Takashi Murakami: The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg

This monograph was published on the occasion of Takashi Murakami: The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg, a traveling exhibition that originated at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and subsequently traveled to the Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada, and Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas. The first retrospective to focus exclusively on Murakami’s painting, the exhibition surveyed his work from his first mature paintings of the early 1980s to expansive recent works, including one from 2017, the year of the exhibition.

Richly illustrated with over 250 full-color images, the catalogue offers a detailed exhibition history, biography, and diverse perspectives on Murakami’s oeuvre. Graduating with a PhD in traditional nihonga painting, Murakami increasingly engaged with the contemporary art world through the development of his “Superflat” theory and allusions to Japanese art, folklore, and anime. The book’s numerous essays—by Michael Darling, Michael Dylan Foster, Chelsea Foxwell, Reuben Keehan, and Akira Mizuta Lippit—offer diverse perspectives on the artist’s work, considering his paintings in relation to the legacy of Japanese artistic traditions and his sustained engagement with popular culture. A text by Murakami responding to Nobuo Tsuji, as well as a foreword by Madeleine Grynsztejn is also included.