Object of the Week: Flower Ball

During his time in New York in 1994, Japanese artist Takashi Murakami developed a style of art he describes as “East-meets-West” or “high-meets-low.”[1] Featuring bright colors and a vivid style that is ingenious in its simplicity, Murakami quickly became a renowned contemporary artist, collaborating with prominent cultural figures such as Kanye West and Pharell Williams.

Flower Ball speaks to the beauty of individuality and diversity. Each flower is unique in its colorations and size, situated harmoniously to create the illusion of a three-dimensional ball. The smiling, emoji-like faces at the center of each flower embody a sense of joy and innocence, and have become one of Murakami’s most featured motifs.

Murakami has become increasingly concerned with using his joyful artwork to balance out what he sees as sorrow or tragedy associated with minority groups in America.[2] This topic is a personal one for Murakami, based on his own experiences as an outsider in New York. The prominence of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in response to anti-Black violence has also had an impact on Murakami’s artistic motivations. His simple pop-art images, bold and effervescent, attempt to offer an equilibrium to sadness, highlighting the joy and beauty of diversity. “If my art can effect any change here and now,” Murakami explains, “I want to contribute it not only to give back but to give power to the Black community plagued by the racial injustice.”[3]

This discussion regarding the necessity of celebration and inclusion in the face of tragedy and exclusion is more essential than ever in the current climate of not only the BLM movement, but the recent violence towards Asian Americans as well. The divisiveness and inequities revealed by the COVID-19 pandemic and continued racial discrimination have created unsafe spaces for many groups, with countless instances of vitriol and violence.

Works like Flower Ball remind us that differences between individuals are beautiful and vital––a concept embodied in the diversity of each iconic flower situated together in harmony. As a global art museum, SAM promotes the voices of Black, Indigenous, Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI), Latinx, immigrant communities, minority groups, and all other diverse actors who contribute to the beauty of art, media, culture, and society here in America and across the globe.

– Caitlin Sherman, SAM Blakemore Intern for Japanese and Korean Art


[1] https://hbr.org/2021/03/lifes-work-an-interview-with-takashi-murakami
[2] https://hbr.org/2021/03/lifes-work-an-interview-with-takashi-murakami
[3] https://www.instagram.com/p/CBPI4YRl5gB/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=f0315211-5e0c-4448-87b3-76a3475193a6
Image: Flower Ball, 2002, Takashi Murakami, acrylic on canvas, 98 1/2 in., Gift of Richard and Elizabeth Hedreen, 2016.24.1 2002 © Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Photo: Jueqian Fang

Object of the Week: Flower Ball

Almost one year ago, the Seattle Asian Art Museum reopened its landmark building after a three-year restoration and redesign. On the north side of the museum, curators and education staff collaboratively designed the Community Learning Gallery, which includes works from SAM’s collection, interactive stations, and art-making activities focused on storytelling. One corner of the room asks the question: “What are masks for?” Anchoring this space is the exuberant and expansive circular painting Flower Ball by Takashi Murakami, hung adjacent to masks from Nepal, Korea, Indonesia, and Japan, and a creative-making activity by Romson Regarde Bustillo.  

AAM Reopening Educator Preview

The Asian Art Museum opening weekend on February 8, 2020, welcomed more than 12,000 visitors in the first two weeks. One month later, we closed the museum in alignment with COVID-19 public safety recommendations. And, suddenly, the question on the Community Learning Gallery wall label: “What masks do you wear to disguise or protect yourself?” gained new and critical associations. 

Seen in person, Flower Ball is magical and disorienting. Murakami uses spatial recession to create the illusion of a three-dimensional sphere coming towards you in space. The 98 ½-inch diameter circle is covered in flower faces, each wearing the mask of an emotional expression like a smiley face emoji. Flowers are Murakami’s self-described icon and appear as a recurring image in his colorful pop art. Trained at the Toyko National Museum of Fine Arts and Music, Murakami developed a trademark aesthetic—dubbed “Superflat” by the artist—that brings together the contemporary cultural penchant for cuteness (kawaii), the two-dimensional composition of traditional Japanese paintings such as Nihonga, and the illustrative styles of anime (animation) and manga (comic books). 

