was impossible to understand human beings just by looking at the surface.’ 

Allen observes: ‘Somehow, the pandemic unleashed a kind of creative rebirth for Takashi. Suddenly, around the fall of 2020, new types of monsters were springing to life – and we were able to capture this moment in the pandemic portraits featured in this show, such as Unfamiliar People, and in the works related to the moment when, as he said “his brain turned on” to the potential of virtual and digital art.’

The exhibition’s other namesake (the ‘Swelling of Monsterized Human Ego’) is equally timely and a jab at society’s increasing submersion in the digital realm and its obsession with social media – areas that Murakami, himself a prolific poster, continues to grapple with.

‘One of the recent themes for me in creating new artwork has been the formation of new types of ego and the loss of substance in communication caused by social media,’ Murakami explains. ‘In [Darren Aronofsky’s 2022 film] The Whale, the ways in which the main character and his daughter communicate through social media and Zoom seemed to illustrate the drastically different ways the generation that has had social networking since birth and my 61-year-old self communicate. I can’t completely comprehend how best to interact with and through social media, and am at times confused. In other words, I have a hard time understanding the distance of new relationships mediated by social media and it troubles me.’

Ironically, by contemplating the effects of rampant digital use in our daily lives, by contemplating the effects of rampant digital use in our daily lives, Murakami began pursuing a new visual arc – the incorporation of ukiyo-e motifs, a classical genre of Japanese art spanning the 17th to 19th centuries, into his work. Translated as ‘pictures of the floating world’, this style of painting is not only well-known due to its depictions of Japanese wealth, power and prosperity, it was also something Murakami has consciously avoided – that is, until now. 

An epic, 25m-long new work, Judgement Day showcases an unravelling composition of classical figures, monsters and beings in various states of being ‘monsterized’, which poetically dovetails with his signature Superflat style that draws from post-Second World War anime and manga aesthetics. ‘Laura and I had started to discuss the keyword “monsterized” for the show a few months before the opening, and I was exploring how to create a work that aligned with the keyword. Then, one day in early July, on the way back from my daughter’s ballet recital, the idea came to me and I made this work,’ says Murakami.

‘For a long time, I was very reluctant to use ukiyo-e motifs for my paintings. The reason was that I used to think it wouldn’t be such a good idea for me, as a Japanese, to use “Fujiyama Geisha” to make my debut overseas and gain recognition for it,’ he elaborates. ‘However, I have now been working in Europe and the United States for about 30 years, and I felt that it would actually be strange for me not to make any mention of ukiyo-e, which is the most well-known art form from Japan among people overseas.’

He continues, ‘I thought it might be good to explore and create [different] kinds of Japanese monsters in the context of ukiyo-e, which is very familiar for someone like myself, born and raised in Japan, as well as to the general audience, visually speaking. And so with this piece, I referenced it for the first time. I placed Taira no Kiyomori hi-no-yamai no zu [also known as ‘The fever of Taira no Kiyomori’], a work by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, an artist of the Meiji period (1868-1912), at the centre of my painting, and surrounded it with motifs from famous ukiyo-e paintings by Tōshūsai Sharaku, including the large heads. I tried to express the “monsterized” state of human beings in the painting.’

With solid colour fields created using his trademark squeegee work technique, which he says ‘express[es] a rougher and more dynamic use of colour’, Judgement Day feels akin to another momentous work, which Murakami created after the Great East Japan earthquake of 2011, The 500 Hundred Arhats, which measures a whopping 100m in length. Allen anticipates Judgement Day to be equally seminal. Completed in just under three months, it is a deep testament to Murakami’s artistic process and promises to be a late-career masterpiece.

‘Takashi is a force of nature, and so I’ve been swept into the whirlwind of his practice. Getting a behind-the-scenes view of his creative process, studio mechanics and techniques has been a privilege that we’ve tried to share in various parts of the exhibition,’ she says. ‘The scale of the paintings, the density of their imagery, the diversity of styles and techniques. These are all works that really need to be experienced in person.’

Murakami’s ruminations about Japanese art’s traditional past are also articulated through a series of works made in response to ancient and traditional ceramics, of which he is a fervent collector and connoisseur. Again, he has translated recognisable ceramic motifs, such as Qinghua carp, perch and lotus flowers, into painted form, while preserving the classical palette of painted blue and white porcelain. While seemingly unlikely, and certainly unexpected, Murakami’s connection to ceramics is deep-rooted and yet another throwback to an earlier stage in his career.

He reveals, ‘When I made my debut at the age of 29, Mr Akira Aoi, a collector who had works by Willem de Kooning and Picasso, took me to the Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka. At that time, he explained to me about the eroticism of ceramics, which I didn’t understand at all and took home with me as homework to think about. Mr Aoi has since passed away, more than ten years ago, and I had wanted to and tried to somehow reach his state of mind before that, purchasing and observing ceramics. Along the way, I truly fell in love with ceramics from the bottom of my heart, having developed its vocabulary and sense of history for myself. I am not sure if what I understand now is the same as what Mr Aoi was trying to tell me, but I think I now understand the eroticism of ceramics in my own way.’

‘Murakami’s evolution is not a straight line but recursive, circling back to older interests, and sampling and remixing again and again, as is his style,’ Allen concludes. ‘He always has his eye on “the changing flow of desires” in the world, and he’s constantly looking for new ways to express the bizarre or brutal [because] those desires affect who we are and how we experience the world. Doing all that, with a sense of humour, is a powerful way to make art that is accessible to a larger and younger audience.’

With the show rounded out by painted works recording Murakami’s creation of NFTs and Murakami-themed avatars for the Clone X NFT collection, ‘Unfamiliar People – Swelling of Monsterized Human Ego’ is a comprehensive snapshot of Murakami’s standing as one of the world’s most acclaimed contemporary artists.

When asked if he took any risks with this exhibition, he replies, ‘I didn’t take any risks. Because art is not about taking risks. However, I think the biggest risk was that I made the people at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco worry for a long time that I may not be able to produce the works in time for the exhibition. I think the risk has been hedged now that we have managed to present Judgement Day.

‘I believe that art and philosophy are things with tremendous power,’ he asserts. ‘When you come into contact with them, your brain shifts at once from your ordinary life to the unrealistic world of imagination, and at the moment of that shift, your sense of values change beyond the reality that is born out of your new life.’ 

