Mr. Pointy

<p>Rising to prominence in the 1990s, Takashi Murakami skillfully mixes Japanese pop culture, animé, and cartoon aesthetics into a new form of global pop art. At once an artist and a businessman, his large-scale paintings and sculptures are as well known as his mass-produced trinkets and collaborations with Louis Vuitton. However, both practices disclose his persistent and tempered engagement with art-historical precedents set by Pop Art. In 2000 Murakami coined the term “superflat” to describe not only his art practice and that of his Japanese contemporaries but also a larger cultural shift toward the “extremely two-dimensional.” While this sensibility is most present in Japanese animé, Murakami asserts it is a worldwide phenomenon. According to Murakami’s own “Superflat Manifesto,” the phrase accounts for the way in which different layers of culture, especially high and low, “fuse into one.” <em>Mr. Pointy</em> embodies the concept of superflat. The character combines religious iconography taken from sources as diverse as Mayan culture, Tibetan Buddhism, and the Thousand-Armed Buddha (<em>Kannon</em> in Japanese) with a cartoon style. <em>Mr. Pointy</em> was devised by Murakami in 2003 and has since been repeatedly rendered in paintings, mass-market prints, and sculptures.</p>