Japanese Pop Art - Takashi Murakami

Born and raised in Tokyo, Japan and internationally prolific as a 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 it known for blurring the line between high and low arts. He invented 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 to describe Murakami's own artistic style and that of other Japanese artists he has influenced. From early on, he was enthusiastic about animation and manga, and aspired to one day work in the animation industry. He attended Tokyo University of the Arts, originally looking to acquire the drafting skills necessary to become an animator. Eventually he majored in Nihonga, the 'traditional' style of Japanese painting that incorporates traditional Japanese artistic Conventions, techniques and subjects.

Some of my favourite prints by Takashi Murakami are his flower and skull prints because the busyness in them is what inspires the style I want to try and achieve in some parts of my promo and app. I also really like the colour scheme in this print because they're vibrant and use mostly blue shades which is pretty much the same colour palette I was aiming to go for, with just a few stand out-ish colours used in certain areas such as pink yellow or green. I also like how some of the outlines for objects have an inverted effect or a double stroke line as it slightly separates foreground and background objects gives it a bit of a sense of depth yet still acquires that 'superflat' or flat print style. I also like how he's made it look so over crowded that objects and characters are even being cut off on the sides of the image because they don't fit in the image. Since most of his work are printed and look very patterned I might use simpler versions of his work as patterns for some of my artwork for example the print on the kimono of the geisha character could have this flower and skull pattern.

  

Some of his other prints that I like and that inspire me are his square superflat prints which usually show off some weird and simple character design and fresh looking blue landscape or the patterned happy flowers iconic to Murakami's style. He also commonly creates a camo-print like pattern to colour many of his backgrounds, landscapes and characters. He also draws himself in a lot of these square prints in an anime style. Most of these square prints are made up of different faces or expressions of characters such as the smiling flowers and different expressions drawn on his own cartoon self and other weird characters in the print. Supeflat is characterised by flay planes of colour and graphic images involving a character style derived from anime and manga. The theory posits that there is a legacy of flat, 2 dimensional imagery which has existed throughout Japanese art history and continues today in manga and anime. The style differentiates itself from the western approach in its emphasis on surface and use of flat planes of colour.