MURAKAMI TURNS 64, STILL REWRITING ART'S RULES

## The Superflat Revolutionary Takashi Murakami (born February 1, 1962, Tokyo, Japan) is a Japanese artist and entrepreneur widely recognized for his ability to adapt the aesthetics of Japanese traditional art to operate within the context of popular culture. Today he turns 64, and his impact on culture remains unmatched. His style, which emphasized two-dimensional forms and bold, striking imagery, gave birth to an artistic movement known as Superflat, which not only acknowledged but glorified the interaction between the commercial and art worlds. This wasn't just aesthetic theory. It was cultural prophecy. Asked about straddling the line between art and commercial products, Murakami responded: I don't think of it as straddling. I think of it as changing the line... Japanese people accept that art and commerce will be blended; and in fact, they are surprised by the rigid and pretentious Western hierarchy of "high art." ## The Vuitton Revolution The Louis Vuitton and Takashi Murakami collaboration didn't just create handbags, it rewrote the rules of luxury, while generating over $300 million in the first year. In Paris, the collection sold out in a matter of hours. In New York, desperate shoppers added their names to a 7,000-name waiting list and on resale websites sellers doubled the original price. Marc Jacobs was six years into his role as Louis Vuitton's artistic director when he attended a Takashi Murakami exhibition at Paris's Fondation Cartier in 2002... Jacobs sent an email asking if Murakami would be interested in collaborating, and the artist said yes without hesitation. Murakami reimagined it entirely. He replaced the sacred brown and gold with candy colors on stark white and black fields, drawing from manga aesthetics and traditional Japanese family crests that had originally inspired Georges Vuitton's 1896 design. ## Generation Defining Imagery West collaborated with Japanese contemporary artist Takashi Murakami to oversee the art direction of Graduation as well as design the cover art for the album's accompanying singles. Often called "the Warhol of Japan", Murakami's surrealistic visual art is characterized by cartoonish creatures that appear friendly and cheerful at first glance, but possess dark, twisted undertones. The cover art for Graduation was cited as the fifth best album cover of the year by Rolling Stone. The sales battle [between Curtis and Graduation] serves as the final battle, the winner-take-all rumble between the present (thug rap) and the future (alternative rap) for rap supremacy. The fact that Graduation was both the bigger commercial and critical success was the death knell for thug rap, and correspondingly the Modernist movement of hip-hop. In 2018, Takashi Murakami collaborated with fashion designer Virgil Abloh on an artowrk series, mixing fashion with Murakami's art. The cross-pollination continues, from Nike collaborations to NFT experiments to whatever comes next. ## The Next 64 Years Murakami didn't just predict the future of culture. He created it. At 64, he's watching a generation raised on his visual language take over everything from fashion weeks to TikTok feeds. His flowers, his characters, his radical collapse of high and low have become the default setting for how young creatives think about art. The man who turned luxury bags into museum pieces and album covers into gallery walls isn't slowing down. He's still changing the line.