前有安迪·沃霍尔(AndyWarhol)，后有村上隆(Murakami Takashi)。商业元素和消费文化是他们的艺术创作中不可分离、乃至致力于探索的部分。要说模糊高雅艺术和通俗文化的界限，安迪·沃霍尔不是第一个，村上隆也绝对不是。但能把超通俗、超商业、超“幼稚”的视觉艺术带到凡尔赛宫展出，之后还正儿八经地发表《幼稚力宣言》的，村上隆可谓是独一无二。

出生在战后东京的村上隆，正遇上经济飞速发展，消费主义爆棚的时代。他是少数将日本流行文化作为艺术创作主题传播至国际舞台的日本当代艺术家，而动画(Animation)－漫画(Comics)－电玩(Game)，也就是所谓的ACG，作为一种极富日本特色的文化，，从小就对村上隆产生了深刻影响，更是他作品的一大灵感来源。在发表《幼稚力宣言》之前，这位宣言狂人就曾在1996年发表过《超扁平宣言》：“将来的社会、风俗、艺术、文化，都会像日本一样，都变得极度平面……今天，日本电玩和卡通动画最能表现这种特质，而这些又在世界文化中具有强大的力量。”

所谓“超扁平”(Super-flat)，就跟它的名字一样直白，即指以日本动漫为根源的纯二维(Two-dimensional)的画面。在好莱坞疯狂追求CG动画的逼真度的当下，日本动漫仍坚持着二维动画的创作，可见日本文化对“平面”的情有独钟。这其中以浮世绘为代表的传统日本画的影响不可忽视，这也是村上隆曾经系统学习过的艺术形式。与西方艺术脉络截然不同的风格理念，也是村上隆在国际艺术舞台，特别是西方艺术界广受欢迎的原因之一。

不具备任何写实性的画面充满了幻想感，却不似抽象艺术那样晦涩，视觉上来说，可谓是人人都能享受其中乐趣。另外，与安迪·沃霍尔大量运用现成的流行图案(Ready-made images)不同，村上隆代表性的视觉符号皆为他个人的原创，比如最为著名的太阳花，还有骷髅头系列，常常被与死亡的话题联系在一起讨论，与可爱的造型和鲜艳的颜色形成戏剧性的对比。

本次杜若云章画廊举办村上隆个展，展出多幅珍贵村上隆代表作品版画，包括他最富盛名的太阳花系列、骷髅头系列、MR.DOB系列，以及最新在东京举办个展时展出的《500罗汉》。其中《500罗汉》更是2015东京森美术馆村上隆五百罗汉展览官方出品，带艺术家亲笔签名全球限量30版。

村上隆从不乏追随者，他的作品中看似“幼稚”的吸引力，“幼稚”的追求，都是对当今流行文化最深刻的映射，就像他说的，“扁平”中有着巨大的表现力和强大的力量，令他的作品风靡全球。

Andy Warhol of the west and Takashi Murakami of the east, are icons of consumerism arts of different generations. Speaking of blurring the line between high arts and popular culture, Warhol was not the first one to practice, and neither was Murakami. However, being so “serious”and so successful as far as to bring the super-pop, super-commercial and super-“childish”arts into an iconic domain of high arts and cultures like the Versailles,Murakami is the unique one.

Born in the after-war Tokyo, Murakami encountered the age of rapid economic development and the explosion of consumerism. He is one of the few Japanese contemporary artists who managed to use Japan-oriented pop culture as the subject of his arts and landed it onto an international stage. Japanese Animation, Comics and Game, the famous abbreviation being ACG, influenced Murakami deeply from a very young age, and later on became the major inspiration of his. Before releasing The Declaration of the Power of Childishness, the artist had released The Declaration of the Super-flat in1996, and in it he said, “the future society, custom, arts and cultures will all be like Japan, extremely two-dimensional…Nowadays, Japanese video games and cartoons are able to show such features, which exert impressive power to theworld.”

The so-called “super-flat” is very muchself-explanatory, used to describe the arts based on the origins of Japanese two-dimensional animation and comics. These images bear absolutely no illusionof the realistic, full of the sense of fantasy, while not as obscure as, say,abstract arts. In other words, they are easy to consume, which is precisely the vision of Murakami and the spirit of consumerism. Unlike the works of Warhol where ample ready-made images are exploited, the visual signs in Murakami’s paintings are mostly original, such as the most famous one, the sunflowers; the skulls, often discussed in relation to the topic of death, in dramatic contrast to its “cute” style; and the fashion icon, MR. DOB.

Compared with Warhol’s somehow distant attitude in his comments on the mass production, Murakami’s repetition of the same motif with a variety of shapes and colorswhich giving a sense of implied insanity and craziness, visualizes the mentalstate of people under the influence of consumerism in nowadays society. The artist himself stated once that “my way of creation is to grasp people’s desire”– from this perspective, there seems to be a ever present dark undertone in hisworks.

On the other hand, his arts style and exploration in the world of consumerism lead him to huge commercial success. His work 727 was sold with a price over a hundred million yen (over 9.7 million US dollars), making it the highest priced Japanese contemporary artworks. The prestigious French luxury brand Lois Vuitton also sought to work in collaboration with himfor more than once.

This time Je Fine Arts Gallery assembled a collectionof prints of Murakami’s most celebrated works including the series of the sunflowers, the skulls, MR. DOB, and the 500 Arhatsdisplayed in his latest exhibition in Tokyo, with the artist’s autograph. Theseemingly “childish” attraction and pursuit in Murakami’s works are in fact profound reflection of contemporary popular culture, which makes his works a universal phenomenon and sought after all over the word.