日本の現代アーティスト・トップ 6 (2020年) Contemporary artists from Japan, Top 6 (2020)

Contemporary art is constantly in fluxus. 現代アートはいつもイン・モーション（流動）である。
グローバル・アートの文脈(＝国際活動）を巡って、2020年度のリストを同封させて頂きます。
In the context of the global art scene, here is my list for 2020:

日本の現代アーティスト・トップ 6
Contemporary artists from Japan, Top 6

1. MURAKAMI Takashi 村上隆
2. KUSAMA Yayoi 草間彌生
3. SUGIMOTO Hiroshi 杉本博司
4. LEE U-Fan 李禹煥
5. NARA Yoshitomo 奈良美智
6. MIYAJIMA Tatsuo 宮島達男

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As a reference you can compare the new list with other ones:

日本の現代アーティスト・トップ 15 (2022年)
Contemporary artists from Japan, Top 15 (2022)
https://art-culture.world/articles/contemporary-artists-from-japan-top-15-2022-日本の現代アーティスト・トップ-15-2022年/

日本の現代アーティスト・トップ 11 (2021年)
Contemporary artists from Japan, Top 11 (2021)
https://art-culture.world/articles/contemporary-artists-from-japan-top-11-2021-日本の現代アーティスト・トップ-11-2021年/

日本の現代アーティスト・トップ 10（2019年）
Contemporary artists from Japan, Top 10 (2019)
https://art-culture.world/articles/contemporary-artists-from-japan-top-10-2019/

日本の現代アーティスト・トップ 157（2018年）
Contemporary artists from Japan, Top 157 (2018)
https://art-culture.world/articles/contemporary-artists-from-japan-top-157-2018/

日本の現代アーティスト・トップ 92 (2017年度)
Contemporary artists from Japan, Top 92 (2017)
https://art-culture.world/articles/contemporary-artists-from-japan-top-92-2017/

日本の現代アーティスト・トップ 68 (2013年度 ー 2016年度)
Contemporary artists from Japan, Top 68 (2013 – 2016)
https://art-culture.world/articles/contemporary-artists-from-japan-top-68-2016/

その他、こちらのリンクへどうぞ、compare with other up-dates:

森美術館前なう！日本一美術家、天才村上隆の超ダサい、米国産、金色うんこ自画像！爆笑！！(2020/11/20)
In Front of The Mori Art Museum, NOW! Japan’s No.1 Artist, Genius MURAKAMI Takashi’s, Made in America, Golden Bullshit Self-Portrait Sucks! ROFL!!
https://art-culture.world/articles/genius-murakami-takashi-天才村上隆/

米国ギャラリー Blum&Poeのアーティスト・リストから外された村上隆 (2019/4/23)
Takashi Murakami Had Been Erased From American Gallery Blum & Poe’s Artists’ List
https://art-culture.world/articles/takashi-murakami-blum-poe-村上隆/

今日のJapan Times。「村上隆：日本のアート・アウトサイダー、平成時代を定義した、’嫌われた’アーティスト 」。不幸な村上隆、、、(2019/3/14)
Today’s Japan Times. “Takashi Murakami: Japan’s art outsider. The ‘hated’ artist who defined the Heisei Era”. An Unhappy MURAKAMI Takashi…
https://art-culture.world/articles/takashi-murakami-japans-art-outsider-the-hated-artist-村上隆/

村上作品の価値？不幸な村上隆、、、(2018/11/16)
The Value of Murakami’s Works? An Unhappy MURAKAMI Takashi…
https://art-culture.world/articles/takashi-murakami-art-works-value/

日本のアート界を駄目にした男？ 不幸な村上隆、、、(2018/10/19)
The Man Who Ruined The Japanese Art World? An Unhappy MURAKAMI Takashi…
https://art-culture.world/articles/takashi-murakami-kaikai-kiki-japanese-art-world/

2020/7/18
Mario A

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up-date 2020/8/25

https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B08CWJ5Z1S

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Ten days ago, art dealer Emmanuel Perrotin (Perrotin Gallery), who works together with MURAKAMI since 1993, explains his view on the actual situation regarding the so-called “bankruptcy” rumours about Murakami’s Kaikai Kiki Co.

see also:
GALERIE PERROTIN POP-UP GALLERY
TAKASHI MURAKAMI “ENSŌ”
ギャラリーペロタンポップアップギャラリー
村上隆 個展「円相」
OCTOBER 31, 2015 – NOVEMBER 21, 2015
http://gallery-kaikaikiki.com/2015/10/enso/
http://en.gallery-kaikaikiki.com/2015/10/enso/

