It is difficult to discuss Japanese contemporary art after 1989 without acknowledging Takashi Murakami. So representative is the artist of some of the major developments of the period — the revitalisation of the Tokyo art scene in the mid 1990s, the forays of art into the field of popular culture, and the growth of an international market for Japanese art (whose quirks Murakami would brilliantly exploit) — that he is, along with Yoko Ono and Yayoi Kusama, arguably one of the best‑known Japanese artists working today. Murakami’s innovation exceeds the simple reading that his works encompass the very contexts in which art is experienced and discussed, bought and sold. His studio, initially comprising a handful of assistants — mostly students and younger artists — has evolved into a multinational production house, artist management company and gallery chain. With Geisai, he created a biannual amateur art fair utterly indifferent to the established market and, beginning with ‘Superflat’ in 2000, he organised a series of exhibitions that have substantially inflected external perceptions of Japanese art.

Crucial to Murakami’s practice has been his appropriation of the iconography and methodology of manga and anime, right down to their production and distribution, coherent with his Superflat theory.¹ Before he created his parade of characters, which his studio produces in industrial quantities with minor variations — Mr DOB, Miss Ko, Machikado-kun, Masamune & Spica, and many others — Murakami made his name with a series of avant-gardist re-enactments and a ‘critical pop’ style utilising readymade objects in installations that were conspicuously critical of conservative ideologies in Japanese society. The shift within Murakami’s practice to a strategy of appropriating consumerist modes of production and distribution began with his 1994 exhibition ‘Which is Tomorrow? — Fall in Love’ at Tokyo’s SCAI the Bathhouse gallery, and its centrepiece painting And then, and then and then and then and then 1994.

The work marks one of the earliest appearances of Mr DOB, a slightly unhinged Mickey Mouse–type character. His name, Mr DOB, derives from an abbreviation of a nonsensical phrase ‘dobojite dobojite oshamanbe’ that alludes to several meanings — a phrase spoken by an ignorant protagonist in the popular manga serial Inakappe Taisho, launched in 1968 and produced as a TV animation series in the 1970s; the popular comedian Toru Yuri (1921–99), who used the line in his gags; and the name of the town in Hokkaido, Oshamanbe, which has its origins in the indigenous Ainu language. As ‘dobojite’ is a funny way of saying ‘why’ (‘dōshite’), DOB symbolises meaninglessness and, at the same time, refers to the complex structure and reception of language. The character is therefore regarded as a reflection of Murakami’s critical attitude towards the emptiness of consumer society.

Just as significantly, the painting represents a stepping stone in Murakami’s transition to industrial production — having been prepared by a sign-writer, then reworked by the artist. According to the artist, the decision to outsource the work had two origins: he wanted to emulate Minimalism’s made-to-order production techniques, shifting the locus of artistic labour from the object to the idea; he also had a large wall to fill and needed to fill it quickly. When he found the result ‘too perfect’, Murakami decided to apply sandpaper to produce the painting’s intriguing surface. The work was a major hit — travelling to the 46th Venice Biennale, the Benesse Art Site Naoshima, in Japan, and the ‘Second Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ in 1996, before being acquired by the Queensland Art Gallery — prompting the artist to reappraise his practice.

Despite criticism from various sectors of the Tokyo art community, Takashi Murakami persisted with the idiom he had developed. While the painting was intended as a parodic self-portrait, given its significance the artist now regards it as his most representative work.2

Endnotes

1. Murakami linked the absence of linear perspective in East Asian art — effectively the flat pictorial plane — with the ‘flattening out’ of previous hierarchies separating high art (painting, sculpture) from low culture (comics, games).
2. Murakami’s account of the production and reception of And then, and then and then and then and then is given in artist talks presented in association with his 2007 retrospective exhibition at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Los Angeles, and at the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, in 2009, viewed 7 April 2014.