Takashi Murakami

I went to Santa Monica last night to meet up with an MIT friend, Carter. After eating dinner at a Japanese curry house, we walked around the surrounding stores so we can make some room for dessert. One of the stores he showed me was called Giant Robot, which is where I became introduced to Takashi Murakami. He's a really amazing artist who is pretty much like the Andy Warhol of the 21st century. The subject matter of most of his artworks (that I've seen so far) is about high and low culture- the obsessive [Japanese] consumerism, the meaning of nonsense, shallowness of today's consumer-driven culture etc. The artwork itself is very interesting as well. He is definitely influenced by Warhol and Lichtenstein, but somehow fuses their styles with that of anime and manga. According to wikipedia and other sites I browsed through, this new style that Murakami developed is called "Superflat", referring to the flattened forms of his figures. The figures are cartoons with bright colors everywhere. Their eyes definitely remind me of anime like Sailor Moon (the only anime I've ever seen in my life). Murakami also takes his art to a very interesting level. While a lot of his paintings, exhibitions, and sculptures are on exhibit in many prominent art galleries, he also puts his artwork on consumer goods (kind of ironic I think...) like keychains, t-shirts, toys, you name it. Carter even told me that he's selling some kind of keychain for Louis Vuitton...I may have that wrong, but I know he's making something for that designer. All in all, I've never artwork quite like this, and I definitely recommend everyone to check out his artwork. It's kind of amazing, and seeing his work just reminded me how much I love looking at / analyzing people's creations :o)