Acrylic on canvas

100 × 100 cm. 39 3/8 × 39 3/8 in.

Signed in English, titled and dated on the reverse
PROVENANCE
Blum & Poe, Los Angeles
Private Collection, Los Angeles
Important Private Collection,Asia

An Homage to the Ultimate Understanding of Life
Takashi Murakami’s Contemporary Manifestation of "the Ensō"

"I would like to reach the point where my brush would move with a life of its own, where I would have no greed or desire. Or perhaps where I would retire to the act of painting precisely because I cannot escape the desire to live. That is, I would like to become an existence that cannot be identified either as a human being or a ghost, and to paint wanderingly in that state. This time I think I may have come close to that state of wandering. And I was lucky enough to successfully paint the ensō motif."
——Takashi Murakami

As the originator of the concept of "Superflat" art, Takashi Murakami is a significant figure in the contemporary art world and has fans worldwide. He has been selected as one of the "Top 100 Contemporary Artists of the Year" by ArtReview for eleven consecutive years since 2003. His works are collected by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Palace of Versailles in Paris, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and many other major institutions. His company, Kaikai Kiki, has also successfully discovered celebrated artists such as Mr. and Aya Takano, giving Murakami the title, the "Godfather" of Japanese contemporary art.

Apart from being the celebrity artist who carries forward "Superflat" and "kawaii", Murakami was also the first to receive a doctorate in Japanese painting from the Tokyo University of the Arts. He is knowledgeable in traditional Japanese art, which he transforms into a personal artistic language in his subsequent works. In 2011, the devastating experience of the Tōhoku Earthquake of March 11, 2011, and the death of his father prompted him to turn and delve deeper into the philosophy of life - elements such as rakan (Arhats) and ensō (circle) became important themes in his works at this time. Ensō: Memento Mori Red on Blue is one of the special works in the Ensō series that Murakami began in 2015. In the same year, after completing this work, Takashi Murakami used it as a prototype to create prints, showing how much satisfaction and importance he attaches to the painting.

A Modern Collision of Eastern and Western Philosophies

"All the living are the resurrection of the dead, and the practice of philosophy is the practice of death."
——Greek Philosopher Socrates

The concept of ensō originated in Zen Buddhism during the Song Dynasty. As Zen Buddhism spread to Japan, it became a classic theme in Zen paintings, an essential art genre in ancient Japan. The prominent Zen master of the 17th and 18th centuries, Hakuin Ekaku, spent his life trying to convey the true meaning of Zen, sacrificing himself to help others and leaving behind more than 10,000 paintings. Ensō is a crucial theme representing Hakuin’s cultivation of his inner world to reach the state of enlightenment. An admirer of Hakuin, Murakami uses contemporary acrylic paint to spray a perfect circle on top of an intricate composition of skulls, leaving behind natural drip lines, and splashes the centre with dots of white paint. The drops of sprayed paint merge into silver streams, as if the lights from countless souls are withdrawing from the flesh and bone of the earthly body symbolized by the skulls below, converging and demonstrating the reincarnation of life.

"Memento mori," in the title, is a Medieval phrase that reminds people of life’s inevitable end of death, that one should keep a clear head and live each day as if it were their last. Since antiquity, many renowned paintings have been born out of this concept. In these paintings, the symbolic skull motif has become an essential imagery in Western art. Takashi Murakami combines this theme with his iconic skulls to reinvent the classic Western philosophical concept in a contemporary Pop art style.

In this painting, Takashi Murakami boldly uses red, which is as passionate as fire and blue, which is as tranquil and tolerating as the sea and the sky, as the primary colours, creating a collision of warm and cold tones. A few splashes of red and gold emerge among the overlapping dark and light blue skulls. Like an ensemble of fire and ice, the colours chant the ups and downs of life. Tens of thousands of skeletons in different sizes and forms, densely gathered, are like sentient beings all connected by an ensō in a mystical ethereality, facing death equally without distinction. Through the ensō in the centre, like a black hole, the viewer takes a glimpse of heaven’s mysterious workings, as if they have opened the "eye in the sky." Combining Eastern and Western philosophies of life creates a strong visual impact that is profoundly moving and thought-provoking.

Price estimate:
HKD: 800,000 - 1,200,000
USD: 102,200 - 153,300

Auction Result:
HKD: --