ABOUT Takashi Murakami

He is probably the most well-known pop artist in Japan and the most expensive Japanese artist whose works have sold at auction. He has earned solid international acclaim for his paintings, which are strongly influenced by Japanese painting, but also draw on the Otaku subculture, and his 2008 figure "My Lonesome CowBoy" sold for 1.6 billion yen at Sotheby’s Auction, an event that was so astonishing that it was widely publicized in the U.S. and abroad. Takashi Murakami works are widely popular both in Japan and abroad, and in 2008 he was named one of TIME magazine "100 Most Influential People in the World. He has also expanded his activities beyond the art world, collaborating with ISSEI MIYAKE and LOUIS VUITTON. While original works of art are difficult to obtain, as the price of a size 15 print can exceed several million dollars, prints can be purchased for as little as several tens of thousands of yen. Even his prints are superb in the way they are textured using modern printing techniques.