This landmark publication accompanies a major retrospective exhibition of Takashi Murakamis paintings. Although other volumes on Murakami in English address the crossover between his fine art and commercial output, this book presents the first serious consideration of his work as a painter. It provides a sustained consideration of the artists relationship to the tradition of Japanese painting and his facility in straddling high and low, ancient and modern, eastern and western, commercial and high art. Lavishly illustrated with large-scale images of works that span his art student days to nowmany reproduced together for the first timethe book contextualizes Murakamis output in postwar Japan with essays that situate the artist in relation to folklore, traditional Japanese painting Nihonga, the Tokyo art scene in the 1980s and 1990s, and the threat of nuclear annihilation. The volume includes essays by curator Michael Darling, Michael Dylan Foster, Chelsea Foxwell, Reuben Keehan, and Akira Mizuta Lippit, as well as a biography and exhibition history, selected bibliography, and index.

Takashi Murakami: The Octopus Eats Its Own Legwaspublished on the occasion of the exhibitionorganized bythe the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.It was presented at the Vancouver Art GalleryFebruary 3 to May 6, 2018.

Edited by Michael Darling
Essays by Madeleine Grynsztejn,Michael Dylan Foster, Chelsea Foxwell, Reuben Keehan, Akira Mizuta Lippit and Nobuo Tsuji

288 pages
11.6 10.17 inches
250 colour illustrations
ISBN 9780847859115
Hardcover
Skira Rizzoli Publications, Inc.
2017