Flowers of Hope 2020

Takashi Murakami made this super-flat field of smiling flowers, and it’s pure process. Not in the sense of messy brushstrokes, but in how each flower seems to be stamped out with perfect lines, and how they fit together like pieces of a puzzle. It’s hard to tell what kind of paint he used, but it’s so smooth, it's probably acrylic. The colors are vibrant and dense. The surface looks almost machine-made. The way the outlines are so precise reminds me of cartoons, where everything is neatly defined. Look at that one flower right in the middle, the one with all the colors of the rainbow in its petals. It's like a tiny sun, shining in the middle of this happy, trippy garden. Murakami, like Warhol, questions the divide between “high” and “low” art. Is it painting? Is it pop? Either way, it’s a conversation. It’s art.