Artist of the day: Artist of the day, (Japan week) October 2: Takashi Murakami, Japanese sculptor

Takashi Murakami at Versailles

A French aristocrat descended from Louis XIV is seeking a court order to stop a Japanese artist exhibiting his work at the Palace of Versailles. Work by Takashi Murakami, who blends Japanese classical art with manga-style modernity, iwas on show for 3 months. But Prince Sixte-Henri de Bourbon-Parme believes Murakami's brightly coloured work dishonours the memory of his ancestors. The prince and fellow protesters say Murakami "denatures" French culture.

Murakami's work sits in striking contrast to the classical French splendour of Versailles, the palace built during the reign of Louis XIV, the "Sun King". The 48-year-old artist trained in traditional Japanese techniques but has risen to prominence through his "super-flat" method, incorporating two-dimensional anime and manga. He describes his retrospective at Versailles as an opportunity to interpret the story of the Versailles through Japanese eyes, calling it "a fantastic tale coming from a very distant kingdom". The palace is "one of the greatest symbols of Western history", the artist said.
"It is the emblem of an ambition for elegance, sophistication and art that most of us can only dream of." Murakami's striking works included a golden buddha in the palace courtyard, and a towering fibreglass and iron sculpture, adorned with religious iconography incorporating ancient Mayan culture and symbols of Tibetan Buddhism, in the Hercules Salon.

Biography:

Takashi Murakami (1962) was born in Tokyo. His father was a taxi driver, and his mother was a homemaker. His mother, who studied needlepoint and designed textiles, had a tremendous influence on Murakami's interest in the arts. His parents often had him write reviews on exhibitions he had seen.

In addition to his work as an artist, Takashi Murakami is a curator, entrepreneur, and a student of contemporary Japanese society. In 2000, Murakami curated an exhibition of Japanese art titled Superflat, which acknowledged a movement toward mass-produced entertainment and its effects on contemporary aesthetics.

Known for his brightly colored and maniacally cheerful works, Takashi Murakami's astronomical rise to fame in the contemporary art world has been met with equal parts celebration and criticism. Murakami merges Japanese pop culture referents with the country's rich artistic legacy, effectively obliterating any distinction between commodity and high art. He is compared to Andy Warhol for his art-as-business approach, as well as for his large factories of workers who produce, market, and sell his art. His critics have derided him as a sell-out, and as playing into the art market's increasing demands for easily consumable and exotic art from Japan. But for Murakami, this is a compliment and precisely what he intends. His work draws inspiration from the Japanese subculture of otaku, which is replete with strange perversions of cuteness and innocence, as well as incredible violence. Through this, Murakami crafts a subtle critique of Japan's contemporary culture as well as the West's intruding influence upon it.

Sculptures of anime-inspired characters, overly cheerful cartoon characters with razor sharp teeth, and sickeningly cute paintings of smiling daisies are all stylistically and thematically based on Murakami's early engagement with the Japanese subculture of otaku - a large group of fanatical geeks obsessed with the fantasy worlds depicted in anime (animated cartoons) and manga (comic books), and the concept of kawaii (all things "cute"). In his youth, Murakami immersed himself in this world, and as an artist he began to draw stylistic inspiration from it and presents to viewers from a cynical and distanced stance.

Murakami created his own movement called Superflat. The name refers both to the flattened compositions that lacked one point perspective of historical Japanese artistic movements such as nihonga, as well as to the flattening (or merging) of art and commerce. Superflat is Murakami's way of bringing together Japan's history with contemporary pop culture. Its bright and easy eye-candy aesthetic immediately lured a wide audience to Murakami's work. However, critics have derided Superflat as a blatant caricature and distortion of modern Japan. Regardless, Superflat has inspired an entire generation of contemporary Japanese art.