Pharrell Visits Takashi Murakami – The 500 Arhats (October 2015)

Takashi Murakami – Arhat Cycle, Palazzo Reale, Milan

Besides Perrotin, Gagosian remains the main representative gallery for MURAKAMI Takashi.
Exhibitions by Takashi Murakami @ Gagosian
https://gagosian.com/exhibitions/archive/artist/takashi-murakami/

TAKASHI MURAKAMI @ GAGOSIAN LONDON
June 27–August 5, 2011
Britannia Street, London
https://gagosian.com/exhibitions/2011/takashi-murakami/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKG0i-frbEc

Viewpoints / Openings : Takashi Murakami @ Gagosian Gallery, London
Posted by Patrick Nguyen, August 5, 2011
https://arrestedmotion.com/2011/08/openings-viewpoints-takashi-murakami-gagosian-gallery-london/2147483647/

TAKASHI MURAKAMI
In the Land of the Dead, Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow
November 10, 2014–January 17, 2015
555 West 24th Street, New York
https://gagosian.com/exhibitions/2014/takashi-murakami-in-the-land-of-the-dead-stepping-on-the-tail-of-a-rainbow/

Video from March 19, 2019
TAKASHI MURAKAMI AT LACMA
In a conversation with curator Stephen Little recorded at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Takashi Murakami describes the process behind three major large-scale paintings. Among the works he discusses is Qinghua (2019), inspired by the motifs painted on a Chinese Yuan Dynasty porcelain vase. Qinghua appears in Murakami’s Beverly Hills exhibition GYATEI².
https://gagosian.com/quarterly/2019/03/19/video-takashi-murakami-LACMA/

“psyche” by Kaikai Kiki youtube channel (Mar 24, 2010)

See also:
Takashi Murakami x BOME – History of Figure Collaboration Project (July 2013)
ワンフェス史上(たぶん）最大美少女、身長３ｍ巨大フィギュアの尻
ワンフェス2013［夏］の Takashi Murakami×BOME「カイカイキキブース」で、巨大フィギュア「３ｍの女の子」など、現代美術家・村上隆氏による作品を展示してた。ワンフェス史上（たぶん）最大の美少女フィギュア(のおっぱいとお尻)で、椹木野衣さんの感想『彫刻としての物理的脅威と反彫刻的な仮想イメージのギャップが凄い』などがある。
http://blog.livedoor.jp/geek/archives/51404310.html

Dealer Marianne Boesky on Remaking Her Gallery, and Learning From the Last Art-Market Crash
artspace 2014/5/3, Andrew M. Goldstein
quotes:
How did Murakami catch fire?

It was a combination of things. He’s brilliant, and he’s rigorous, and every part of his plan is ruthless. We would train each other. He would come here or I would go to Japan and he would throw questions at me about the art world and art market. He was a ruthless information-seeker because his first goal was to create an art market in Japan for his generation—it wasn’t about and still isn’t about making money and being famous. He was trying to legitimize the art that was being made in his country in his time. In Japan back then, you were an artist if you made nihonga paintings and wore a suit to your studio and made $100,000 a year—then you were approved. His brother is that kind of artist. Murakami wanted the otaku and the manga artists and the people who were being creative in that field to be acknowledged as artists, and in the West that was happening.
So he purely came to show with me here on so that he could launch himself in America, because the Japanese are always glomming onto what the West is doing and always trying to appropriate it and ultimately catch up culturally with the West. He knew that if the West embraced him, they would have to. So he came out with his first show with me and Blum and Poe in America, and he had his version of the St. Pauli Girl with her big bursting breasts and the cowboy and the splash paintings, and it was brilliant.

Why was that first show such an important statement?

Because if you took the sculptures away, the splash paintings were a perfect combination of Pop Minimalism, gestural abstraction, and Hokusai wave paintings—he was capturing 100 years of painting history in these paintings and then putting them in the context of these ridiculously over-the-top sculptures, which were meant to be a commentary on how in the same way that we have stereotypes about the Japanese, they also have stereotypes of us, that we’re all cowboys and St. Pauli Girls. Beer and boobs! [Laughs]
So he just handed it to the audience, and it worked. So that was the beginning, and then the strategic projects he did in Grand Central Station and Rockefeller Center and with Marc Jacobs were all part of a really considered plan. The nos and the yeses of what an artist does is a really important part of their trajectory, and he was like a military strategist.  

