TAKASHI MURAKAMI (B. 1962)
Lot 100PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT BRITISH PRIVATE COLLECTION

TAKASHI MURAKAMI (B. 1962)

This is Dokurobei

Closed25 September 2019

Price Realised

USD 52,500

More Information

Conditions of Sale
How to sell

TAKASHI MURAKAMI (B. 1962)
This is Dokurobei
dated, titled, and signed in Japanese (lower right)
silk, acid dyes, platinum foil, wood, metal, scroll (with artist’s wood box)
image: 40 x 40 cm. (15 3/4 x 15 3/4 in.)
scroll: 129.9 x 51.8 cm. (51 1/8 x 20 3/8 in.)
Executed in 2003
this work is unique

Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Specialist note

Takashi Murakami is best known for his contemporary combination of fine art and pop culture. He uses recognizable iconography like Mickey Mouse and cartoonish flowers and infuses it with Japanese culture. The result is a boldly colorful body of work that takes the shape of paintings, sculptures and animations.

In the 1990s, Murakami founded the Superflat movement in an attempt to expose the "shallow emptiness of Japanese consumer culture." The artist plays on the familiar aesthetic of mangas, Japanese-language comics, to render works that appear democratic and accessible, all the while denouncing the universality and unspecificity of consumer goods. True to form, Murakami has done collaborations with numerous brands and celebrities including Kanye West, Louis Vuitton, Pharrell Williams and Google.

One of the most acclaimed artists to emerge from postwar Asia, Takashi Murakami—“the Warhol of Japan”—is known for his contemporary Pop synthesis of fine art and popular culture, particularly his use of a boldly graphic and colorful anime and manga cartoon style. Murakami became famous in the 1990s for his “Superflat” theory and for organizing the paradigmatic exhibition of that title, which linked the origins of contemporary Japanese visual culture to historical Japanese art.