Takashi Murakami is often billed as the next Andy Warhol. Like the American pop art icon, he fuses high and low, pulling imagery from consumer culture to produce visually arresting, highly original work. He is ingeniously self-promotional.

Time Bokan – Camouflage

Murakami, who grew up in Tokyo, sees his heritage as key to his art: “The Japanese don’t really have a difference or hierarchy between high and low .” His “art merchandise” is dominated by a cast of creepily cute characters inspired by manga comics and anime cartoons – the twin pillars of Japanese pop culture.

Cartoon characters have figured in high art since Roy Lichtenstein first transferred a Sunday comic to canvas in the early ‘60s. But the art establishment – steeped in old-world prejudices against mass merchandising – took Lichtenstein and Warhol’s art as a critique. Murakami’s work celebrates commerce! This is quite politically (“culturally”) incorrect and refreshing as compared to moralizing “social” art...
Murakami explains that his art process is “more about creating goods and selling them than about exhibitions.”!...

(motif for Louis Vuitton! ;-)

Flowers

When I consider what Japanese culture is like, the answer is that it all is subculture. Therefore, art is unnecessary

Murakami curated a recent exhibit in New York City titled “Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture.” “Little Boy” is the name given to both the bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Murakami’s view of the relationship between Japan and the United States in the years since.

Takashi Murakami on Wikipedia
jca-online.com article
wired article
publicartfund.org article