‘Takashi Murakami: Unfamiliar People – Swelling of Monsterized Human Ego’ is on view at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco until 12 February 2024, asianart.org, @takashipom

This article appears in the November 2023 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Welcome to our November Art issue! Headlining are two cultural superstars – Takashi Murakami with a potent mix of pandemic-inspired creatures, eye-popping flowers, NFTs, avatars and 17th-century Japanese motifs for his latest show at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, and Ryan Murphy, the prolific film and TV producer, who takes us on a tour of his offices, which were inspired by the glamour and hedonism of American fashion designer Halston, as brought to life in the Netflix mini-series Halston, which Murphy executive produced.

Then on to more fantasy interiors with our vision of shared public spaces – including a dream canteen, an outdoor escape and the hotshot’s hideaway. We take a peek at three sculptural houses that highlight the tactile qualities of concrete. Located in Mexico, Canada and Belgium, they treat architecture as a volumetric exercise, sometimes appearing monolithic, while others take more elaborate, articulated forms.

We celebrate 20 years of the Frieze Art Fair with an exclusive interview with Eva Langret, director of Frieze London, and create our very own private view with an art-inspired fashion shoot at the David Zwirner Gallery, London, set against a backdrop of works by Brazilian artist Odoteres Ricardo de Ozias. Art’s most provocative duo Gilbert & George present their vibrant vision of the ‘Lady Dior’ bag, while Dutch designer Sabine Marcelis shows us her take on the iconic (and ironic) 1960s lava lamp. 

Finally, we visit the blockbuster Chanel exhibition at London’s V&A, which explores the six-decade-long career of the legendary French couturier. We were granted privileged access to the collection, and hand-picked six exquisite evening gowns from the 1930s, which we photographed as fashion as art, and which perfectly capture the timeless elegance of Chanel. I hope you enjoy the issue!

Sarah Douglas
Editor-in-Chief

The November 2023 issue of Wallpaper* is available in print from 5 October, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Bodrum Loft, among the Turkish resort’s increasingly luxurious hotel openings of recent years, has transformed into a sculpture park this summer in a collaboration with gallery Perrotin and Artsa Consultancy and Project. Running until September, the exhibition, ‘French Delights’, includes work from artists such as Takashi Murakami and Daniel Asrham, curated in the grounds of the Tabanlıoğlu Architects-designed hotel, which comprises 36 independent residences set into the hillside facing the meeting point of the Mediterranean and Aegean seas.

‘French Delights’ at Bodrum Loft

‘I am glad of this invitation and happy to show these sculptures in such a sublime context,’ says participating artist Iván Argote. ‘I like the relationship of these works to the sea – it generates a new poetic dialogue – as well as the relationship to the region, a place rich in history and archaeology.’ 

As the worlds of blue-chip art galleries and luxury lifestyles gravitate towards one another, projects such as this bring artworks to collectors in their daily lives. 

Selçan Atilgan, founder of Artsa consultancy, curated the commercial exhibition, which is the agency’s second at the hotel. ‘Bodrum Loft is famous for its architecture that seamlessly integrates with nature,’ she says of the property’s appeal.

She established Artsa after graduating from Sotheby’s Institute and working in the commercial gallery world with a focus on organising exhibitions alongside art fairs. While she has worked on projects around the world, this is the first time she has produced a show in Turkey. 

‘I had always wanted to be able to organise these events in my country, in Turkey. At this point, I met the Akın family, who own Bodrum Loft, and our story of working together began.’

The artworks were placed in situ in an intuitive way, intended to be harmonious with the natural setting of the hotel, meaning they are either in tune with the sea, the greenery or the sky. 

Alongside Arsham and Murakami, artists selected for the show, all of whom are represented by global art power player Perrotin, include Jean-Marie Appriou, Wim Delvoye, Laurent Grasso, Gregor Hildebrandt, Klara Kristalova, Jean-Michel Othoniel and Paola Pivi.

There is a focus on nature in the work of Kristalova and Appriou, while incidental political statement comes from Elmgreen & Dragset – whose Adaptation, Fig. 16 (Black Mirror) reflects on the regulatory role of road signs – and from Iván Argote. 

‘I like to think of these works as fictional archaeologies,’ Argote says of his pieces. ‘They are part of a series named Excerpts, a group of sculptures in steel, concrete, copper, gold, and oil-based painting, that seem to be ruins or remains of pre-existing architecture. On the surface of the sculptures, we find writings, reflections, poems, and quotes that are simultaneously intimate and political statements.’

The ingenious idea of taking art out of the city when collectors leave for the summer is not a new one, with blue-chip gallery outposts in the Hamptons, USA, and Somerset, UK, for example, enjoyed by many and shopped by a lucky few. But as part of hospitality’s focus on luxury living, initiatives such as this are sure to flourish.

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Hublot has once again collaborated with Japanese artist Takashi Murakami on a unique piece, for the Only Watch 2023 auction. The biannual charity auction, all proceeds from which go towards research into Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, has seen watch brands create exceptional one-off pieces since its launch in 2005.

The Hublot MP-15 Takashi Murakami Tourbillon Only Watch marries Murakami’s colourful design codes with Hublot’s sharp technicality – here, the brand debuts its first central flying tourbillon in a feat of engineering. Murakami specifically requested the complication, challenging Hublot to create a piece seemingly hovering in the air, awarding hours and minutes the same central positioning while staying faithful to Murakami’s precise proportions.  

Hublot and Takashi Murakami’s Only Watch 2023

His vibrant aesthetic is encompassed in the 12 petals of the watch, set with a rainbow of 444 gemstones. The petals, which curl towards the movement as if to the sun, eschew a natural graduation for bold, playful pops of colour.

‘Only Watch was created in 2005 and our manufacture was founded just four years later, in 2009,’ says Hublot CEO, Ricardo Guadalupe. ‘We are both of the same generation. We have grown very quickly and have pushed the boundaries in our respective fields: Hublot in high watchmaking and Only Watch in philanthropy. Whenever Only Watch founder Luc Pettavino needs us, we will be there. Hublot has never shirked its moral and social obligations, nor will it ever do so.’

