BIOGRAPHICAL CATALOG OF THE MODEM'S COVERS AUTHORS

133 2002 CONTEMPORARY ARTIST Modem Women’s Milano Modem Women’s Paris Spring-Summer 2003 Covers by MURAKAMI Takashi Murakami (1962, Tokyo) is a Japanese contemporary artist, who expresses himself in painting and sculpture, as well as fashion, merchandise, and animation. Murakami i nvented the term “ superflat”, which describes both, the aesthetic characteristics of the Japanese artistic tradition, and the nature of post-war Japanese culture and society. He is often classified as pop-artist. In his work he blurs the line between “high” and “low” arts. In the early 1980’s Murakami choose to educate at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, because of his very early interest in animation and comics. He was unsatisfied with the poor art market in Japan. That’s why he decided to concentrate his artistic style and motifs (cute/distur- bing bright-colored anime-ish characters on flat and highly glossy surfaces, life- size sculptures of anime figurines), as a part of his pragmatic strategy. In 2003 Murakami installed a public art display called Reversed Double Helix at the Rockefeller Center plaza in Midtown Manhattan. In the same year he achie- ved astonishing success with the handbag design he created for Louis Vuitton. Murakami ownes factories in Tokyo and New York, where, with the help of dozen assistants, he creates his paintings, sculptures, and merchandise. In 2009, Takashi Murakami had his first retrospective exhibition in USA, Germany and Spain; Time magazine named him as part of “100 Most Influential People”, the only visual artist included. In 2010 Murakami exhibited at the Palace of Versailles (France), becoming the third contemporary, and first Japanese artist have been given the opportunity of such presentation.