AAm Reopening Celebration

When I imagine this painting hanging in the dark gallery of the closed museum, I picture each of the flower faces peacefully sleeping, eyes closed, a few mouths snoring, and the painting waiting patiently for us all to return. We hope to reopen the Asian Art Museum this spring, and as people come back to the gallery, I envision Murakami’s flower faces waking up in joy and smiling down at all the visitors who look back at them with their own masks on, everyone happily and safely reunited.

Bonus! You can find an art making activity in Chinese, Spanish, and English inspired by Flower Ball here.

– Regan Pro, SAM Kayla Skinner Deputy Director for Education and Public Engagement

Images: Installation view Asian Art Museum, 2019, photo: Jueqian Fang. Photo: Robert Wade. Flower Ball, 2002, Takashi Murakami, acrylic on canvas, diameter: 98 1/2 in., Gift of Richard and Elizabeth Hedreen, 2016.24.1 2002 © Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Photo: Jueqian Fang.

SAM Book Club: Seven Days in the Art World

Welcome back, book lovers! Today we’re here to discuss Sarah Thornton’s Seven Days in the Art World.

When I introduced this book here last month, I said it sounded like a whirlwind. Boy, did Thornton deliver. In what reads like part ethnography, part investigative journalism, part gossip column, the book flies around the world to relay some of the most high-drama, large-personality, and high-stakes scenes of the art world.

The picture Thornton paints is one of extremes. She didn’t just visit an artist studio: she visited Takashi Murakami’s massive international operation on the day he unveiled one of his most ambitious sculptures to date. She didn’t just go to a fair: she went to one of the highest-attended fairs in the world during the height of the art market. She didn’t just attend an MFA crit class: she sat in on Michael Asher’s legendary marathon session at CalArts, known for going longer than the average crit by a good ten hours.

It makes sense why she would choose these particular days and moments: extremes are fun. They make for fast-paced, engaging reading. But when taken all at once they hardly paint a, shall we say, realistic picture of what working in the art world is like for most people. What would Seven Days in the Art World be like if Thornton had interviewed the typical, instead of the extreme? An afternoon of returning phone calls and writing emails in a cramped office? A long string of meetings? No one wants to read that—so who can blame Thornton for choosing to highlight the days and players she did?

The other extreme that was impossible not to notice was the art market itself—and the moment in which Thornton was writing about it. In the author’s note she states that she conducted her research between November 2004 and June 2007; the book was published in November 2008. In other words, the book looks at the time period when the art market was growing to ever more staggering, unsustainable heights—and it hit the stands after that bubble burst, right in the middle of the financial crisis of Fall 2008. From the moment it hit readers’ hands, Seven Days in the Art World was a strange mix of the contemporary and the historical, highlighting a world that in some ways are timeless, and in others had already ceased to exist.

So, did I recognize the art world I inhabit in these pages? Sometimes. The events and spectacles Thornton details are certainly there, even if they’re fewer and farther between than Seven Days in the Art World would suggest. Mostly I recognized my art world in this quote from Artforum publisher Charles Guarino: “It’s the place where I found the most kindred spirits—enough oddball, overeducated, anachronistic, anarchic people to make me happy.” Amen to that, and shout out to my fellow oddballs for making this job so fun.

Because ultimately those of us who work in the art world do it because we love it. Not just the high-stakes, high-drama affairs, but the actual work of it. The long meetings and endless emails may not be fun to read about, but in the day-to-day they contribute to something we all care deeply about. So whether you’re writing, exhibiting, studying, or making art—or doing any of the countless other things that contribute to and support it—a hat tip to you, and to many happy days in the art world.

—Carrie Dedon, Curatorial Assistant, Modern & Contemporary Art

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