Takashi Murakami is one of the greatest marketing artists of the 21st century. Playfully crossing the line between art and design/Pop culture, he extracts motifs from their context, isolates them and places them in a new environment. In his work, Murakami plays with the oppositions of East and West, past and present, high art and low culture while remaining consistently amusing and accessible. His work morphs the worlds of popular contemporary Japanese cartoons and historic Japanese painting (he is classically trained, with a PhD in the traditional nihon-ga style).
His collaborations with the fashion companies Issey Miyake and Louis Vuitton received international attention. In 2001 Murakami founded the company Kaikai Kiki Co which produces and markets not just his art works but also merchandising articles and cartoon films.
Major exhibitions of Murakami’s works were held in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in 2007, the Museum for Modern Art in Frankfurt in 2008, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao in 2009 and the Palace of Versailles in 2010.
