If you are in touch with the pop art scene, then you are probably familiar with the infamous Murakami Flower: a multicolored flower with beady eyes and a bright smile. Takashi Murakami’s artwork has always been a prominent element of pop culture—most notably for Kanye West, appearing in the 2007 album Graduation and his 2018 collab album Kids See Ghosts with Kid Cudi. Murakami himself collaborated with Billie Eilish for their limited edition Uniqlo clothing line, and his creative influence even made an appearance in Mitty’s own Visual Art 1 assignment on yōkai. 

Takashi Murakami’s first ever solo exhibit in the Bay Area, Takashi Murakami: People—Swelling of Monsterized Human Ego, opened to the public on September 15, 2023 at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco and runs until February. This showcase contains over 73 of his art pieces, with his most recent creation: the remarkable 83-foot long painting Judgement Day depicting the Japanese Buddhist lord of hell, Enma-ō, surrounded by creatures from the Japanese Edo art period.

Murakami’s exhibition was set to be showcased years ago. However, due to the pandemic, there were delays. Although the enforced quarantine confined people to the walls of their home, it could not restrict Murakami’s creativity. After the start of COVID-19, he began to produce the star of the show: the Unfamiliar People series. This series stems from his view on how cyberspace has affected people since the pandemic. He was inspired by the “formation of new types of ego and the loss of substance in communication caused by social media” and personifies them through portraits of misshapen characters. In the process of designing, he observed that “after the pandemic started, some people who used to live normal lives started to loudly voice strong opinions…or started attacking others out of an astonishingly intense sense of fear.” He had a hard time understanding the distance of new relationships mediated by social media, and it troubled him.

Although Murakami’s signature paintings are depictions of monsters decked in a myriad of vivid colors, my favorite section of the exhibit would have to be his Tranquility Zone, with a painting of fish swimming in a pond named Qinghua: Grass Carp, Chinese Perch, and Lotus Flowers. The 31-foot-wide piece almost serves as a remedy to the calamity and vibrancy of his monster paintings, promoting serenity with every stroke of blue acrylic. This specific painting was inspired by Murakami’s encounter with a Chinese porcelain jar from the Yuan dynasty during his first solo show in 1991. The jar brought up past memories of his childhood: fishing with his dad at the nearby river and raising different kinds of fish, including carp. 

Takashi Murakami: Unfamiliar People—Swelling of Monsterized Human Ego displays Murakami’s great skill in connecting traditional Japanese art styles with elements of contemporary art and depicts our digital monsterization in scary, yet mesmerizing ways.