Alongside the watch, collectors will receive a special edition of calligraphy created by the artist. ‘I decided to pick up calligraphy again,’ says Murakami. ‘My mother used to love it and I took many classes in this art from the age of five to 17. I progressed to a very high level, attaining the seventh dan, which is equivalent to assistant instructor. When I went to art school, my calligraphy practice became more sporadic. But my mother brought it up whenever I spoke to her! So, I decided to return to it, working directly on my used coffee filter paper, which is a very good base for the ink. This enabled me to create unique calligraphy, “Time of Rainbow”, inspired by the unique watch I have designed with Hublot for Only Watch 2023.’

hublot.com

Digital-first auction house Joopiter gathers cultural artefacts from the worlds of art, watchmaking and music for its third auction, ‘Just Phriends’. Jupiter founder Pharrell Williams is at the helm of the wide-reaching sale, collaborating with longtime friend Sarah Andelman on the curation of furniture design, fashion and high jewellery.

Sarah Andelman curates ‘Just Phriends’ Joopiter auction

For Andelman, formerly of Parisian concept store Colette, and owner of consulting company Just an Idea, Joopiter’s distinctive curation sets it apart from traditional auction houses. ‘I think Pharrell had the feeling there was a space for a new kind of auction house, with a more special content, maybe more personal, who could touch new generations,’ she says. 

Of curating the ‘Just Phriends‘ auction, she says, ‘I immediately thought the theme should be “around Pharrell” [this time] and to bring together artists he worked with regularly like Takashi Murakami, Kaws, Daniel Arsham, Michael Kagan, FriendswithYou, and brands like Chanel and Louis Vuitton, of course. And to complete the group, we have contributions from artists and designers I worked with, whose work I felt makes sense with Pharrell’s world and values. The big difference here from a classic auction is that most of the lots are new, made especially for this occasion.’

Lots include a piece in fibre glass, steel, wood and LED by Takashi Murakami and Pharrell Williams; an MTV Video Music Awards trophy designed by Kaws; a Richard Mille RM 65-01 Automatic Winding Split-seconds Chronograph signed on the back by Pharrell; and George Condo’s Portrait of an English Lady oil on linen painting.

‘I’m very proud of the diversity of the lots, from a creative, emotional and historical point of view,’ Andelman adds. ‘I love the connection from Pedro Winter’s personal collection of vinyl, to the custom Harry Nuriev DJ table. 

‘We have some themes like “bears” – from the Campana brothers’ bench, to an all-new custom Jean-Charles de Castelbajac jacket, to the Paola Pivi bear eating a Chanel x Pharrell loafer. 

‘We also have multiple astronauts, including the Kaws MTV Moonman Award, the Steven Harrington drawing, and the Michael Kagan sculpture. I think the MSCHF microscopic bag will remain a memorable statement. I’m also very found of the real-size Lego sculpture by Nathan Sawaya and I loved visiting his atelier in Las Vegas where all of his bricks are organised by colour.’

‘Just Phriends’ will be open for global bidding on joopiter.com from 19 to 27 June 2023

In a move that captures just how dynamic collecting watches and art can be, the Swiss watchmaker Hublot and the artist Takashi Murakami have reunited to launch their fourth artistic project together. Hublot and Murakami have sought to bridge the gap between watchmaking and digital art by releasing 13 new NFTs alongside 13 watches. Each of the unique NFTS is inspired by the Classic Fusion Takashi Murakami All Black watch – the inaugural collaboration with the artist, which Hublot unveiled in January 2021 – and linked to a new limited edition of 13 unique Classic Fusion watches, which will be unveiled during Watches & Wonders in Geneva at the end of March 2023. 

‘When my collaboration with Hublot was announced, we made it known that we would be adopting new forms of artistic expression,’ Murakami says. ‘After creating all the timepieces together, as well as the digital works of art, we are now imagining new ways of accessing contemporary art.’

Procuring the latest Hublot and Takashi Murakami watches

Procuring any one of the watches is set to be a challenge. Twelve of them will be available for purchase on an e-commerce platform exclusively accessible to owners of a previous series of NFTs, which Hublot and Murakami released as part of their third collaboration in 2022. 

Those 324 NFTs were originally offered to owners of a Hublot x Takeshi Murakami model: either the Classic Fusion Takashi Murakami All Black or the Classic Fusion Takashi Murakami Sapphire Rainbow. 

From now until the new watches are available for sale in early April 2023, collectors interested in the upcoming series will be able to collect one of the 324 NFTs on the decentralised NFT trading platform, OpenSea, in order to stand a chance of buying one of the 12 watches. Those lucky enough to get their hands on one will also be awarded one of the exclusive new NFTs.

Classic Fusion Takashi Murakami Black Ceramic Rainbow

All this virtual excitement is anchored back in the real world with the 13th watch in the collection. The masterpiece, which is known as the Classic Fusion Takashi Murakami Black Ceramic Rainbow, takes Murakami’s iconic smiling flower motif and realises each of its 12 petals in a sparkling rainbow gradient consisting of rubies, sapphires, amethysts, tsavorites and topaz. The stunning watch face is further enhanced by a ball-bearing system, perfected by Hublot’s engineers, that enables the flower petals to turn on their axis with each movement. Inside the 45mm ceramic case, the watch beats with the manufacture Unico set in the Classic Fusion design and boasts a 72-hour power reserve. 

This watch can only be obtained if a collector manages to collect all 12 NFTs by April 2024. In the event that no one person has managed the task, the watch will be auctioned by Hublot for charity. 

‘Our partnership with Takashi Murakami is allowing us to construct a history that interlinks all the works we have released with Takashi, both digital pieces and the watches themselves,’ says Hublot CEO Ricardo Guadalupe. ‘Faithful to its history, Hublot is once again first, unique and different in how it rewards its collectors, providing them with privileged access to both ownership of and trade in unique artistic pieces.’

hublot.com

Entering Takashi Murakami’s first exhibition in Dubai feels like visiting a store for hybrid emojis in 3D. On a frontal wall is a new set of heavily pixelated paintings of the artist’s shiny, happy Murakami.Flower series, which have a retro video-game feel. On plinths are DOB sculptures in bow-ties and candy colours (Mr DOB is a prominent mouse-like avatar in the cast of characters the artist created in 1993). In the centre is Together with the Flower Plant and Child featuring two waving plants (one clearly the adult) with wide-mouthed smiles, green bodies and petals the colour of rainbows.

Murakami’s exhibition is taking place at Perrotin’s pop-up space at ICD Brookfield Place, alongside a corresponding show by Jason Boyd Kinsella. It’s part of a partnership with ICD’s Malak Abu-Qaoud and coincides with the launch of Perrotin’s new permanent Middle Eastern outpost, in Dubai’s financial district. The accessibility of Murakami’s visual language paired with Abu-Qaoud’s community-driven approach as an art manager makes this collaboration a good fit.

