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Takashi Murakami
Flower of Joy - Blackberry Madness
- Estimate
- HK$1,000,000 - 1,500,000€114,000 - 171,000$128,000 - 192,000
Lot Details
acrylic and platinum leaf on canvas laid on board
signed and dated 'Takashi 07' on the overlap
diameter: 40 cm. (15 3/4 in.)
Executed in 2007.
Specialist
Full-Cataloguing
Catalogue Essay
"Once every two days, I would buy flowers for my lesson and make compositions for my students to work on. At the beginning, to be frank, I didn't like flowers, but as I continued teaching in the school, my feelings changed: their smell, their shape - It all made me feel almost physically sick, and at the same time I found them very 'cute'. Each one seemed to have its own feelings, its own personality... At the same time there is this strength in them; it is the same image of strength I find when drawing the human face." Takashi Murakami in H. Kelmachter, Takashi Murakami, Paris, 2002, pp. 84-85.
Provenance
Takashi Murakami
Japanese | 1962Takashi 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.
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