Jellyfish Eyes - MAX & Shimon in the Strange Forest, 2004
Acrylic on canvas mounted on board. 59 x 59 in. (150 x 150 cm). Signed and dated "Takashi 04" on the reverse.

Property from the Halsey Minor Collection

PROVENANCE Blum & Poe, Los Angeles

© 2004 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved. "We want to see the newest things. That is because we want to see the future, even if only momentarily. It is the moment in which, even if we don't completely understand what we have glimpsed, we are nonetheless touched by it. This is what we have come to call art." (T. Murakami, Superflat, Tokyo, 2000) Breaking the barriers of Japanese contemporary art, Takashi Murakami is best known to represent his culture by applying Japanese animation onto canvas. In a Warhol fashion, Murakami takes the everyday mundane and turns it into fine art. Similar to the "Pop" pioneer, Murakami displays his oeuvre of work through painting, sculpture, and printmaking as well. In Jellyfish eyes—Max & Shimon in the Strange Forest, Murakami demonstrates a Zen-like composition of evenly dispersed graphics surrounding the comiclike subject matter of the animated characters Max & Shimon. The colorful graphics based on a galaxy black background not only enhances the fantasyworld of Japanese animation but the viewer is embraced with the emotions of the subject matter. In its "Superflat" style, the artist becomes the creator of his fantasy work and at the same time, directly represents Japanese contemporary culture in an art form which can be comprehended by a mass audience around the globe.