Superflat Takashi Murakami

Somehow Japan is really good at taking English words, combining them in unlikely ways and exporting them back to the West as a brand new thing. Think about the Walkman, for instance. The term I'm bringing up here however is ''superflat''. Japanese artist Takashi Murakami is a pioneer. His art screams in wild colours and outrageous characters with roots in anime and pop art (like Warhol's). He creates things in many media and he's able to merge all of them into one unified entity, hence the ''flattening'' (not 'flat' as in lacking). Truly something I'd like to try.

Anyway, this video provides some insight into his art and how the new wave of Japanese art owes to his particularly crazy and colourful mindview:

Warning: if you get offended by strange things, then don't watch this. Open your mind a little and maybe you won't get offended =P



And here I have the two adverts which he made for Louis Viutton. I say the first one was a mixture of crazy awesome music by the Fantastic Plastic Machine with Murakami's distinctively seizure-inducing colour explosion. The second one looks like a continuation a few years later, but it lacks the bang of the first loco one.



And



Seen enough? Kaikai Kiki Co., an artists' collective founded by Murakami himself. Apparently, they are working on a film called Kaikai & Kiki, to be released this year, featuring many of Murakami's brainchildren. More of this infectious stuff:



Now let's see, what will this mean outside of Japan?