Catching Up with Takashi Murakami
An Overpriced JPEGs interview with the Legendary Artist
Here at Overpriced JPEGs, we’re big fans of Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, so when we heard rumblings of new projects and a gallery exhibition on the horizon, we jumped at the opportunity to sit down with the eclectic creator.
In the ever-evolving landscape of digital art, few artists have been as transformative as Takashi, whose wide-ranging body of work marries pop culture with history and fine art. After ‘awakening to the metaverse’ while watching his kids interact with video games during the pandemic, Murakami quickly took to NFTs, collaborating with RTFKT Studios on Clone X and launching his own collection, Murakami.Flowers, last spring.
A pop-culture icon himself, Takashi’s teamed up with several fashion brands, from Supreme to Louis Vuitton, and his celeb collectors include Leo, Biebs, and Drizzy - whose custom Murakami concert grand piano once adorned the cover of Architectural Digest.
Takashi and Pharrell’s 2009 collab piece ‘The Simple Things’ is being sold this month as a part of the ‘Just Phriends’ auction, and this Saturday, June 10, he’s kicking off a new exhibition at the Gagosian gallery in Le Bourget, France.
His new exhibit, Understanding the New Cognitive Domain, exemplifies Takashi’s continued convergence of the art world’s past and future, with paintings paying homage to traditional Japanese Kabuki and figurines drawing on the futuristic anime-style avatars from Clone X.
🚨 Alpha Alert: To commemorate the occasion, he’s designed a Flower Jet Coin NFT mintable IRL by anyone attending the opening reception in France. 👀
We caught up with Takashi, who shares what he’s been up to, how he’s playing the current market, and whether he’s embracing AI in his artwork.
Can we get a vibes check? How are you feeling generally about the NFT market these days?
I can imagine that those who have made a killing with NFTs over the past two years or so must be very disappointed. As a contemporary artist, however, I’ve experienced long periods of not being successful financially, and I think now is a time to wait and see.
Like waves, the art market sometimes suddenly bounces up and all the works in the inventory are sold, and there are other times when nothing sells well and the inventory accumulates.
Regardless of those ups and downs in the market, what is important is what and how artists themselves think and express.
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You’ve had a long-standing relationship with several traditional art galleries while also exploring the digital space? How do you see the role of traditional galleries evolving with the rise of digital arts and NFTs?
I’m 61 years old now, and I can’t abruptly and suddenly announce myself as an NFT artist. My theme, rather, is to explore what kind of structure NFT art can add to or inject in the history of art. Since I’m not thinking of something revolutionary like young people, I think I’ll continue my relationship with traditional galleries as before.
If young people on the other hand manage to turn everything upside down, I want to learn about and be impressed by their world and say, “Wow! I see!”
How do you see traditional art mediums and digital art coexisting in the future?
When I was in high school, TAITO’s tabletop game Space Invaders became popular, and like many other young people of that time, I was addicted to it and frequented coffee shops to play it.
In that sense, to me digital art has always been linked to game culture, and I don’t have a very intricate sense or concept of digital art imprinted in my brain. I have quite a primitive notion linking video games with digital visuals.
Tell us about the piece you’ve contributed to Pharell’s ‘Just Phriends’.
About 20 years ago, Pharrell got acquainted with my gallerist, Perrotin, and he started exhibiting and selling chairs and other furniture of his own creation at the gallery. Around that time, Pharrell wanted to meet me, so we met in Paris and, immediately, he asked me to make a case for the pieces of jewelry he had designed, and the collaboration was launched.
I mulled over different possibilities, at first thinking of a glass case, but somehow I ended up with a sculptural piece. The work was first released at Perrotin’s booth at Art Basel and, I think, it was purchased jointly by two female clients. I assume the work has since left their hands and is being reintroduced to the market once again. I pray that the world will become what Pharrell envisions!
How do you approach collabs and commissions? Do you try to get on a regular cadence, or are there certain brands or people you align with?
Ever since my first collaboration with Louis Vuitton, I have had many projects with LVMH brands. In addition to myself, when artists that my company, Kaikai Kiki, represents collaborate with various brands, there is always a complicated process of scrutinizing and negotiating contracts, which is quite difficult for artists who have focused on painting pictures to handle.
So we help them through the process, and because we’re able to handle them efficiently, we can create a flow of respect from an artist’s standpoint. At least I imagine that's why we get a lot of collaboration offers, but I wonder?
"Working with Takashi is a dream come true, he is a force that motivates you to always think further, and welcomes all our ideas, it’s the dream collaboration where we manage to create experiences together that we would never be able to do on our own. It’s what collaborations should always thrive to be: Genuine, original and exciting.” - Benoit Pagotto, Founder, RTFKT
As an artist who’s embraced emerging technologies, how do you see AI influencing the creative process? Are you using AI in your art or workflow at all?
In creating new works, I’ve been using AI since around February this year to generate different variations of my ideas in shapes and colors that I would never have thought of. Recently, however, image generation by AI has been evolving so much so rapidly that images that are nearly complete can be produced with the push of a button.
I’m very excited about the new possibilities going forward, because I have a feeling I’ll get to create paintings that I myself have never seen before.
For the past two months, I’ve been giving my staff who handle design and 3D data a break from the usual production so that they can spend some time learning AI, and I expect and am hopeful that the results of this effort will start to emerge very soon.
How would you feel about someone creating AI art in your name or style? Would you consider it flattery or an infringement on your artistic identity?
I really don’t know what to expect in this area yet, but I imagine that I’ll have issues with works that clearly violate my territory by copying the format of my work. I’ll have to take those on a case-by-case basis.
You’ve mentioned that you’re planning to resume working on your CGI film, Jellyfish Eyes 2, which was put on hold due to the pandemic. The clips you shared were impressive. Could you share more about what we can expect from this film?
I made the financial decision to stop working on the film in April 2020 and completely disbanded the production team for the time being. However, by August that year, our company’s situation had recovered and we had some visions for the future. So that December, I started talking to various people, and we’re now working with the famous director Takashi Miike on the continuation of the film.
Mr. Miike re-edited the film and cut some scenes. We’re currently in the process of creating about 1,000 new CG scenes. Our goal is to complete the project in 2024, and we’re doing our absolute best, but CGI is still a complex process.
In the age of the creator economy, what’s been your approach to social media? Do you run your own social channels?
I do all of my own Instagram posts. There are also pages for Kaikai Kiki Gallery [and various other projects we manage], but I only manage my own page, Tonari no Totoya, Murakami Flowers, and Tonari no Otakara. The rest is handled by Kaikai Kiki staff.
However, since Instagram activity has decreased so much recently, I’ve started using TikTok for things like job postings for my company for starters!
Are you buying any NFTs in this market? Which artists should people be paying attention to?
Recently, I’ve formed a business alliance with NiftyKit, a company I met through my NFT project, and am forming a deep relationship with them to design the future of the NFT business.
I’m also focused on the production of the projects I’m involved in, such as Murakami Flowers, RTFKT projects, and my protégé, Mr., has a new NFT release.
At the moment, the cryptocurrency market isn’t so volatile, so I occasionally purchase a little bit of artwork that I’m interested in, but I no longer purchase at the astonishingly high prices that I used to in 2021 and 2022.
Drop us a comment or hit us on Twitter with your thoughts on Takashi’s interview and who we should chat with next!
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