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Lot Essay
Please note the image pictured is a rendering of the work.Mononoke will be on view at Christie's from May 11-13.
This striking work by the master of Japanese contemporary art, Takashi Murakami, is a fantastical representation of one of his key themes, that of the Superflat. This theory is the result of Murakami's attempt to address some of the questions that are inherent in any discussion about art and life, but in a uniquely Japanese way. Murakami's main focus is the gulf between what is regarded as high and low art in traditional Japanese society. As he sees it, Japan's traditional culture has been diluted since his country's defeat in World War Two and has become increasingly dominated by Western influences; Superflat is Murakami's attempt to redress the balance. In Monokoke, Murakami 's theory confronts these issues in a number of ways. By painting an image inspired by Japan's obsession with the distinctive branch of animation known as anime onto a canvas, Murakami collapses the distinction between fine art and contemporary culture.
Mononoke alludes to both an ancient tradition in Japanese folklore known as yokai and recent Japanese anime film and television series. Yokai more generally refers to supernatural beings in Japanese mythology, including shape shifters and animals that have mystical powers. Princess Mononoke was a 1997 anime film that centered on the ongoing struggle between man and the environment, more specifically the supernatural animal forces protecting the forest from decimation in the hands of profit-minded residents of aptly named Iron Town. The 2007 television series, Mononoke, documented the travels of the medicine seller as he faces the various mononoke or demons. In the present work, three Buddha-like figures hover above a lion, elephant and tiger who stand perched atop of a kaleidoscopic mound of skulls. The multi-colored, rolling eyes seem to convey that these figures are possessed, outside of the realm of natural. The psychedelic colors, whimsical patterns and cartoonish figures belie the sense of doom and overarching allusion to evil. With this combination of old and new, Murakami forges a new path for the culture of his homeland which embraces not only history and tradition, but also the kitsch reminders of his country's modern day obsession with cuteness, anime and manga.
The flat, pristine surfaces eliminated of all evidence of the brushstroke with Murakami establishing a relation between high and low art just as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein did when they incorporated mass culture in their own paintings. The tricolor background further alludes to the Ben-Day dot sunrise paintings of Lichtenstein from the 1960s, infusing yet another layer of formalist pop legacy into this impressive work. Recognizing the unique graphic history of Japan as evidenced in the manga notebooks of Katsushika Hokusai, Murakami's art argues that pioneering cartoonists after World War Two were continuing both formally and philosophically the lineage of the classical aesthetic of the non-receding plane and the production of non-hierarchical art.
This striking work by the master of Japanese contemporary art, Takashi Murakami, is a fantastical representation of one of his key themes, that of the Superflat. This theory is the result of Murakami's attempt to address some of the questions that are inherent in any discussion about art and life, but in a uniquely Japanese way. Murakami's main focus is the gulf between what is regarded as high and low art in traditional Japanese society. As he sees it, Japan's traditional culture has been diluted since his country's defeat in World War Two and has become increasingly dominated by Western influences; Superflat is Murakami's attempt to redress the balance. In Monokoke, Murakami 's theory confronts these issues in a number of ways. By painting an image inspired by Japan's obsession with the distinctive branch of animation known as anime onto a canvas, Murakami collapses the distinction between fine art and contemporary culture.
Mononoke alludes to both an ancient tradition in Japanese folklore known as yokai and recent Japanese anime film and television series. Yokai more generally refers to supernatural beings in Japanese mythology, including shape shifters and animals that have mystical powers. Princess Mononoke was a 1997 anime film that centered on the ongoing struggle between man and the environment, more specifically the supernatural animal forces protecting the forest from decimation in the hands of profit-minded residents of aptly named Iron Town. The 2007 television series, Mononoke, documented the travels of the medicine seller as he faces the various mononoke or demons. In the present work, three Buddha-like figures hover above a lion, elephant and tiger who stand perched atop of a kaleidoscopic mound of skulls. The multi-colored, rolling eyes seem to convey that these figures are possessed, outside of the realm of natural. The psychedelic colors, whimsical patterns and cartoonish figures belie the sense of doom and overarching allusion to evil. With this combination of old and new, Murakami forges a new path for the culture of his homeland which embraces not only history and tradition, but also the kitsch reminders of his country's modern day obsession with cuteness, anime and manga.
The flat, pristine surfaces eliminated of all evidence of the brushstroke with Murakami establishing a relation between high and low art just as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein did when they incorporated mass culture in their own paintings. The tricolor background further alludes to the Ben-Day dot sunrise paintings of Lichtenstein from the 1960s, infusing yet another layer of formalist pop legacy into this impressive work. Recognizing the unique graphic history of Japan as evidenced in the manga notebooks of Katsushika Hokusai, Murakami's art argues that pioneering cartoonists after World War Two were continuing both formally and philosophically the lineage of the classical aesthetic of the non-receding plane and the production of non-hierarchical art.