DOB (klien's Pot Series) 1997

Takashi Murakami made this piece, DOB (klien's Pot Series), with clean lines and a playful color palette. It's like watching a cartoon mutate before your eyes. There's something so direct about the flatness of the colours and the way the shapes butt up against each other. Take that blue field on the left – it's so solid, so unapologetic. And then you've got the pink areas, those fleshy tones that feel both innocent and a little unsettling. The whole surface has this smooth, almost plastic quality, which makes it hard to ignore the texture of the canvas underneath. It's like Murakami wants you to be aware of the painting as an object, as something constructed. The way he throws in these cartoonish teeth and eyes reminds me a bit of Philip Guston – that same willingness to embrace the absurd, to let the darkness in. Only Murakami does it with this candy-coated sheen that's all his own. Is it cute? Is it sinister? Maybe it's both!