In 1962 Takashi Murakami was born in Tokyo. He works in commercial and digital media as well as in fine arts media. The leading themes of his works are based on the pop-culture, later these ideas turned into sculptures, into so-called “Superflat” painting.
He was rewarded with a doctoral degree in style named Nihonga that emerged in the 19th century, which presents the art where Eastern and Western styles are mixed up. Almost immediately, due to the augmenting popularity of manga and anime, Murakami was interested in the culture of otaku movement and he supposed it to symbolize in many ways the contemporary Japanese culture.
Murakami created a new style in the fine art and called it “Superflat”, and it was characterized by the likeness to otaku culture and lifestyle, sexual fetishism and modern consumer society.
The remarkable Murakami’s works are “My Lonesome Cowboy” and “Hiropon”.
“My Lonesome Cowboy” describes an absolutely naked guy holding by his hand his erected penis and ejaculating a semen stream in the form of a lasso above his head.
“Hyropon” is a fiberglass sculpture which represents a female of the anime-type with enormously large breasts and with the bikini top which does not cover her breasts in sufficient way. Both his works supply the author’s point of view on the Japanese anime, on their meaningfully individual sexual content; these works also signify the consequences of the irresistible Western influence on the Japanese culture causing the appearance of some newly developed tendencies.
Identical to the very first cyborg Frankenstein, “Hyropon” and “My Lonesome Cowboy” stand for extra-large cyborg models stimulated by the postmodern society; designed from different fragments of Western and Eastern pop cultures. At the same time they empower and contradict the traditional positions, and thus create a starting point for a future dialogue.
Using such elements as popular culture, animations and cartoons, Murakami reveals the Japanese uniqueness which is influenced and developed by various factors in the background of the consumer culture. His works’ characters represent the illusory attractive creations and, as true cyborgs, at the same time identify the aspects of present-day world.
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