Highlights | Takashi Murakami: The 500 Arhats

Highlights

727, Ensō (circle) and Abstraction | Daruma | Mr. DOB | The 500 Arhats – "Blue Dragon" and "White Tiger" | The 500 Arhats – "Black Tortoise" and "Vermilion Bird"

The 500 Arhats – "Black Tortoise" and "Vermilion Bird"

The 500 Arhats (detail) 2012 Acrylic on canvas mounted on board 302x10,000cm Private collection
Installation view: "Takashi Murakami: The 500 Arhats," Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2015 Photo: Takayama Kozo
(C)2015 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

The creature that reigns over the north is usually portrayed as a cross between a turtle and a snake, but in Murakami's work the creature itself is not depicted. Instead, the sacred mountain in the center and the sacred animal, Shen, next to it serve as substitutes for images of a turtle and snake, respectively. When it was exhibited in Doha, Qatar in 2012, this section of the painting was incomplete, lacking among other things the fourth giant sacred animal, making this the first exhibition of the completed work anywhere in the world. The Vermilion Bird that reigns over the north incorporates images from Tezuka Osamu's Hinotori (Phoenix) based on early-modern Chinese phoenix designs. Arhats, who float freely in the space-like background, almost appear as if they have visited us riding on gigantic waves for the purposes of spirit pacification.

In this work, for which Murakami and his assistants examined various arhat imagery from the past as part of an effort to create a decidedly modern depiction of the Five Hundred Arhats, traditional Eastern iconography and elements borrowed from contemporary magazines and manga form a harmonious unit.

Some have called it "Murakami's Guernica," referencing Pablo Picasso's masterpiece Guernica, which was painted as a response to the tragedy of the Spanish Civil War. Confronted with the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami and the subsequent nuclear power plant disaster, many artists were seized by a sense of helplessness, while others undertook various activities in response. When a society finds itself in a critical situation, what is it that its artists and art can do? In order to convey a message from the past to the present, and from the present to the future, Murakami has joined forces with young artists to produce the kind of massive painting that will stand the test of time. Indeed, one could say that The 500 Arhats is Takashi Murakami's answer to this question.

727, Ensō (circle) and Abstraction | Daruma | Mr. DOB | The 500 Arhats – "Blue Dragon" and "White Tiger" | The 500 Arhats – "Black Tortoise" and "Vermilion Bird"

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