You also did fantastically well at auction yourself, when you sold Murakami’s My Lonesome Cowboy at Sotheby’s for $15.5 million in 2008, after he was poached by Gagosian, fetching five times his previous record.

Oh yeah, I did do great. I had a partner on that piece, and the timing was spectacular and Alex Rotter did an incredible deal. It was that culminating time in ’08—it was nuts. But I hadn’t represented Murakami for years and I had a partner who wanted out, so the timing was right. I have no qualms. I don’t feel sad. [Laughs]
full text:
https://www.artspace.com/magazine/interviews_features/qa/marianne_boesky_interview-52268

Michael Shnayerson, May 28, 2019, artnet
quote:
“By now, Murakami had begun asking his dealers to underwrite production costs—not for Vuitton bags, but for much of the rest of his work. Blum and Poe knew that Murakami was no spendthrift. He slept in a converted crate in his office, just outside Tokyo, and worked every waking hour, making all design decisions, no matter how small.
The problem was his ambition: it was just so sweeping. They underwrote as much as they could, as did the artist’s other dealers, but when Murakami announced that his next project would be a 19-foot-high platinum and aluminum Buddha, his dealers balked. Boesky was pregnant in 2006, and Murakami, she recalled, didn’t like the timing of that at all. “You’re lactating, you can’t be my business partner,” she recalled him saying.”
more at:
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/michael-shnayerson-boom-excerpt-1553674

Sarah Thornton on Murakami:

Murakami in the Christie’s auction room with art consultant Philippe Ségalot, 2006

WORLDWIDE WARHOL
November 16, 2006 • New York • Sarah Thornton at Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Evening Sale
https://www.artforum.com/diary/sarah-thornton-at-christie-s-post-war-and-contemporary-evening-sale-12071

May 15, 2008 • New York • Sarah Thornton at Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Sale
quote:
“Facing eighty-three lots, Meyer began by speed-reading the rules. The first few works flew off the block with remarkable efficiency, but it wasn’t until Lot 9, Takashi Murakami’s naked and fully erect My Lonesome Cowboy, 1998, that mouths began to drop. Word had it that dealer Marianne Boesky had consigned the work and that, some time ago, Meyer himself had almost bought the seminal sculpture. (Meyer told me that he’d decided against it because his mother was coming to visit.) The crowd delighted in a virile volley of bids between Philippe Ségalot on the aisle and Sotheby’s Alexander Rotter, who was on the phone with someone who many suspected was Steve Cohen but others thought might be Viktor Pinchuk (although the Ukrainian billionaire usually has a dealer like Larry Gagosian or Jay Jopling bid for him in the room). Eventually, Rotter’s client won the sculpture for $15.2 million, nearly four times its $4 million high estimate. Even Murakami, who was sitting at the back of the room with artist Chiho Aoshima, was wide-eyed with amazement.”
more at:
https://www.artforum.com/diary/sarah-thornton-at-sotheby-s-contemporary-art-evening-sale-20200

https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/david-teigers-passionate-pursuit-of-the-avant-garde

From MoMA collection’s description:
quote:
“Mr. DOB functions as an endlessly morphing alter ego of sorts for the artist, appearing in every facet of his production—in or on paintings, sculptures, key chains, and plush toys—reinforcing with each repetition the character’s iconic status.”
full text:
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/88960

https://www.scaithebathhouse.com/en/exhibitions/2014/01/making_links_25_years/

MURAKAMI VS MURAKAMI @ Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong
2019/6/1 – 9/1
https://www.taikwun.hk/en/programme/detail/murakami-vs-murakami/362

村上隆 對戰 村上隆 專訪 MURAKAMI vs MURAKAMI Interview | 大館 Tai Kwun

村上隆 對戰 村上隆 MURAKAMI vs MURAKAMI | 大館 Tai Kwun

see, refer to:
桶田コレクション展 ‘LOVE @ FIRST SIGHT’ @ スパイラル 東京 (2019/4)
Oketa Collection exhibition ‘LOVE @ FIRST SIGHT’ @ SPIRAL Tokyo
https://art-culture.world/articles/oketa-collection-exhibition-love-at-first-sight-桶田コレクション/

Interestingly, artist MURAKAMI Takashi’s art collection can be regarded as excellent and referential. The exhibition in the Yokohama Art Museum 2016 brought much more sympathies by the audience and critical acclaim by colleagues than the solo show “500 ARHAT” at the Mori Art Museum 2015.