The wild popularity of the technicolour iterations of Murakami’s DOB works comes from their recognisable references to several animated characters, such as the Japanese robot-cat Doraemon, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Mickey Mouse. ‘I started out as an artist by wanting to draw animations,’ Murakami says. The impact of otaku, or the obsession with video games, manga, animation and science fiction, is ever-present in his work as the kind of Japanese geeky subculture that engenders a major trend. ‘You can really feel the tempo of a place like Japan through its manga culture,’ he continues. ‘When I became a famous artist in New York, I thought I needed to go back to honest, Japanese culture.’ Yet Murakami understood the power of Pop Art early on when he became part of the New York City art scene in the 1990s. His ability to combine this awareness with craft via Nihonga, the lavish Japanese traditional painting technique he studied in university, is how he stakes his claim using the language of consumerism and youthful nostalgia.

Murakami’s ‘Superflat’ ethos of levelled pictorial space and stylised figures has become a signature approach, drawing from kawaii, or the aesthetic of ‘cuteness’ in postwar Japan. This controversial, Neo-Confucian notion of docile, childlike women as illustrations of doe-eyed girls during the Edo period was later popularised by iconic characters such as Hello Kitty. But while the result is that Murakami’s works are often read as emotionally flat, with an optimism that is childlike, a closer look reveals darker undertones in the pointy teeth or refracted faces of DOB Kaiju Monster in the exhibition, undoubtedly inspired by the Japanese kaiju or ‘strange beast’ motif prevalent in a film and TV genre. 

Murakami has often explained that Superflat responds to Japan’s post-Second World War condition, earthquakes and the 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima. In Dubai, he says, ‘The Japanese people have experienced a lot of natural disasters. Perhaps the [1945] atomic bomb [in Hiroshima and Nagasaki] was seen as that kind of disaster too. At the same time, we still have fear. Maybe my characters look like happiness, but in my head, it’s not necessarily that. There’s this idea hiding in the background.’

His anthropomorphic cartoon-like figures may be an attempt to seek subjects that have been left out of art history, but their rich references are sometimes lost on the viewer. For example, the 108 backgrounds for the Murakami.Flowers series are based on the Buddhist principle of bonnō – or the number of earthly temptations that sully the mind. To an uninformed eye, this could read as the 108 colours of advertising.

The most striking work in the exhibition is on the way out: a 2017 miniature model of Murakami himself, cloaked in an Oriental robe, each hand taking on a mudra (a yogic gesture symbolic in Hindu and Buddhist ritual). Murakami Mini Arhat, modelled on the clairvoyant disciples of the Buddha, is a satirical self-portrait that has Murakami’s face split in two with a double emerging in between. Four eyes imply 360-degree vision and the eerie omniscience of an artist who has long understood the intersections between art and commerce. 

Takashi Murakami at Perrotin Dubai, ICD Brookfield Place, until 28 January 2023. perrotin.com

Tai Kwun Contemporary has mounted an ambitious major exhibition of Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, revealing dazzling and diverse new work ranging from paintings, sketches and video animations to monumental sculptures and costumes that has put the space on the map of the contemporary art world.

Murakami says the Hong Kong institution’s Herzog & de Meuron-designed building inspired the pieces. ‘I was very excited when I heard they were the designers,’ he says. ‘They are my favourite architects and immense spaces like this are hard to come by. They immediately reminded me of how I was first moved by contemporary art and I wanted to reflect this feeling embodied in the building.’

This entailed transforming two large halls into immersive sensory-driven environments, completely integrating floors, walls and ceiling with gold leaf that provides a mesmerising backdrop to Murakami’s Enso paintings – a circle sprayed over embossed patterns of skulls to symbolise emptiness and infinity. Murakami holds a PhD in nihonga, a refined hybrid of European and traditional Japanese painting. In another gallery, a floor artwork depicts an apocalyptic jumble of skulls, which visitors must cross to see The Birth Cry of a Universe, a 4.5m tall gold leaf-clad sculpture that took ten years to complete.

Murakami says he always conceives different themes for gallery shows, but Tai Kwun Contemporary offered a novel – and liberating – experience. ‘I didn't have to think about whether this will immediately sell or not, so I could think instead about creating works that fit in this space.’ Other highlights include a room dedicated to Murakami’s own eclectic collection, with works by postwar artists who influenced him and the first exhibition of his cosplay costumes, custom designed in collaboration with Tokyo-based stylist and costume designer Kazuki Yunoki and presented in glass boxes on life-size pure white Murakami mannequins adopting his trademark animated stances. There are also paintings inspired by British artist Francis Bacon’s surreal distorted works, meticulously detailed sketches in preparation for a painting of Tan Tan Bo, animated film, an alter-ego of Murakami based on a manga character by Mizuki Shigeru, and two large cartoon-like outdoor sculptures, KaiKai and Kiki. Even the pop-up store, where visitors can stock up on special edition badges, posters and plush flower cushions, stands out with a hyperstimulated skull-pattern carpet, mirrored black and silver wallpaper and neon wall art, in true Murakami fashion.

INFORMATION

‘MURAKAMI vs MURAKAMI’ is on view until 1 September. For more information, visit the Tai Kwun website

ADDRESS

Tai Kwun
10 Hollywood Road
Central

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Like the man himself, Takashi Murakami’s favourite food is a national treasure. ‘Sushi is a symbol of Japanese culture, and can now be enjoyed anywhere in the world,’ he says.

Contrary to his outré aesthetic, his favourite variety, tuna nigiri, is as orthodox as it comes. The artist’s opinion on flowers, a recurring motif in his artwork, is more ambivalent. ‘Their smell, their shape – it makes me feel almost physically sick, and at the same time I find them very “cute”,’ he says.

Ingredients
Sushi rice
Rice vinegar
Sugar
Salt
Fresh sushi-grate tuna, thinly sliced

Method
Rinse the rice until the water runs clear, then place in a pan with almost double the amount of water and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat, cover and cook for 20 minutes until tender and the water absorbed. Leave until cool enough to handle.

Combine the rice vinegar with some sugar and salt in a pan and cook over a medium heat until the sugar dissolves. Allow to cool, then stir into the cooled rice, stirring until it dries and becomes sticky.

