Takashi Murakami: Art or Design?

Having watched Art Safari: 'Toying with Art' I learnt that Takashi Murakami that he was both an artist and a designer because he made art which was then sold as a mass produced product. For example he would make 'sculptures' which would be downsized and sold as 'toys'. One thing that struck me was that he had skilled workers making the art for him. This makes me class him more as a designer in this way. I feel that he is a designer especially after having read Joshua Porter's 'Social Design' in which Andy Miller comments "genuinely honest art is created without the market in mind....Design is created with the market in mind...[if you're] purposefully crafting your work in order to sell, you’ve become a designer". Murakami seems to know his target market well and has designed his art and designs around their interests. Hence why his toys sell so well. Meanwhile art collectors and critics think that he is the new Andy Warhol. However, Jeff Howe from www.wired.com argues that Warhol did not appeal to both the low and high cultures like Murakami does. Whereas Andy Warhol's paintings were unaffordable and his films were hard to decipher, Murakami hits all price points and happy imagery appeals to many.

RESEARCH -

Wikipedia says:-
Takashi Murakami is a prolific contemporary Japanese artist who works in both fine arts media, such as painting, as well as digital and commercial media. He blurs the boundaries between high and low art. He appropriates popular themes from mass media and pop culture, then turns them into thirty-foot sculptures, "Superflat" paintings, or marketable commercial goods such as figurines or phone caddies.


Quotes from an interview with Mr Murakami:-
 

	You are here today as a designer, how did you as an artist, become involved in the design world? I have a long relationship with design, a good example is my collaboration with Louis Vuitton. However this is the first time I‘ve made a public presentation at a design fair and Design Miami is a very good place to present my pieces but for me the background is the same. In the Western world there is a clear division between Art and Design but in Japan they are the same, it's part of Japanese philosophy.

*Superflat is a postmodern art movement, founded by the artist Takashi Murakami, which is influenced by manga and anime. The term is used by Murakami to refer to various flattened forms in Japanese graphic art, animation, pop culture and fine arts, as well as the "shallow emptiness of Japanese consumer culture."


*Otaku is a Japanese slang word which means someone who is obsessed with something, especially anime and manga. The term "otaku" being used as very knowledgeable geek, obsessed with anime, extreme fan of anime and manga.