Takashi Murakami interview: 'I realised the importance of creating art that people truly want'

Sporting a salt-and-pepper beard, Japanese artist Takashi Murakami is candid about his age. The artist, who will be 62 years old by the time his solo exhibition opens in Kyoto this February, often references his numbered days and remarks that each exhibition could be his last. Despite this, he maintains a vibrant global presence, jet-setting to international festivals like Art Basel Hong Kong and sitting in front-row seats at Paris Fashion Week.

Most of the time, Murakami embodies a unique duality: on one hand, he appears as a weary elder artist, sceptical about the world and its inhabitants, influenced by his extensive life experiences. On the other, he exudes a youthful exuberance, eager to explore new horizons and embrace technological novelties like Non-Fungible Tokens and AI chatbots. This dichotomy is reflected in his art and his founding of the Superflat movement in 2001, which merges modern manga and anime aesthetics with inspirations from Edo-period (1603-1868) art.

This February, Murakami’s solo exhibition at the Kyoto City Kyocera Museum of Art showcases his fusion of ancient art with post-modern pop culture. In our interview, we delve into Murakami’s past and present and his perspectives on the evolving art world.

Your work receives an astounding amount of global recognition, shared by only a few of your Japanese contemporaries. What aspects of Japanese art do you think resonate most with global audiences? What are the next steps for more Japanese artists to be recognised abroad?

I seem to have managed quite the right blend of cultures, taking on Japan’s post-World War II culture head on, moving back and forth between it and the classical Japanese pictorial form, and using Western-style grammar to express myself. The next steps for Japanese artists would be to learn English and not to be afraid of contracts. Don’t skimp on legal fees, you know?

You've shown your art at venues abroad such as in Paris and San Francisco. How is it different from exhibiting in Japan?

When I exhibit abroad, the curators at each museum all have their own ways of going about things. They tend to want to highlight things like the impact of anime and manga on my work, or what I refer to as Superflat. For example, for the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, their curator Laura Allen, who is an expert on Japanese art, asked me for a fusion of my latest ideas and Japanese classics.

In Japan, rather than approaching me through the Superflat lens, curators tend to focus on things like my background in Nihonga painting or how I’m influenced by classical Japanese art.

You’ve often referred to some of your works, like ‘My Lonesome Cowboy’, as ‘stupid’ or ‘silly’. But that piece fetched $15.2 million in a 2008 auction. There seems to be a contrast between how you value your own work and how it’s valued by collectors.

I was puzzled by that price at first, but then I spent a lot of time at galleries in New York, buying art to understand price ranges. I learned the reality of what goes into art prices. It sounds obvious, but the reason an artwork sells at a high price is that several people are willing to pay that much for it.

In other words, I realised the importance of creating art that people truly want. I reinvented myself – really started spending the time and money I needed on research, brainstorming, experimentation and results – to be able to create works worthy of such prices.

What are your thoughts on the future of traditional art mediums?

Real appreciation of painting, which is a form of entertainment, will endure. Just the other day, I was at the Musée d’Orsay [in Paris] and was struck by the amount of detail in Monet’s paintings. That experience resembled the one I had marvelling over the extraordinary detail in a pencil drawing of the battleship Wunder, done for one of the ‘Rebuild of Evangelion’ films. Looking at it, I could almost hear the breath of the artist. I believe this kind of experience, of appreciating something handmade, won’t just go away.

Given the increasing digitisation of our world and the rising prominence of virtual and augmented realities, how do you envision the future of contemporary art?

Simply put, discovery is the most important component of any artistic experience. It’s like Archimedes’ Eureka moment – the ability of an artwork to turn your brain upside down and rewire your thinking when you see it or learn the artist’s concept for it. Art will remain relevant as long as it can produce that experience.

NFTs, which you’ve recently explored, have seen a significant decrease in their value. Do you think there’s still a place in the art market for NFTs?

Virtual reality will keep moving forward. People who aren’t interested in art and entered the NFT art market just to speculate have been selling off their collections, but those who understand the ideational value of NFT art have retained theirs – and many are buying more now that prices have gone down. I’m convinced that another NFT boom will come along in the next five years, and the people who threw away their collections will be kicking themselves.

Throughout your career, you’ve engaged in both merchandising projects and the creation of art. How do you navigate the balance between these two aspects of your career, ensuring that your artistic vision and integrity are maintained even in commercial endeavours?

