Korin; Red River 2015

Takashi Murakami made 'Korin; Red River' with a very graphic sensibility, but I see him as part of the painting tradition too. I think of the black background as a painted field, and then the flat stylized rendering of the red river and the flowers as a kind of layered painting on top. I imagine Murakami thinking about the surface, building up layers of meaning and reference. He’s been in conversation with pop art, anime, and traditional Japanese art, and it’s all in there, right? I wonder what it’s like to make those graphic flowers with their little smiley faces, arranging them on the surface. And that river snaking through the picture plane, pushing against the flowers, makes me think of Hokusai and Hiroshige. It’s all about remixing, sampling, and finding new ways to see the world through the language of painting.