With a wet hand, grab a handful of rice and shape it into an oval form. Lay a slice of tuna on top and press down gently. §

A version of this article originally featured in the March 2019 issue of Wallpaper* (W*240)

It seems that Vancouver has been rather superflattened by the arrival of Takashi Murakami – or at the very least supercharged. The Japanese international art world star arrived in town to open his retrospective exhibition ‘The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg’, on the eve of his 56th birthday, to a palpable civic buzz. He was even presented with a special plaque by the deputy mayor declaring the day of his birth – 1 February – an official citywide Takashi Murakami Day.

After installing a five-metre high sculpture inside the rotunda of the Vancouver Art Gallery (a neoclassical former courthouse designed by Francis Rattenbury and renovated by Arthur Erickson in his iconic Robson Square), as well as new installations on the gallery’s Georgia Street façade, Murakami found time for a public lecture, a press conference and a birthday gala bash complete with a Grammy Award winning DJ.

Such a dizzying pace seems apropos for an artist who has so enthusiastically straddled the worlds of high and low art, museum culture, fashion and hip hop. But it’s perhaps the installation on the VAG’s façade that best speak to Takashi’s unique hybridity – his often fraught dance between the realms of East and West, the historic and contemporaneous, the commercial and the aesthetic: a central work playing on his familiar skull imagery hangs over ionic columns, flanked on either side by gorgeously detailed nihonga inspired pigmented blue octopus tentacles. Occupying the city’s main plaza and de facto town square, the vaguely post-apocalyptic banners are met by the blank gaze of the adjacent Microsoft HQ.

Vancouver, a city with a strong Asian population on the edge of the Pacific, seems well placed to be the only Canadian stop on the exhibition’s North American tour and the second stop after debuting at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art last summer (where it shattered attendance records).

The heady retrospective, curated by the MCA’s Michael Darling, spans three dynamic decades of work: from early 1980s paintings blending traditional Japanese nihonga style techniques with contemporary inspiration (and the influence of Anselm Kiefer and Jeff Koons), through to his 1990s shift toward the anime influenced Superflat style. It also features more recent work inspired by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Fukushima (that killed more than 15,000 people) including the stunning 100 Arhats (2013), depicting wizened monks and emanating a magnificent kind of Buddhist Bosch vibe

In addition to the site-specific installations, the VAG exhibition includes six new works, some of them still in completion. Murakami’s often cartoonish gestures and larger than life personality can mask his deep gravitas, and these new works are no exception. Juxtaposing his intricately detailed skull and flower motifs, they offer compelling takes on the damaged zeitgeist of a media frenzied world simultaneously saturated by cute kitten videos and images of massacres.

Here, his autobiographical Mr DOB character continues his journey into an uncertain, constantly shifting present. The Disney noir figure – like the artist himself – carries the post-war Japanese baggage of apocalypses past and prescient. ‘My art,’ Murakami told a rapt Vancouver audience, ‘contains secret messages for the future.’

INFORMATION

‘The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg’ is on view from 3 February until 6 May. For more information, visit the Vancouver Art Gallery website

ADDRESS

Vancouver Art Gallery
750 Hornby Street 
Vancouver BC V6Z 2H7

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So far, 2017 has been a busy year for Takashi Murakami. His first solo show in Scandinavia, ‘Murakami by Murakami’, ran from February to May at Oslo’s Astrup Fearnley Museet, and was closely followed by ‘The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg’, an exhibition of his paintings at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, on show until 24 September. Just five days later, the artist’s first major survey in Russia opens at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow. Murakami likes it this way. ‘I am very grateful that my exhibitions are held simultaneously around the world,’ he says. ‘In the midst of this boom of a sort, I feel my head is spinning, though I feel anxious when I think about a quiet future without such flurries of activity.’

Murakami really lives for his art. He literally camps down in his factory-sized studio in Miyoshi, a rather bleak, predominantly industrial area about an hour outside Tokyo. He sleeps there, in a large cardboard box in a corner of one of the rooms. He eats there, often preparing his own simple meals. And, of course, he works there. The studio is in operation 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In the early evening, the night shift takes over from the day shift, and the hectic working schedule runs on.

The studio is remarkably clean and highly organised. Large sheets of cardboard give information about who is on duty, production schedules and deadlines, and changes to artworks. When a dot of black paint has been added to a painting, the painting is photographed. This photograph is then printed out, time-stamped and added to the production board for the artwork so Murakami can go back to previous versions if he chooses. He is constantly making changes and doesn’t like deadlines for wrapping up his art. ‘The deadline of an exhibition used to be my deadline,’ he says. ‘Today, if I am really unhappy about a particular work, I will ask for it to be returned to the studio after the exhibition so I can complete it. If I keep at it for more than two years, however, the galleries and the clients start to become seriously upset, so when their anger reaches tipping point, I deliver the work.’

In lieu of windows, the studio is illuminated by hundreds of fluorescent tubes, making it impossible to tell the time of day. There is also hardly any sound. Staff work assiduously at computers or crouched over paintings. Murakami sits at his table, sketching or making corrections on transparent sheets of vinyl superimposed over printouts of works in progress. From time to time he walks around, with his dog Pom in tow, to check on what’s happening and give orders to assistants. ‘I live like a monk, which is a way to induce the release of neurochemicals in my brain to heighten the senses and achieve a state of alertness,’ Murakami says of his rigid working style. When Wallpaper* visited, his focus was on the exhibition at Garage. The opening was barely two months away and several of the commissioned works for the show were still unfinished.

Garage Museum of Contemporary Art was founded in 2008 by oligarch Roman Abramovich, an avid art collector, and his then wife Dasha Zhukova. The museum takes its name from the bus garage, designed by constructivist architect Konstantin Melnikov, that was its first home. After a brief period in a temporary space designed by Shigeru Ban, the museum moved in 2015 to a permanent location, a prefabricated concrete pavilion that previously housed a restaurant. The space had been out of use for more than two decades and was in ruins when Zhukova commissioned an overhaul by OMA, which wrapped the existing concrete structure in a double polycarbonate skin. The wide, open spaces were renovated but kept as close to their original form as possible. A beautiful mosaic mural depicting autumn, which now greets visitors entering the museum, was also salvaged from the restaurant.

For the past two years, Garage’s senior curator Katya Inozemtseva has been hard at work on the exhibition. To explain Murakami to a Russian audience, she has organised more than 70 artworks into five sections, each exploring a Japanese cultural phenomenon that is examined in Murakami’s art. In the ‘Kawaii’ section, a new 3m long painting serves as a backdrop. Featuring Murakami’s trademark smiling flowers, the partly gilded piece introduces visitors to the artist’s treatment of the Japanese concept of ‘cuteness’, via an all-star cast of Doraemon, Pokémon and Hello Kitty characters.

