Takashi Murakami
Takashi Murakami
Takashi Murakamiis an internationally prolific contemporary Japanese artist. He works in fine arts media—such as painting and sculpture—as well as what is conventionally considered commercial media —fashion, merchandise, and animation— and is known for blurring the line between high and low arts. He coined the term superflat, which describes both the aesthetic characteristics of the Japanese artistic tradition and the nature of post-war Japanese culture and society. Superflat is also used as a moniker to describe Murakami’s own artistic style...
NationalityJapanese
ProfessionArtist
Date of Birth1 February 1962
CountryJapan
I would like to live to 120, because conceptually, people can survive to 120. Every 20 years, it changes. So maybe, in the next 20 years people can go to space. I don’t know what the next revolution will be. I want to watch.
I've been immersed in manga since I was a kid. I grew up with this culture. So I started to think about how to compare manga to contemporary art.
Contemporary art and manga - what is the same about them? Nothing, right? The manga industry has a lot of talented people, but contemporary art works on more of a solitary model. No one embarks on collaboration in contemporary art in order to make money. But in the manga world, everyone is invested in collaboration. The most important point is that the manga industry constantly encourages new creations and creators.
My aesthetic sense was formed at a young age by what surrounded me: the narrow residential spaces of Japan and the mental escapes from those spaces that took the forms of manga and anime.
Rather than a big figure, I guess you could say I'm more of an influential minority symbol.
The concept of minimalism is to relax. Like a Zen monk in training, it is something that brings equilibrium to the heart. I don't necessarily think it has any problems, but if I were to force myself to name one, I would say that since the minimalist feeling already includes its own universe, I think it might kill the drive that we would otherwise have to commit the physically impossible and attempt to travel into outer space.
We want to see the newest things. That is because we want to see the future, even if only momentarily. It is the moment in which, even if we don't completely understand what we have glimpsed, we are nonetheless touched by it. This is what we have come to call art.