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Takashi Murakami / Hark Back to Ukiyo-e: Tracing Superflat to Japonisme’s Genesis at Perrotin, Los Angeles

  • Writer: LA Art Documents
    LA Art Documents
  • 24 hours ago
  • 2 min read


Takashi Murakami

Hark Back to Ukiyo-e: Tracing Superflat to Japonisme’s Genesis

Perrotin, Los Angele

February 14 – March 14, 2026




Perrotin Los Angeles is delighted to present a new solo exhibition by Takashi Murakami, Hark Back to Ukiyo-e: Tracing Superflat to Japonisme’s Genesis.


Freshly inspired by a visit to Monet’s Giverny, Takashi Murakami (b. 1962) explores the relationship between ukiyo-e and Impressionism in a suite of 24 new paintings at Perrotin Los Angeles. The latest works advance his theory of how ukiyo-e, or “floating world pictures,” transformed the global art scene in the late 1800s. In recent years, Murakami has reflected on how landscape prints from Japan spurred Impressionists to adopt more subjective and abstract approaches to composition and painting. Now the artist whose early sculptures HIROPON and My Lonesome Cowboy challenged the world to consider the theme of sexuality in Japanese art ponders the global impact of the ukiyo-e genre known as bijinga, or pictures of beautiful women.


Bijinga in ukiyo-e focused on the women, notably courtesans, geisha, and iconic attendants of teahouses of Edo (modern Tokyo). Often celebrities in their own right, or popular entertainment personalities, the women are presented as alluring figures, alone or gathered like hothouse flowers at the pleasure quarters or teahouses where they entertained; from casual everyday gestures to viewing seasonal displays of flowers or moonlight; or sometimes traveling to assignations. Drawn to their novel compositions, exotic costumes, and erotic elements, Monet and other Impressionists drew inspiration for new depictions of modern life in France.


The Perrotin show opens with an in-depth guide to Edo fashions and tastes in the form of four monumental paintings based on bijinga by Kitagawa Utamaro and Torii Kiyonaga. Kitagawa Utamaro’s “Flowers of Yoshiwara” Dogs and Cats Intoxicated by Cherry Blossoms - SUPERFLAT and Kitagawa Utamaro’s “Snow in Fukagawa” Samurais and Many Cats in Edo during the Little Ice Age - SUPERFLAT reprise two of Utamaro’s most celebrated works, large-scale paintings of women gathered at teahouses in spring and winter. (In the late 1800s both paintings were in Paris, in the collection of Siegfried Bing, an influential figure in the world of Japonisme; Monet may have had the opportunity to see them first-hand.) At an impressive two meters by four meters, Murakami’s versions convey the originals’ grand scale. Two large-scale copies of woodblock-printed bijinga triptychs by Utamaro and Kiyonaga hang with them.



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