Japanese contemporary artist Takashi Murakami is known as the holy hand of "healing painting", and his artistic symbol has always been a colorful, childish and cute sunflower, but between 2011 and 2012, Murakami Takashi's painting style has changed dramatically, creating a grotesque and funny "Luohan Tu", and the "Luohan" series of works has also become his representative works without dispute. On April 27, 2022, Takashi Murakami's Sixty-Nine Arhats Under the Bodhi Tree will be unveiled at the Hong Kong Sotheby's Contemporary Art Evening Sale.
Takashi Murakami, "Sixty-Nine Arhats Under the Bodhi Tree"
Takashi Murakami's Sixty-Nine Arhats Under the Bodhi Tree is huge, 10 meters long and 3 meters high, and was created in 2012. Deeply rooted in traditional Japanese culture and highly contemporary, the work shows Murakami Takashi's most classic and easily recognizable "ultra-flat" painting style, and the Luohan on the painting has a distinct kawaii style and anime elements although his expression is sinister and eccentric.
Takashi Murakami
Takashi Murakami is known for his flexible use of Japanese culture. Born in Tokyo in 1962, he graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts of Tokyo University of the Arts in 1986, majoring in Japanese Painting, and became the first recipient of a doctorate in Japanese painting from Tokyo University of the Arts in 1993. In 2001, Murakami Takashi held a touring exhibition in the United States, and initiated the term "Superflat" to describe the unique sense of shallowness and emptiness in Japanese consumer culture, which caused great repercussions, and Murakami became the founder of the "Ultra Flat Movement". In 2008, Takashi Murakami was named one of the "100 Most Influential People" by Time magazine.
The Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011
The 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake affected countless Contemporary Japanese artists, including Takashi Murakami, who was as far away as the United States at the time. He was deeply shocked to learn about the destruction of his hometown and the casualties of the people through the media. In the face of great disasters, people feel powerless, but even so, they still have to continue to live. Realizing that art, like faith, can help soothe social unrest and trauma, Takashi Murakami began creating the "Arhat" series in the second half of 2011.
Murakami Takashi's "Arhat" series of creative manuscripts
Takashi Murakami spent several months studying the atlases, notes, and allusions to the Arhats. In Murakami Takashi's view, the mythical Arhat is the Heavenly Regiment that relieves the heavenly beings, and he hopes to tell the story of how to get rid of the five hundred kinds of hardships and disasters of mortals through the story of the five hundred arhats.
Takashi Murakami said that after a huge natural disaster, everyone began to think positively about the balance between life and death, and the theme of the five hundred arhats seemed to become relevant to us in an instant.
Part of Takashi Murakami's "Five Hundred Arhats"
Murakami Takashi's "Luohan" series of large-scale paintings is only 4 pieces, each of which is a large scale, especially the 100-meter-long "Five Hundred Arhats" painted in 2012, which depicts 500 luohans with different postures. Takashi Murakami also painted "One Hundred Arhats", "Sixty-Nine Arhats Under the Bodhi Tree" and "Red Ghost, Green Ghost and Forty-Eight Arhats", depicting 100, 69 and 48 different forms of arhats respectively, and the movements, expressions, postures, and costume characteristics of the characters are delicate and diverse, which is dazzling.
In the process of studying the history and artistic image of The Arhats, he was greatly inspired by the 19th-century Japanese shogunate painter Kazunobu Kano's "Five Hundred Arhats". Kazunobu Kano's work is inspired by the Great Ansei Earthquake of 1855, in which the Arhat saves the people from suffering.
Kazunobu Kano,"Five Hundred Arhats"
Takashi Murakami said that in the past, when a disaster occurred, monks would paint to those who suffered. I use the Five Hundred Arhats as a solace painting, perhaps my Guernica.
The same series of "Five Hundred Arhats" is the largest painting by Takashi Murakami, which is currently the largest painting on the auction floor, and has also been exhibited at the Royal Palace of Milan, the Aschop Finnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and the Vancouver Art Museum.
Part of Takashi Murakami's "Sixty-Nine Arhats Under the Bodhi Tree"
In the painting "Sixty-Nine Arhats Under the Bodhi Tree", the arhats are all facing forward, and the demeanor and movements of each arhat are ever-changing; the Bodhi tree, as one of the three sacred trees of Buddhism, makes the painting full of auspiciousness and enlightenment; between the arhat and the sacred tree, there are many spiritual beasts, such as the bear body, elephant trunk, and rhinoceros tapir on the lion's side on the left hand of the picture, which feeds on human nightmares, and the fur can block disasters and add auspiciousness.
Sotheby's experts in Hong Kong interpret the tapir in the painting
In terms of creative style, "Sixty-Nine Arhats Under the Bodhi Tree" can be called the culmination of Murakami Takashi's various artistic styles. The artist adopts his unique "ultra-flat" style, the picture also contains ukiyo-e elements, and refers to the aesthetics of Japanese anime and Japanese kawaii (cute), a new interpretation of the time-honored traditional art image, injecting a cartoonish appearance into the image of Luohan, so the picture has a unique flavor and is full of fun. While thinking about the worries of the world, the arhats in the painting do not forget to smile and look at the wind and clouds, revealing the naughtiness and vitality of Murakami Takashi, and hope to give encouragement and comfort to the world through the paintings.
Sixty-Nine Arhats Under the Bodhi Tree, which has been exhibited in major art museums around the world
In the art market, only one of Murakami Takashi's large-scale "Arhats" series has been auctioned, and in 2021, "Red Ghost, Green Ghost and Forty-Eight Arhats" broke the auction record of Murakami's paintings for $6.08 million. Today, the sixty-nine arhats under the Bodhi Tree, which has doubled in size, is estimated at HK$23 million to HK$30 million, and it is not known whether it can achieve another good result.