2016/1/30 – 4/3 @ Yokohama Museum of Art
村上隆のスーパーフラット・コレクション
―蕭白、魯山人からキーファーまで―
Takashi Murakami’s Superflat Collection
―From Shōhaku and Rosanjin to Anselm Kiefer―
https://yokohama.art.museum/special/2015/murakamicollection/english.html
https://yokohama.art.museum/special/2015/murakamicollection/summary.html

村上隆トークイベント 「村上隆のスーパーフラット・コレクション展 ―蕭白、魯山人からキーファーまで―」 横浜美術館

see also:
アーティスト小泉明郎氏に2017年の日本現代アート透明賞 JCATP
KOIZUMI Meiro wins 2017 Japanese Contemporary Art Transparency Prize
https://jcatp.com/recipients/koizumi-meiro/

(2019/8/6)
エスプリ・アーティスティック* 小泉明郎、丹羽良徳、折元 立身、グスタフ・クリムト、名古屋 覚
Esprit Artistique* KOIZUMI Meiro, NIWA Yoshinori, ORIMOTO Tatsumi, Gustav Klimt, NAGOYA Satoru
https://art-culture.world/articles/koizumi-meiro-niwa-yoshinori-orimoto-tatsumi-gustav-klimt-satoru-nagoya/

MURAKAMI Takashi’s Instagram account with over 2 million followers

https://www.instagram.com/takashipom/

On 2020/5/7:

2 weeks ago Murakami’s posting @ Instagram made huge waves in the global art scene.
Artnet:
Takashi Murakami Announces That His Business Is on the Brink of Bankruptcy in an Emotional New Video Posted to Instagram
The artist’s lavish spending and big-budget sci-fi film could be the cause of his financial woes.
Caroline Goldstein, July 1, 2020
full text:
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/takashi-murakami-bankruptcy-video-1891602

“I’m a silly human being

This spring, I streamed a series of cooking show of a sort on Instagram Live. I’m sure those who watched them were utterly confused, but I was trying to buoy my own thoroughly sunken feelings through these streamings.

With the sudden swoop of COVID-19 pandemic, my company faced bankruptcy and I had to give up on a number of projects, the most symbolic of which being the production of my sci-fi feature film, Jellyfish Eyes Part 2: Mahashankh.”
full text see:

part 2:

Compare with Jellyfish Eyes (Part 1)

Jellyfish Eyes | Official Trailer (English Subtitles)

Takashi Murakami Q&A | ‘Jellyfish Eyes’ (Full)

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artdaily-news: Murakami’s Kaikai Kiki artists new group exhibition “Healing” @ Perrotin Seoul 2020/7/23 – 9/4
Exhibition explores the multifaceted and eccentric universe that is Takashi Murakami’s Superflat
SEOUL.- Perrotin Seoul is presenting Healing, an exhibition of works –old and new– by Kaikai Kiki artists Takashi Murakami, Mr., MADSAKI, TENGAone, Kasing Lung, Aya Takano, Chiho Aoshima, Emi Kuraya, ob, Otani Workshop, Yuji Ueda and Shin Murata.
more @
https://artdaily.cc/news/127192/Exhibition-explores-the-multifaceted-and-eccentric-universe-that-is-Takashi-Murakami-s-Superflat

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In 2 weeks opens the rescheduled group show @ the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, where Murakami exhibits a.o. his new works:

STARS展：現代美術のスターたち―日本から世界へ
世界が認める現代アートのトップランナー6名
STARS: Six Contemporary Artists from Japan to the World
How Have They Become Superstars?
2020.7.31 [Fri] – 2021.1.3 [Sun]
* Period has been modified.

https://www.mori.art.museum/jp/exhibitions/stars/index.html
https://www.mori.art.museum/en/exhibitions/stars/index.html

(up-date: 2020/8/23)

森美術館で開催中の「STARS展」では、コロナウイルス感染防止対策の一環として、ギャラリートークをオンラインで実施することにいたしました。
森美術館館長の片岡真実が、作品のみどころについて解説いたします。

https://www.mori.art.museum/jp/news/2020/08/4249/

Murakami’s friend Madsaki introduces in English some aspects from the new work, be shown in the Mori Art Museum （「英語で言うって」）

Last year’s cool collaboration with Billie Eilish

Billie Eilish – you should see me in a crown (Official Video By Takashi Murakami)

ここに載せた写真とスクリーンショットは、すべて「好意によりクリエーティブ・コモン・センス」の文脈で、日本美術史の記録の為に発表致します。
Creative Commons Attribution　Noncommercial-NoDerivative Works
photos: cccs courtesy creative common sense