How Takashi Murakami Got His Start as an Artist | Hacker News Reader

How Takashi Murakami Got His Start as an Artist

artsy.net

59 pointskarimford9 comments

Murakami is a legend. If you like his stuff then you'll probably also like James Jean: http://www.jamesjean.com/

there are also tons of great jp artists who worked as murakami's assistants. jnthed comes to mind

>https://www.pixiv.net/en/users/4395

I see this site is doing the "incompatible with recent versions of Firefox" thing that steals the content away after displaying it for a split second, like imgur has also done (among others, I'm sure).

That said, I recommend reading the Superflat manifesto: https://www.amazon.com/Superflat-English-Japanese-Takashi-Mu... ...obviously this might be mentioned in the linked page that doesn't like me.

Wayback machine luckily has a copy: http://web.archive.org/web/20040319114336/http://www.hirokia...

For me, this text didn't just illuminate Murakami as an artist – it significantly altered how I think about media consumption, otaku (shut-in) culture and [post]post-modernity.

He's an interesting thinker, I saw him give a lecture at the Henry in Seattle many years ago, which opened my eyes to the many echoes of Hiroshima in anime.

Azuma’s discussion of otaku culture is nothing short of revelatory for anybody who looks at the proliferation of animanga imagery and associated ideas and is attempting to understand their underlying structure. The manuscript he mentions in that interview is now an excellent book - “Otaku - Japan’s Database Animals” - which expands heavily on the concepts he mentions here including further discussion of Murakami.

A friend of mine worked as an assistant in his studio in Brooklyn. One time Murikami sent someone out to pick up his lunch, and they brought back the wrong order. He got so angry that he knocked the bag out of her hands, and then punched her in the stomach (then fired her).

One of my favorite artists, I own several signed prints.

I remember seeing a show of his stuff at the Pacific Design Center in WeHo many years ago. Lovely.

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