KYOTO–Internationally renowned artist Takashi Murakami is back in Japan with his first large-scale solo exhibition in his home country in eight years.
Organized by The Asahi Shimbun and other entities, the “Takashi Murakami Mononoke Kyoto” event is being held at the Kyoto City Kyocera Museum of Art’s Higashiyama Cube until Sept. 1.
Murakami, 62, is known for his bold contemporary art pieces that combine classic Japanese paintings with modern Japanese pop culture, such as anime and manga.
He calls his art movement “superflat,” since it uses a “flat” aesthetic common across Japanese art styles and because mixing high and lowbrow art forms is different from class structures in the Western art world.
“Manga and otaku cultures, which are not considered ‘high art’ in Japan, have become culturally powerful worldwide,” he said.
Th exhibition features Murakami’s reimaginings of works by master painters from Kyoto, alongside Murakami’s reimaginings of his own works from his earlier career.
Visitors to the venue are first greeted by the artist’s spectacular new painting titled “Rakuchu Rakugai Zu Iwasa Matabei rip,” which measures about 13 meters long.
The piece vividly shows a bird’s-eye view of Kyoto, populated by well over 2,000 samurai and townsfolk. It is based on “Rakuchu Rakugai Zu” (Scenes in and around the capital), a 17th-century national treasure painted by Iwasa Matabei.
Murakami’s versions of the wind and thunder gods were adapted from Tawaraya Sotatsu’s “Wind God and Thunder God Screens,” which are also national treasures.
The exhibition also features DOB, a round-faced character that Murakami uses to represent himself and Japanese people as a whole.
“When I think about what Japan needs to confront the West, I have no choice but to analyze what makes the Japanese people Japanese,” Murakami said. “The world can be changed with art.”
However, because the nature of his stance is hardly accepted in the country, Murakami said that he doesn’t want to hold solo exhibitions in Japan in the future.
The venue is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., with the last entry at 5:30 p.m.
It is closed on Mondays except national holidays.
Admission is 2,200 yen ($14.80) for adults, 1,500 yen for college and vocational school students, 1,000 yen for senior high school students and free for junior high school students and younger children.
For more information, visit the official website at: (https://takashimurakami-kyoto.exhibit.jp/en/).