Let’s say you watch anime on TV, fall in love with that world and want to buy a toy related to that show, right? Back when I was a kid, people [making those toys] weren’t able to properly recreate anime worlds in real life due to stuff like technical or budget constraints. I remember being frustrated by the quality [of figurines and other toys]. [The reason I do merchandising] is that it can be a way to fulfil children’s dreams, since having creators be involved throughout the [merchandising] process can help break down barriers [that hold quality back].

A lot of artists these days, including yourself, are branching out into merchandising. Why is that?

The music industry is way ahead of art in this. Musicians were all over merchandising back when MTV was at its height.

Musicians were making music and videos, touring and creating merchandise, and had such an influence on society. But one day, all of a sudden, that ended with programs like Napster, which erased the value of music [as a product]. This forced the music industry to restructure and pivot to a completely different model. We’re now seeing a different way of doing business, as many artists focus on live shows as their main source of revenue rather than relying on earnings from streaming.

Simply put, merchandising in art is done because it sells. I think [merchandising] is booming because the public wants rich, comprehensive artistic experiences, but just like with music, one day people will tire of all that, and the art world will have to undergo the same kind of restructuring as we saw in the music industry.

You have previously said that Japanese people ‘hate’ your characters and artistic philosophy because you do a lot of lucrative projects. Do you still feel the same way?

For people under 25 these days, being an artist is something glamorous and I’m seen as this old ‘art guy’ who’s been around for ages. They treat me pretty neutrally, so no, I don’t feel hated in that sense. But the people who make society go round, people my age, still hate me – no change there.

You’re about to hold a solo exhibition for the 90th anniversary of the Kyoto City Kyocera Museum of Art. Do you feel like you’re finally accepted and celebrated by the Japanese art community?

I think the only public museums in Japan to have my work in their collections are the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa and the National Museum of Art, Osaka. Compared to what I’ve been doing internationally, I guess I’d say [the Japanese art community] still gives me the cold shoulder.

This seems like a milestone exhibition. How did it come about?

Shinya Takahashi, a former executive at Mori Building, who after leaving that company returned to his native Kyoto and became the general manager of the Kyoto City Kyocera Museum of Art [formerly the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art], invited me to participate in the exhibition held after that museum’s renovation [and rebranding in 2020]. Mr. Takahashi is someone I trust, so I accepted with the conviction that he’d be able to accommodate my requests.

How did you approach creating this exhibition? And what do you want to achieve with this exhibition?

My theme was to push the limits of my imagination and the capacity of my studio. And I’ve created 150 completely new paintings for it.

Shinya Takahashi, general manager of the Kyoto City Kyocera Museum of Art and the de facto curator of the exhibition, asked me to delve into the history of Kyoto. His first request was for me to create a work themed on Iwasa Matabei’s [early 17th century] ‘Rakuchu rakugai-zu (Scenes in and Around the Capital)’. He beseeched me to express the wild contrast between the touristy Kyoto of today and the Kyoto of old, where people lived among terrifying monsters, and I was convinced.

Iwasa Matabei’s painting features some 2,800 human characters, plus all sorts of animals, baskets, mats, trees and more – a total of more than 4,000 distinct items. Just keeping up with all that was hard. In order to express the customs of old Kyoto, I enlisted the help of four assistants to a certain famous manga author. Luckily they had just finished a major series and had time to spare before the next one. They also helped me check the historical accuracy of the images.

The theme of the exhibition is a mixture of Kyoto’s history and my own, blended in the mind of Shinya Takahashi.

It’s been over 20 years since you conceived Superflat as an artistic movement. How do you think this movement has evolved in the years since your 2000 exhibition and how do you think it might expand in the future?

I don’t think it’s outlived its purpose yet. That’s because social media has made society itself superflat. In the end, I think this is driving anger and egoism. Things are getting out of control, and we’re moving toward a pretty dark place. In that sense, we’re seeing the ‘dark side’ of superflat, the negative consequences of it. I think the superflat-isation of society, driven by social media, will continue for another decade or two, so I think [Superflat] will remain an instructive term in the near future.

In your last interview with Time Out Tokyo in 2016, you mentioned that you collect your hair and fingernails in case there’s a use for them in a technologically advanced future. Do you still do this? How do you plan to use them?

I still do it, and have amassed a pretty big collection. I hope they can be displayed in a museum or somewhere after my death, so people can have fun looking at them and going, ‘Yuck!’