A master of blending genres on the canvas

Takashi Murakami paints outside the box in Perrotin solo show

- BY JESSICA GELT

IN HIS art show in L.A., the founder of the Superflat art movement explores the influence of the ukiyoe genre on Impressionists.

(ARIANA DREHSLER For The Times)

After the COVID-19 pandemic, Takashi Murakami felt like he was losing his way. His generation of artists, he thought, was increasingly untethered from a concrete movement or theme.

"The art had become more and more about a struggle against the market or within the market," he says through a translator during a recent interview at Perrotin Los Angeles on the afternoon of the opening of his new show, "Hark Back to Ukiyo-e: Tracing Superflat to Japonisme’s Genesis.”

Featuring 24 new paintings, the show explores how the Impressionists were influenced by the Japanese genre of ukiyo-e, which translates to "floating world pictures," and references Japanese woodblock prints and paintings made during the Edo period (between 1615-1867). The colorful artworks largely depict the sensual hedonistic lifestyles of city dwellers including merchants, courtesans and kabuki actors.

Dressed in patchwork jeans, a faded denim jacket and a white long sleeve shirt, Murakami reveals how a recent trip to Claude Monet’s house and gardens in Giverny, France, cemented his understanding of the fundamental connections between genres.

"I came to [Monet's] garden for inspiration and I thought, ‘OK, we can do anything,’" Murakami says, adding that contemplating the Impressionist legend's unconventional world helped him to become unstuck.

PAINTINGS by Japanese artist Takashi Murakami at his show at the Perrotin.