Flowers in Heaven 2010

Takashi Murakami made this work, Flowers in Heaven, as an endless expanse of smiling daisies. I love how each flower is precisely placed, yet there's a wild, untamed feeling about the whole thing. It's a process of repetition, but not in a boring way! The surface is smooth and slick, probably printed, with each colour sharply defined. There's no visible brushwork or texture, which adds to its artificial, almost digital feel. Look closely at the little details: the way the colors clash and vibrate against each other, the slight variations in the flower faces. Each one has a slightly different expression. It makes you think about pop art and the endlessness of mass production, but also about the uniqueness of each individual. Flowers in Heaven reminds me of the Pattern and Decoration movement, artists like Joyce Kozloff, maybe, but pushed to an extreme. The painting is both a celebration of joy and a meditation on the overwhelming nature of contemporary culture.