Murakami depends upon 727 blazing his trail, beside himself with joy. It’s the 20th anniversary of 727, the 20th year since the character debuted in Murakami’s quintessential painting in 1996. The piece currently resides in the MoMA San Francisco art collection, as a gift from David Teiger. Commemorating the birth of 727, Murakami released three …
For over a month a little link for the Murakami Takashi Print Archive remained hidden at the bottom of the Sugimoto68 homepage. Desperate to finish sooner, I constantly felt like Ambassador de Sadesky in Kubrick’s prescient masterpiece, Dr. Strangelove. Dr. Strangelove confronts Sadesky about withholding the critical information necessary to make Russia’s nuclear deterrent work: …
A Murakami print problem that collectors do not normally perceive as a problem is the identification of the production date of a particular print. Naturally, the date of the print appears right on the print itself, right? Wrong. Major auction houses and all types of Murakami sellers often identify the incorrect production date for Murakami …
Continue reading “It’s the writing, not the copyright, right? Dating your Murakami”
At some point a Murakami collector will start comparing prints and suddenly realize something strange––the signatures don’t match! Murakami’s signature evolves from a legible printed scrawl to the now ubiquitous opaque loops. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but what about Murakami’s John Hancock? With the (de)evolution of his signature you …
So you’ve opened up your new Murakami to find a pleasant surprise, Japanese characters! The text adds a nice nuance to a Murakami print; however, there will come the day when someone admiring your print suddenly asks you what the writing means! You could just make something up, but now Sugimoto68 brings an alternative–a translation …
