Flower Parent and Child 2019

Takashi Murakami made this print, "Flower Parent and Child" and like much of his work, it's awash with bright, almost hallucinatory colors, laid down with an incredible smoothness. Look at the surface—it’s so flat and even, you can hardly see any trace of the hand that made it. It's all about that process of repetition and perfection. The adult flower figure, covered in a skin of smaller flowers, holds hands with its child. These figures could be read as avatars or stand-ins. The overall effect is joyful, but also just a little bit unsettling. And in the parent's other hand, it clutches a bunch of flower heads, which feels like a slightly sinister detail. This kind of ambiguity is interesting to me. You could compare him to someone like Jeff Koons, another artist who's interested in surface, repetition, and the relationship between art and commerce. But there is also something about Murakami's work that feels very personal, even vulnerable, under the layers of pop gloss.