"When I was little, I guess I was just an ordinary kid. But then things changed when I was in junior high. You know, kids that become geeks become one because of something. Like, they aren't good at sports, or girls don't like them. I, too, for some reason, got into things like science fiction and, well, especially science fiction as an escape."
Takashi Murakami (born 村上 隆 Murakami Takashi on February 1, 1962) is a contemporary artist from Japan, and founder of the postmodern pop-art movement "Superflat".
He works in fine arts media (such as painting and sculpture) as well as commercial media (such as fashion, merchandise, and animation).
Murakami's artwork
This creator provides examples of the following tropes:
- Anime Hair: My Lonesome Cowboy in the "Goku/Cloud/Sora" sort of way.note
- Flower Motifs: A recurring motif is through the use of his smiling daisies, each done with their own respective color scheme in quick succession.
- Hypnotic Eyes: The eyes of the various characters are used in accessory to the Rainbow Motif, with various circles inside circles of varying colors to make them look crazed, drugged and/or enlightened.
- Inspiration for the Work: Takashi's various arhat paintings were created in the wake of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami
, drawing upon Japanese stories of arhats - Buddhist monks who are a few steps away from achieving enlightenment - committing acts of charity and altruism among the poor, the suffering and grotesque. - Mushroom Samba: With the extreme Rainbow Color Motifs, motifs involving flowers, eyes, skulls, mushrooms and octopuses, everything having a face to some capacity and hyperrealistic Yōkai of every shape and size to accent typical Anime weirdness, it is enough for anyone to question what he was taking.
- Odd Friendship: With Kanye West of all people, having rendered the rapper into a cartoon bear - Kanye Bear - for the cover of the album Graduation, as well as doing the artwork for Kids See Ghosts, his collaboration with fellow musician Kid Cudi.
- Otaku: The whole point of the "Superflat" movement is meant to be the art world's way of acknowledging the "shallow emptiness of Japanese consumer culture" (anime and manga being two notable inspirations), so much of his art using visual tropes associated with Japanese culture, pre, and post-Westernization.
- Person of Mass Destruction: Mr. DOB in Tan Tan Bo Puking◊
- Postmodernism: He primarily uses his art as a fun-house mirror reflecting the shiny, plastic, candy-coated absurdity of Japanese pop culture.
- Rainbow Motif: Nearly every work of his includes at least one hue of all the six-to-seven colors of the rainbow.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni:
- Embodiment of "A" and Embodiment of "Um" literal embodiments of this trope. "Embodiment of 'A'" is red-skinned and a Blood Knight. "Embodiment of 'Um'", by contrast, is blue-skinned and The Stoic. And both are stereotypical Onis.
- Red Demon and Blue Demon with 48 Arhats◊
- Shout-Out: The white-beast with a fruit-tree coming out of its head from The 500 Arhats◊ was deliberately based on the Forest Spirit from Princess Mononoke.
