Even though Takashi Murakami’s work is generally linked to these two disciplines, he mainly focuses on producing paintings, illustrations and murals, in fact he’s stated in more than one occasion that he doesn’t know much about fashion, and that when he’s working he listens to generic Youtube playlists titled something like Best dance music . But still, his multiple collaborations with Louis Vuitton, creating the emblematic multicolour Monogram that marked the 2000s, are now legendary; and he has also worked with other urban brands such as Vans or Nike. But how did people begin to link his work with hip hop?
It was the year 2007, Kanye West had launched his first album College Dropout , which was acclaimed by critics and the public, and he had planned on dropping Graduation: which in the cover would appear the – already iconic – same mascot as the first one, a bear, which matured and showed its evolution by graduating from university. By pure coincidence, right before releasing his album, he went to a Murakami exhibition and was flabbergasted by his work. Clearly, we could say that he loved his art, which makes a lot of sense as Kanye has always been a fan of anime, an aesthetic that Murakami shares; without going too far Akira is one of his biggest inspirations (go watch his Stronger video). This is how the artist would end up making a comic version of the bear for the cover. Yet still, Murakami’s work goes further than just a cute aesthetic, what’s referred to in Japanese as “kawaii”.
Murakami’s known to have created a new artistic movement, which he calls Superflat, where he elevates the anime aesthetic and tries to blur any kind of lines, which for example would normally separate what’s 2D with what’s 3D or the kawaii from the macabre. He has been able to break all kind of stigmas and stereotypes that surround the idea of what makes an artist or a contemporary artist, becoming some kind of a successor to Warhol. The American artist used icons from pop culture, whilst Murakami has been able to create new icons with characters like Kiki and Kaikai, who looks as if they were taken out if an anime.
Going back to why Kanye fell in love with Murakami’s work, another thing that drew his attention was the number of projects and different disciplines he was involved in, as Kanye was reminded of another creative that had revolutionised another creative industry… None other than himself, Kanye West, who we now well know has been able to pave his way through the fashion world. Besides, the hip hop world is full of renaissance men, like Pharrell Williams or Kid Cudi, who by chance have also collaborated with the Japanese artist, that’s why we can appreciate how much of an influence Murakami has on this genre.
Lastly, we can talk about a pearl of wisdom that Murakami once dropped on an interview. He has compared the roots of hip hop to those of contemporary art in Japan. Hip hop in the ‘80s and ‘90s was heavily criticised for being a kind of music that only people from the ghetto would listen to, but nowadays it’s receiving the kind of recognition it deserves. Likewise, as the Japanese society is very classic, contemporary art was undervalued, and was considered as something banal instead of intellectual, but with the arrival of artists like Murakami that opinion has begun to change from the beginning of the 21st century onwards. And so both genres have been fighting the same battle and they’ve finally managed to win the war.
