Even if you aren’t personally familiar with famed Japanese contemporary artist Takashi Murakami, you have surely seen his work.
The pop artist’s brightly colored signature characters have appeared on everything from limited edition Louis Vuitton bags to Supreme shirts to Vans skateboarding shoes.
Having collaborated with celebrities like Drake, Kanye West and Billie Eilish, and institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art and Gagosian, Murakami is, without a doubt, one of the biggest “conventional” artists to try their hand at making nonfungible tokens (NFTs). Despite this, his projects still haven’t blown up to the extent of other prominent contemporary artists like Beeple.
Many are convinced that is set to change, claiming Murakami’s flowers are well on their way to becoming as iconic as CryptoPunks and Bored Apes. After a hotly anticipated but ultimately disappointing NFT launch that coincided with the 2022 crypto collapse, the artist is finally having another go at the medium. A new exhibit at San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum shows how Murakami creates original tokens from scratch.
High art and low art
While many take Murakami’s flowers at face value, there is more to them…
