#storybehindtheart

On Januray 15 2005, Takashi Murakami shares a detail of Vapor Trail (2004) at the occasion of the opening of the new space of Emmanuel Perrotin in Paris. The artist creates kawaii (cute in Japanese) characters and says “Japanese don't like serious art. But if I can transform cute characters into serious art, they will love my piece." He defines his work as the Superflat Theory referring to the history of non-three-dimensional styles of Japanese art, and on the flat, shallowness of consumer culture.

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Lisa Phillips, director of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York said “He's a phenomenon (…) his work embodies some interests that extend far beyond Japan. It's a blend of fantasy and apocalypse and innocence ”.

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Perrotin an early supporter of Murakami said that he “was a supernova—there are few artists who have gotten that famous, and that expensive, that quickly.”

Marc Jacobs who teamed up with Murakami for Louis Vuitton in 2002 likes the post.

Sources: The Murakami Method, Arthur Lubow, The New York Times, April 3 2005

Emmanuel Perrotin Gallery - The Art Story.org

Gallerist Emmanuel Perrotin on What It Takes to Rise to the Top of the Dog-Eat-Dog Art World—and Why He Wants to Start a ‘Revolution’, Artnet, June 27, 2019

Murakami's cute flowers, 2020, Acrylic on canvas, 14" x 11" (36 x 28 cm)