The ‘Geijutsu’ section promises to appeal to visitors interested in Murakami’s background in traditional nihonga painting. Situating his art in a historical context, it also features older works by Katsushika Hokusai, Kawanabe Kyosai and Utagawa Kuniyoshi, on loan from the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, to help viewers better understand the references to Japanese art history often found in Murakami’s work. ‘Because the Russian public only has an approximate notion of Japanese history and history of art in particular, we don’t recognise the influences and references he continuously makes,’ says Inozemtseva. ‘Murakami basically continues what has been called the “lineage of eccentrics” that began in the Edo period [1615-1868] with artists like Iwasa Matabei, Kano Sansetsu, Ito Jakuchu and Soga Shohaku. There has never been a show that explores these kinds of connections to history, which is why I wanted to take this approach.’

Another section, ‘The Little Boy and the Fat Man’, explores how the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in 1945 transformed Japanese visual aesthetics. In a European first, Murakami’s Sea Breeze installation from 1992 is on display. The piece is a large, open box on wheels, with a set of mercury lamps in the middle. The lamps turn on and off in powerful glares reminiscent of the flashes after the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. According to Inozemtseva, ‘this is the crucial and very early piece that reveals and outlines the shape of Murakami’s intense interest for the whole post-bombing/post-war thematic’. One of the artist’s trademarks also features prominently: a skull appearing out of a large mushroom cloud, which he calls ‘Time Bokan’ after a famous Japanese anime TV series. These motifs engage in a visual conversation with the large neon Time Bokans that decorate the façade of the museum.

Rather than simply hanging the artworks on its walls, Garage is mounting many of them throughout the space on a specially made metal mesh. Inozemtseva wanted to make the back of Murakami’s paintings visible. ‘The back sides are perfect, no less elaborate than the front,’ she says. ‘Plus, you can see the names of all the contributors who participated in the creation of each painting. Sometimes Murakami works on one painting for years, so the list can be almost endless. I believe it reveals his attitude to his team. They are not just anonymous assistants, like in a medieval studio or contemporary art factory. They are highly devoted and appreciated collaborators.’

To offer an insight into the workings of the artist’s studio, Garage is recreating its mood and structure in the ‘Sutajio’ section (a phonetic rendering of the Japanese for ‘studio’). This is another first for a Murakami exhibition: assistants are staying on after the installation to give classes on his art and techniques. The final section, ‘Asobi & Kazari’ (fun and decoration), spreads playful pieces throughout the museum, extending Murakami’s universe to the gift shop, the façade and the world beyond. 

As originally featured in the October 2017 issue of Wallpaper* (W*223)

INFORMATION

‘Takashi Murakami: Under the Radiation Falls’ is on view from 29 September until 4 February 2018. For more information, visit the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art website

ADDRESS

Garage Museum of Contemporary Art
Moscow 119049

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Ceramics first emerged in Japan in the Jomon period - the prehistoric era - making it one of the first art forms in the country, and one of the oldest ceramic traditions in the world. Chanoyu tea ceremonies designed by Rikyuu - the ancient master of the Japanese green tea ritual - popularised ceramics, and in the 1920s, the Mingei folk art movement continued to place ceramics at the forefront of Japanese culture.

It’s no surprise that contemporary Japanese artists have continued to mine this medium for meaning. Takashi Murakami, the founder of the Superflat movement, is one of Japan’s most prominent collectors of ceramics today. Since opening his small ceramics store, Oz Zingaro, on the 4th floor of Tokyo’s Manga paradise Nakano Broadway in 2011, Murakami has ensured that the development of ceramics in Japan continues to flourish.

His latest public initiative comes in the form of his first museum exhibition on contemporary ceramics: a selection of 300 pieces, curated from his own collection, on view at the Towada Art Centre (the multifunctional arts space designed by Ryue Nishizawa) until May. The exhibition surveys work mostly by Japanese artists, such as Superflat artist Yoshimoto Nara, whose Girl with Tongue Out (2010) forms a neat parallel with Otani Workshop’s more recent Sleeping Child (2016) but there are some major international names too - Rosemarie Trockel, Klara Kristalova and Gabriel Orozco among them.

Murakami also considers the flexibility of ceramics, between functional and art object: Yuji Murakami's Torn Jar with Ameyu, and Shin Murata’s Torn Jar, are both contemporary takes on the rough aesthetic of primitive ceramics, and earthenware originally used by Buddhists in Japan. Similarly, the muted earthy palette of pieces by Yuji Ueda and Aso Kojima reflect on the tradition of the ceramic craft, recalling the simple style of early pottery. They look at the objects of the past as high art, uncovering their inherent beauty and value.

INFORMATION

Takashi Murakami’s 'Superflat Consideration on Contemporary Ceramics' is on at the Towada Art Centre until 28 May. Fore more information, visit the Towada Art Centre website

ADDRESS

Towada Art Centre,
10-9 Nishi-Nibancho,
Towada-shi, Aomori,
Japan

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Contemporary Japanese artist Takashi Murakami has joined forces with NEXT5 brewing unit to produce a limited edition range of sake. Announced by Murakami’s company Kaikai Kiki Co., the special range features bottles designed by the artist filled with a unique brew of Akita sake.

The collection showcases four original bottle designs, one in glass and three in ceramic, featuring Murakami’s signature motif of smiling flowers. However, Murakami’s art is not the only special aspect of the range. The bottles contain pure Junmai Daiginjo Sake from the NEXT5 producers, brewed using methods older than the traditional Kimoto-zukuri method; dating from the earliest years of the Edo period (1603-1868). As both are created using materials sourced specifically from the Akita prefecture of Japan, with maximum attention to detail, the brew is limited to only 5,000 units.

NEXT5, the creator behind this unique sake, is a joint brewing unit of five prominent Akita brewers joining their knowledge and skills together to create sake for the next generation. They comprise of Tadahiko Kobayashi of Akita Brewery, Yusuke Sato of Aramasa Brewery, Koei Watanabe of Fukuokuju Brewery, Tomofumi Yamamoto of Yamamoto Brewery and Naouilo Kuribayashi of Kuribayashi Brewery.

With this collection Murakami joins them on this mission, saying that ‘NEXT5 are going back to question the very nature of what sake is when they create sake…We want to grasp this thread and weave it into a fresh form.’ 

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Kaikai Kiki Co. Ltd. website

Photography: Courtesy of Kaikai Kiki Co. Ltd. 

