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MURAKAMI.FLOWERS



 * ABOUT THE PROJECT
   
 * MINDMAP
 * INSTAGRAM
 * MY ACCOUNT FOR PUBLIC SALE




Murakami.Flowers is a work in which artist Takashi Murakami’s representative
artwork, flowers, are expressed as dot art evocative of Japanese TV games
created in the 1970s. The work is being developed with the number 108 as the
keyword; a combination of 108 backgrounds and flower colors make up a field, and
there are 108 fields. Each field has 108 flower images, resulting in 11,664
flower images in total. The number 108 is a reference to bonnō, or earthly
temptations.

The distribution process will proceed as follows.

 * ① Friends & Family
 * ② Whitelist
 * ③ Public Sale
 * ④ Lucky 727 Proof
 * ⑤ Zen Number Proof
 * ⑥ Bonnō Proof

Whitelist will mainly consist of the holders of RTFKT’s Clone X with Murakami
Drip, of which there are 3,000. In addition, there will be Murakami-related
Whitelist of 500, as well as Friends & Family. I plan to set aside 4,000 for the
Whitelist and Friends & Family together. (The unclaimed quantity after the
Whitelist and Friends & Family distributions will be offered through Public
Sale.)
6,751 will subsequently be offered through Public Sale, which will be a lottery.
Then comes the Lucky 727 Proof, 727 being Takashi Murakami’s lucky number. After
that, there are 78 in the Zen Number Proof, and the Bonnō Proof has 108 for the
number of earthly temptations. I intend to release these last two one day, when
the time is ripe.

The purchase will be limited to one flower per MetaMask wallet. At the time of
the release, each will be distributed as a “seed,” which can be evolved into
(redeemed as) a flower at the time of Reveal after the Public Sale. There is no
knowing which of the 11,664, individually hand-generated flowers your seed will
turn into until the time of Reveal.

Sales Price
Whitelist Presale： 0.0727 ETH
Public Sale: 0.108 ETH




ABOUT PINK & WHITE FLOWERS

The 108 Pink & White flower designs were born out of the first iteration of this
project in March, 2021. At first I tried to release them in an auction format on
OpenSea, but because I was unable to prepare my own smart contract, I took them
down.

I have already produced merchandise, prints, and paintings with these first 108
designs, Pink & White 1 through 108; even a QR code is assigned to each, and
they are linked to my old OpenSea project mentioned above. I consider all this
an event of a generation ago, and plan to leave it as is, as a time capsule.
They are therefore not going to be part of the release this time, though if,
after I do related exhibitions and go through other processes of recognition,
some people still wish to have these works, I may explore offering them for sale
then.


MIND MAP

1
Vision and Values


2
Community


3
Metaverse


4
A Bridge Between


5
Ecosystem


6
Physical World


1
Vision and Values


Murakami.Flowers (M.F hereafter) is being activated upon the system of
Superflat, a theory that artist Takashi Murakami put forth in 2000. Superflat
refers to the cultural concept generated in Japan in the 77 years since its
overwhelming defeat in the Pacific War. The concept stands in opposition to Pop.
Superflat refers to the aesthetic concept of social construction by the
defeated: Japan, which cannot institute a structure in which the victor defines
the righteousness of society in its post-war cultural structure, has instead
established an anti-pyramidal hierarchy. At the root of the narrative formation
in Japanese manga, anime, and "light novels" is this seemingly negative sense of
never being able to fully endorse the winner. However, perhaps you could also
say that the inverted ideas within this aesthetic of the negative has created a
universal structure of beauty that transcends national boundaries.
This is why there are many Japanese imageries scattered throughout this work.
The losers also have their arguments, as well as their ideas of beauty. I hope
to visualize such a landscape in this project.

CLOSE
2
Community


M.F is an attempt to generate a worldview that joins the contemporary art
world—the existing art community of which I have been a member—and the new NFT
art or digital art community. I intend to create my NFT art based on the method
that I believe, in the long run, will let my work survive through in the future
art world 100 or 200 years from now, by extending the skills that I have already
cultivated to survive on the frontlines of the art market for over 30 years.

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3
Metaverse

I am considering the “meta” of metaverse in relation to the “meta” of
metafiction. The “meta” of metafiction seems to be a structure that raises
questions about the relationship between fiction and reality by deliberately
(self-referentially) making the reader aware that it is a fiction, but it
reminds me of a nestling structure, a matryoshka-like structure of a story, and
that meta structure is the reality of "meta" in my mind. In that sense, I am
hoping to create M.F as a meta structure of my history as a painter. (I vaguely
understand that this usage of “meta” may be widely different from that in
metaverse, but here, I am prioritizing my own interpretation.)

I believe most of you who are reading this don’t know my background as an
artist. I am Japanese, an artist, and have been creating work as a professional
since when I was 29. I am constantly thinking about whether the value of my work
can effectively be sustained for as long as possible after my death, and that is
the only thing in my mind as I continue to create artworks; I live to create.
Below, I have explained my past as an artist and why I decided to create M.F.

