The artist seems to enjoy the contradictions he embodies, and he often speaks with a deadpan irony that again echoes Warhol, whom he says he admires. When asked about his decision to study nihon-ga, he says that as student he wanted to be an animator until he realized, as he puts it, that he had no talent. He decided that the next best thing would be to study traditional Japanese painting in order to get a lucrative job painting the backgrounds for animated films. But Murakami s work also manipulates and critiques the insidious aspects of mass-market appeal. Dotted with wide-open cartoon eyes and long eyelashes, each mushroom stares innocently or looks flirtatiously at viewers.
Children stretch out their hands to the playful-looking work.
Yet this mutant, anthropomorphic forest has a dark side. Even the style of rendering the images is paradoxical. Each mushroom is drawn in a highly graphic style, defined by uniform black outlines rather than by painterly brushwork. Moreover each of the hundreds of colors is hand mixed and applied, so that a multitude of studio assistants and several months of work are required. These artists were best known for developing personal styles that were out of step with current taste.