JAPANESE ART HISTORY À LA TAKASHI MURAKAMI

Gagosian is pleased to announce Japanese Art History à la Takashi Murakami, an exhibition of new paintings by Murakami.

December 10, 2024 – March 8, 2025

In this presentation, the artist pursues his fascination with the narrative of Japanese art by offering his own interpretations of historical paintings. By “Murakamizing” these iconic images, he ponders the erosion of the nation’s ancient splendor; he also considers the ways in which it has been impacted by new aesthetics and values associated with its opening to the West after the end of the Edo period (1603–1868).

Murakami’s paintings of the Four Symbols, mythical guardians of Kyoto, pair each of their subjects with metropolitan locations aligned with the four compass directions: the Black Tortoise is associated with Mount Funaoka and Mount Kitayama in the north of the city; the Blue Dragon with the Kamo River in the east; the Vermilion Bird with Ogura Pond in the south; and the White Tiger with the San’indo Highway in the west. To arrive at these juxtapositions, Murakami combined his own sketches with AI-generated images and fragments of his earlier works in a process that parallels the inventiveness of earlier artists in depicting unfamiliar or imaginary creatures.

Among the other works in the exhibition are figure and flower paintings, including a tondo. In one, Murakami reworks a set of Daigo Hanami-zu screens from the collection of the National Museum of Japanese History in Sakura that depicts a cherry blossom viewing event on the grounds of Kyoto’s Daigoji Temple; in another, he reinterprets a pair of Kiku-zu screens by Koˉrin that portray chrysanthemums in white, green, black, and gold. A version of an additional screen by the same artist features bunches of hollyhocks in red, pink, and white, while a work inspired by a screen from the collection of the Artizon Museum, Tokyo, reproduces a composition of hollyhocks and peacocks.

The tondo features aqueous patterns, or “Koˉrin Water,” and repeating chrysanthemums, motifs developed by Koˉrin that sometimes also appear on kimono fabric. In this bridging of art and fashion, Koˉrin, who was the son of a kimono merchant, could be considered Murakami’s creative forerunner.