Let us start When I was around 17.
I was a stupid high school student who actually wanted to be a manga or anime
creator, because I vaguely liked to draw pictures. But I didn't have any talent
in drawing manga, and I was so stupid as to rank around 530 - 540th out of 550
students in my grade at my bottom-level high school. I wasn’t smart enough to go
to a normal university, either, so I decided to go to the art university I could
enter just based on a drawing exam. I further chose to study in the Japanese
Painting (nihonga) Department because the competition was relatively low among
various departments. (Incidentally, the most popular department at the time was
Oil Painting, with 65 times more people applying than spots available, so those
who passed the exam were treated as geniuses! The Design Department had 55 times
more applicants, whereas Japanese Painting had around 25 applicants per spot…
Well, it was still a challenge at the time, but the ratio was the lowest among
the departments.)

Among the painting subjects you study in the nihonga course were "snow, moon,
and flowers,” as well as "flowers, birds, wind, and moon”—traditional themes of
natural beauty. I personally loved flowers, so I studied a lot about them, which
led me to create the paintings of flower characters that you all know today.
I was in the world of Japanese historical paintings until I, at age 26, was
awakened to the world of Western-style contemporary art. This was at the tail
end of the major New Painting (American Neo-Expressionism) boom in New York. So
I moved from Tokyo to New York and became a contemporary artist.

This time, I'm taking a big step away from the world of New York-style
contemporary art and into the world of the metaverse. My awakening to the
metaverse happened in the summer of 2020, the first year of the pandemic, when I
saw the way my children interact with "Animal Crossing: New Horizons.” One day
they were watching some fireworks display within the game while talking on Zoom
with their school friends, whom they could no longer meet in person, admiring
wholeheartedly how beautiful it was. I saw the reality of the shifting values
when I realized that these children could discern beauty within a small video
game screen.
This experience was similar to the one I had when I first encountered
contemporary art at the age of 26, when I was shocked by how there was always a
gap between what you saw and the concept, and realized that once I understood
the context behind the gap, the artworks took on entirely different appearances.
I shuddered with a sensation that made me want to roar in excitement.

And riding on the momentum of that sensation, on March 31, 2021, I started to
release 108 images called Murakami.Flowers on OpenSea. As I learned more about
the NFT world, however, I realized that I was totally unprepared and withdrew
the sales on April 11. Although I didn't actually sell any NFT then, as a result
of this action I have since received a number of invitations to participate in
auctions and new NFT projects, and I declined almost all of them. The reason was
that it seemed as though the interests in the NFT art at auctions were
concentrated only on the numbers game, and I found myself also overly concerned
about the market trends than about NFT's creative potential. So I decided to
first take a deep breath and cool my head down.

Then, I received a really casual invitation from RTFKT to collaborate. I felt
that I could learn a lot about metaverse from these young people. I also thought
that their genuine love for sneakers was so intense that I could trust them, so
I accepted their invitation.
In the meantime, my company has been developing a handheld Tamagotchi-style game
to immerse ourselves in the world of games, and we have also been preparing our
own smart contract for M.F.
Clone X project with RTFKT was released in November 2021, and at the moment I'm
still amazed at the magnitude of reaction it generated.

And now, I am releasing M.F in the Year of the Tiger, 2022.
There are 12 signs in the Chinese zodiac: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake,
horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog, and boar. I was born in the Year of the
Tiger and this is the fifth time my sign has come around in my life, which means
I am 60 years old this year.

Normally, 60 years old may indicate you are in the final stage of life, but as I
said earlier, my artworks are designed so that their mechanism would start
working after my death. So this is truly the start line for me.



And the figure above signifies such a worldview.
I tried to recreate in the digital world a scene where the foot of Japan's
sacred mountain, Fuji, is in full bloom with cherry blossoms. I drew a
delusional picture of a future virtual space where, along with M.F, my various
titles and business endeavors will be reconstructed in the digital world.

CLOSE
6
Physical World


A staff photo at Tonari no Zingaro, Murakami’s fashion item store in Nakano,
Tokyo

Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd., which is producing M.F, has worked in the past in the
real world creating artworks such as paintings, sculptures, CGI live-action
films, TV-series-style animations, etc., and in the world of luxury fashion and
music industry by collaborating with famous and powerful brands and musicians. I
would like to create work with the theme of bridging between this worldview and
the digital world.

CLOSE
4
A Bridge Between


In December, 2022, I am planning to release a portable game with an LCD monitor.
In addition, I plan to start developing and producing online and digital games.
I am also planning to activate events in the real-world art community as
mentioned earlier. I believe that M.F will also spread to exhibitions in art
venues around the world.

CLOSE
5
Ecosystem


The art world operates as an ecosystem entirely different from those of stocks
and commodities. It is a cultural synthesis and marketplace with a huge scale of
its own. As it is already trading NFT art and is operating with the DAO-like
worldview, I believe it is M.F’s mission to connect it with those who inhabit
the worlds of NFT and DAO.

CLOSE


EVENTS

As a starter, I will have an exhibition in May, 2022 at Gagosian, the top
contemporary art gallery in the world, at their Madison Avenue location in NY.
The plan is to exhibit works based on Clone X, the collaboration project with
RTFKT, my brethren in the world of NFT art, as well as real-world paintings of
M.F, among other physical works. I also hope to create opportunities for people
to encounter in person through salons and club events on that occasion.

REVEAL NOW
Music by Mino


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