Superflat
Superflat is the movement Takashi Murakami launched with an exhibition of that name in Tokyo in 2000: flat, brightly coloured, graphic art that joins the traditions of Japanese painting to anime, manga and the consumer culture of postwar Japan.
Takashi Murakami had wanted to work in animation, but at Tokyo University of the Arts he trained in Nihonga, the traditional Japanese painting in mineral pigments, and took a doctorate in it in 1993. By then he had invented a cartoon alter ego, Mr. DOB. After a year on a residency in New York in 1994 he set up a production studio, the Hiropon Factory, in 1996; it became the company Kaikai Kiki in 2001. His Superflat manifesto, published in 2000 in the catalogue of an exhibition he curated at the Parco Gallery in Tokyo, argued that a flatness running from Edo-period painters such as Itō Jakuchū and Katsushika Hokusai to modern anime was a Japanese way of seeing, and that postwar Japan had flattened the difference between high and low culture as well.
The first show, at Parco, brought painters, animators, photographers and designers together: Yoshitomo Nara, Chiho Aoshima, the animator Kōji Morimoto and the artist known as Mr. among them. Enlarged, it opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in January 2001 and travelled to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle. Murakami followed it with Coloriage at the Fondation Cartier in Paris in 2002 and, in 2005, Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture at Japan Society in New York, named after the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Kaikai Kiki took on younger artists such as Aya Takano, who had started as his assistant, and his art fair GEISAI, from 2002, was a place to find more. His collaboration with Louis Vuitton, begun in 2002 at the invitation of Marc Jacobs, carried the look far beyond the art world.
At a glance
- When
- 2000 to today
- Where
- Tokyo
- Leading artists
- Takashi Murakami, Yoshitomo Nara, Aya Takano
Characteristics of Superflat
- Flatness
- Flat, unmodulated colour and crisp outlines, with little or no illusion of depth.
- Anime and manga
- Characters, huge eyes and the graphic shorthand of Japanese animation and comics.
- Japanese tradition
- Compositions taken from folding screens, scrolls and Edo-period prints: in Murakami's 727, Mr. DOB rides a wave after Hokusai.
- Cute and dark
- Kawaii sweetness with something worse underneath: skulls, mutant mushrooms, knives and the memory of the bomb.
- High and low
- Paintings, sculpture, prints, toys and fashion from the same studio, with no line drawn between them.
Superflat artists
Every artist below has a page on this site, with a short biography and what a valuation of their work turns on.
Superflat
- Takashi MurakamiOffset editions of three hundred are described as limited artworks daily, and they are not the same thing as a painting.
- Yoshitomo NaraDraws one child, alone, faintly hostile, and has done for thirty-five years.
- Aya TakanoSuperflat painter of long-limbed girls drifting through futuristic, dreamlike worlds.
Famous Superflat works
- 727Takashi Murakami, 1996, Museum of Modern Art, New York
- HiroponTakashi Murakami, 1997
- My Lonesome CowboyTakashi Murakami, 1998
- Knife Behind BackYoshitomo Nara, 2000
What a valuation turns on
Superflat was made to be sold in more than one form, and a valuation starts by establishing which one a work is. Murakami's paintings and sculptures are unique, or made in very small numbers by his studio; his offset prints of flowers and characters are published in editions of three hundred, signed and numbered, and are what most owners have; below those come toys, plush figures and merchandise, which are collected but are a different market altogether.
For a print, the signature and number, the certificate or receipt, and the condition of the sheet decide most of it: the bright colours fade in sunlight, and trimmed or creased sheets are common. Nara's paintings, his works on paper and his prints are separate markets too, and his drawings, often on envelopes and scraps of paper, need their provenance checked as carefully as a painting's.
Common questions
What is Superflat?
Superflat is the movement Takashi Murakami launched in 2000: flat, brightly coloured, graphic art that links the flat picture space of traditional Japanese painting to anime, manga and the consumer culture of postwar Japan, and treats high art and commercial product as one.
Who started Superflat?
Takashi Murakami, with the exhibition Superflat, which he curated at the Parco Gallery in Tokyo in 2000, and the manifesto in its catalogue. The show toured the United States in 2001, starting at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.
Who are the Superflat artists?
Takashi Murakami, Yoshitomo Nara, Chiho Aoshima, Aya Takano and the artist known as Mr., with younger painters such as Ayako Rokkaku and Tomokazu Matsuyama often grouped with them.
Is Yoshitomo Nara a Superflat artist?
He took part in the first Superflat exhibition in 2000 and is usually grouped with Murakami, but his solitary, sulky children come as much from punk records and his twelve years in Germany, where he studied at the Düsseldorf academy under A. R. Penck, as from anime.
How do I sell a Murakami print?
Send photographs of the front, the signature and edition number, the back, and any certificate or receipt, for a free, confidential valuation. We confirm the edition and check the condition, fading above all, then compare a confidential private sale with auction.
