It’s Kyoto, but not as you know it. Forget cherry blossom and golden temples: study one of Takashi Murakami’s vast new paintings and you’ll notice shimmering clouds laid over the embossed outlines of cartoon skulls. It’s a reference, he says, to the city’s ancient Toribeno burial ground – and a key motif for the artist in his evocation of Japan’s postwar ghosts.
“I really wanted to depict a version of Kyoto that is not beautiful or pleasing to tourists,” says Murakami via a translator from his vast studio-cum-factory complex outside Tokyo. “I wanted to show that Kyoto’s arts and culture were nurtured within the context of really gruesome historical and political conflicts.”