Two concurrent exhibitions of Takashi Murakami's works – a major solo exhibition at the Mori Art Museum and a 'pop-up' of 15 new paintings from his 'Ensō' series at his own Tokyo gallery – offer an intriguing perspective on the contemporary artist's renewed focus on traditional Japanese art.

Although widely exhibited outside of his home country, the Mori Art Museum's exhibition of 50 works including paintings, sculptures and videos is the first significant show of his work in Japan since 2001.

The undisputed highlight is an extraordinarily detailed and colourful 100-metre-long painting that depicts the Buddha's disciples transformed into a mesmerising riot of bulging eyes and toothless grins amid a psychedelic landscape. Titled The 500 Arhats, it was inspired by a set of 100 hanging scrolls created by Kanō Kazunobu (1816–1863).

They are 'unadorned self-portraits of Murakami himself', observes the exhibition's curatorial advisor, art historian Tsuji Nobuo.

Also on show are Murakami's working instructions and sketches used by 200 students from Japanese art colleges who helped complete the work following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Murakami says the disaster had a 'profound influence' on the new direction of his work although his trademark controversial commentary on the complex political and social issues facing modern Japan remains a key theme. For instance, the enormous gold-leaf-clad sculpture The Birth Cry of a Universe represents contemporary society collapsing under the weight of the pursuit of development.

Meanwhile, at his own gallery, a decidedly more minimalist, contemplative series of paintings feature the Ensō or 'circle', a motif in Japanese Zen Buddhism symbolising emptiness, unity and infinity. Here, Murakami – who has a PhD in Nihongo painting – reinterprets the traditional fluid brush stroke, using spray paint over a background of smiling flowers and skulls. He says this new style emerged after he sprayed the word 'HOLLOW' as graffiti on a completed painting.

The artist may be engaged in complex spiritual themes but he has not lost his maverick sense of humour. When asked why his Ensō paintings are in contrasting combinations of black, white, gold and red, he joked, 'Because I thought someone might want to buy them in different colours.'

INFORMATION

'Ensō' is on view at Kaikai Kiki Gallery from 31 October – 21 November

The 500 Arhats is on view at the Mori Art Museum from 31 October, 2015 – 6 March, 2016

ADDRESS

Kaikai Kiki Gallery
B1 floor Motoazabu Crest Building
2-3-30 Motoazabu, Minato-ku, Tokyo

Mori Art Museum
53 floor Roppongi Hills Mori Tower
6-10-1 Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo

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If fandom is divided into those who share their affections and those who guard them, a ceramics exhibition curated by the artist Takashi Murakami comes down in favor of generous avidity. Extending the almost riotous enthusiasm in Murakami’s own work, the more than 400 pieces in clay at Blum & Poe in Los Angeles are displayed in a meandering density that recalls the principles of Japanese rock gardens, with no single sightline to every work. On circular rough-wood shelves and on mounds of grass and rubble, the selection by Murakami is at once overflowing and precise, with a muted natural palette that reflects the artists’ studios in rural Japan. Murakami’s ceramics gallery in Tokyo, Oz Zingaro, is a place of respite in a shopping mall filled with stores selling rare comics, toys and memorabilia, and this exhibition, too, is a reminder of the striking coexistence of traditional techniques with post-war strains of popular culture.

'I think work from the 1600s is the most beautiful, the work I respect the most,' says Kazunori Hamana, who was himself a collector of antiques and now works from an oceanfront studio in Chiba, Japan, catching fish 'every morning.' 'I can’t compete, so I try to make my own style,' he says of vessels that manage to elude the brittleness of earthenware and evoke the shore, appearing almost soft in their unctuous forms and slip-covered surfaces, which he then sometimes etches with scribbles.

Other pieces, by Otani Workshop and Yuji Ueda, some shown outside of Japan for the first time, are made in the ceramics center of Shigaraki, the birthplace of many of the country’s prevalent Tanuki statues, guarding the entrances to bars. The zoomorphic Otani Workshop pieces - with faces at once simple and vulnerable in their cuteness - present different scales of empathy, a ceiling-height figure gazing over smaller effigies that seem to require as much protection as they offer. And in spherical work by Ueda, who comes from a family of tea farmers, cracked-earth textures and fire-licked spots are both elemental and experimental. 'Fire is nature, and maybe you lose everything,' Hamana says of pushing forward the long tradition of earth and water, hardened by heat. 'Or maybe you get something back.'

INFORMATION

“Kazunori Hamana, Yuji Ueda, Otani Workshop; Curated by Takashi Murakami” is on view  until 24 October at Blum & Poe

Photography courtesy Blum & Poe, Los Angeles

ADDRESS

2727 South La Cienega Boulevard, Los Angeles

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The Los Angeles-based Blum & Poe gallery, which also has outposts in New York and Tokyo, is staging a pop-up in Ibiza. Taking place at the island's Art Projects space, the exhibition is a multi-platform showcase of Takashi Murakami's newest work. In addition to this, Lune Rouge Ibiza, Heart Ibiza and the Ibiza Gran Hotel will also be displaying selections of the Japanese artist's recent work and more seminal oeuvre.

And why has Jeff Poe decided to ship 40 works – ranging from the artist's archetypal tondo paintings to monumental sculptures – to the Balearic island? 'Guy Laliberté, a collector who lives there, reached out to us proposing a multi-platform project with Murakami,' he explains. Laliberté, it should be added, is the founder of Cirque du Soleil and a keen fan of Murakami's work –  his own holdings are also on view. 'Considering Murakami's openness and generous aesthetic practice, this opportunity fitted perfectly.' 

Blum & Poe's temporary gallery space features new versions of the artist's Flower Ball series, the faces of the painting – in a stark near-neon palette – now incorporating platinum leaf. Complementing those works is the artist's 2015 gold leaf sculpture Dragon Heads – Gold, comprised of a cascade of skulls.

Lune Rouge Ibiza is the makeshift home of Murakami's more monumental work, such as 69 Arhats Beneath the Bodhi Tree, 2013 – a ten foot wide acrylic, gold and platinum leaf piece depicting a plethora of mythical monsters and robed figures. That piece is flanked by two of the artist's demonic sculptures.
 
Equally compelling and even more imposing is Oval Buddha, an 18 foot-high sculpture coated in aluminium and platinum leaf, on show at the Ibiza Gran Hotel. Finally, the artist's 2013 live-action feature film Jellyfish Eyes will also be screened – a typically surreal sign-off to an already chimerical series.

