Takashi Murakami. This is not my usual type of stuff but I kind of like it. Slate.com has a decent little slide show of his work here. They title it Japan’s Andy Warhol or is it Walt Disney? Two artists I’ve never much liked but…
I’m happy enough that looking at this stuff reminded me of another Japanese artist, not similar at all, though also described as an Andy Warhol. Tadinori Yokoo.
Tadinori Yokoo initially attracted me simply because the print above featured Mishima Yukio. I went through a phase where I read about ten of his novels (many of them very good like Forbidden Colours where a man’s revenge on womankind takes the form of his paying a beautiful gay man to entrance and then leave women forlorn) and his bodybuilding autobiography Sun and Steel as well as the biography of this right wing militaristic prize winning novelist who eventually committed ritual suicide.
Soon I came to appreciate Tadinori’s works on their merits, the juxtapostion of traditional Japanese elements with contemporary styles.