ADDRESS

Art Projects Ibiza
Calle Alcalde Bartomeu Roselló, Sala 9B
Ibiza, Spain 07800

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This year's Art Basel has been a triumph for Takashi Murakami, who was feted at a whimsical, star-studded dinner hosted by Galerie Perrotin, starring geishas and cosplay actors specially flown in from Japan. Also announced were two exhibitions taking place in the artist's homeland over the next months – a major retrospective at Tokyo's Mori Museum, and an exhibition of his private art collection, which stretches from Soga Shohaku to Anselm Kiefer. The exhibitions' trailer shows '500 Arhats', a 100m-long painting created in response to the Great East Japan earthquake of 2011. Breathtaking in scale and meticulous in detail, it depicting the 500 enlightened followers of the Buddha and offers a humbling meditation of the power of faith in times when technology is stretched to its limits. It's a truly riveting work that has only once been exhibited, and makes for a fitting centrepiece for the Tokyo show.

In 2013 Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, who had shot to fashion fame for his Louis Vuitton collaboration during Marc Jacobs' tenure, did a shoot and corresponding interview with US Harper's BAZAAR for his upcoming film Jellyfish Eyes. During that conversation journalist Laura Brown simply asked Murakami, 'Who do you want to work with next?' Without hesitation, he responded Vans. 'The reason then and now is that for the past ten years or more I have worn Vans slip-ons nearly every day while in my studio,' says Murakami from Japan. 'For me, there is no other shoe that is as comfortable and which allows me to concentrate on my work.'

A few months after the article was published Murakami got an email from Brown saying that the footwear company wanted to contact him. Suffice to say, Van's VP global design & merchandising Steve Mills flew out to Japan shortly after and that's how the collaboration, which spans the brand's classic slip-ons, tees and skate decks, began.

We caught up with the artist to discuss his relationship with the fashion industry, his ‘Superflat' style, and his thoughts on the union of art and commerce…

Wallpaper*: Your fashion collaboration with Louis Vuitton struck such a chord in popular culture, what appealed about Vans, as brand, for you to venue into apparel again?
Takashi Murakami: To be honest, this project is moving forward in a completely different style from my collaboration with Louis Vuitton. In some ways, it was through my experience with Louis Vuitton that I became educated in the etiquette of the fashion world. Compared to that, the Vans team feels extremely laid back. For a Japanese person like myself, their relaxed style is sometimes quite a shock. But for me this aspect is also one that inspires trust and so I've been able to approach the project in a very positive way.

W*: Why did you choose your smiling flower and skull patterns for this project?
TM: Both motifs were originally used as all-over patterns in my paintings so I thought they would work well when using shoes as a canvas. They are also trademark images of mine that are immediately recognisable.

W*: How do you ultimately feel about the merging of art and commerce?
TM: One of my favourite historical figure is Sen no Rikyū. He is considered to be the person who perfected the Japanese tea ceremony and is one of the most respected cultural figures in Japan. However, his original trade was that of a merchant. Commerce is, in some ways, the study of human desire and I believe that Rikyū brought this knowledge of true human nature to his theories on the tea ceremony. Though some consider this sort of fundamental desire to be base, I also believe that tapping into it allows art to reach its greatest potential. I almost must say honestly that as a Japanese, I do not feel anything strange or unnatural about mixing art with commerce. In our ‘Superflat' world, this is something that is taken for granted.

Since the 1990s when he created his cartoon avatar Mr Dob, there has been a sector of the art market immune to the charms of Takashi Murakami. His 'superflat' style, considered by many to be the ultimate leveller between high and low art, translated to others as simply 'flat'.

The time to reconsider that appraisal is now. In a new show launched at New York's Gagosian gallery this week, Murakami tosses his divisive brand of 'art merchandise' to the wind and breathes a more spiritual air.

Entitled 'In the Land of the Dead, Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow', the show was triggered by the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami of 2011, which flattened northeast Japan and swept the country into a collective grief. The artist, who has always blended historical motifs and classical techniques in his pop art, mined religious iconography and folk tales with mournful resolve in a journey toward enlightenment.

He devoted time to meditation, to understanding the religions he once dismissed and explored the human tendency to seek religion in the wake of catclysm. Along the way he revisited and internalised Buddhist and Shinto emblems and the 19th-century scrolls of Kano Kazunobu, who painted arhats, or spiritual beings, after the Great Ansei Earthquake of 1855.

Mr Dob makes an appearance in one painting, emoting in a way that's hard to articulate. Ditto the bulbously familiar character Mr Pointy - certainly not the smiley, happy Murakami of yesterday. There is little else to suggest this work comes from the poster boy of art-meets-commerce. The artist's central piece is a 56-tonne sanmon, a replica of a thousand-year-old sacred gate, framing views toward a skull-cluttered canvas. In another room looms a demonic totem, familiar for its Murakami-esque gold plate but not for its mushroom-cloud silhouette, an allusion to that other Japanese disaster in recent memory.

The artist appears to have reconstructed his belief system in the healing years post-tsunami, to embrace all manner of Eastern religions, and tailored their imagery to his mischievous manga sensibility. It's cathartic to watch. Far more edifying than retail therapy.

ADDRESS

Gagosian Gallery
555 West 24th Street
New York, NY 10011

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On the surface, pop creations from the worlds of Anime and Manga have little to do with the regal splendor of Versailles. However, as his new retrospective at the château proves, artist Takashi Murakami's Japanese take on comic strip cool can strike up remarkably easy conversation with a 17th century setting.

Murakami's show follows American artist Jeff Koon's acclaimed exhibition at Versailles in 2008. As well as featuring 22 of his major works, dotted around the chateau and its gardens are 11 new pieces created especially for the exhibition.

With his Superflat style - characterized by flat planes of colour and strong graphics -­ these oversized, surrealist sculptures draw on the fantasy of the setting, assembled with typical Japanese precision.

'It is likely that the Versailles of my imagination is one that my mind has exaggerated and transformed until it has become a kind of surreal world of its own,' says Murakami. 'It is this that I have tried to capture in this exhibition.'

The decision to show contemporary artworks at this national site may have been a controversial one, but by harnessing his own impression of Versailles, Murakami's work reflects and plays with its surrounds with surprising fluidity - helped by its glossy surfaces and abundance of ornamentation.

ADDRESS

Château de Versailles
Spectacles Pavillon des Roulettes
Grille du Dragon
78000 Versailles

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