Murakami Takashi Plate

Japanese contemporary artist Takashi Murakami may be famous among collectors for the psychedelic flowers and chaotic cartoons that populate his prints and paintings, but artists likely know him as the theorist behind the contemporary art movement he calls “Superflat.”

Partially inspired by the Pop art of Andy Warhol, in which celebrity culture and mundane mass-produced items became the focus of bright and colorful works that both celebrated and criticized consumerism, Murakami’s Superflat encompasses painting, sculpture, digital design and more to present a subversive look at consumerism but is also an effort to blend fine art and lowbrow culture.

A multifaceted and remarkably influential artist as well as a compulsive art collector, Murakami has collaborated with brands such as Louis Vuitton, while one of his most famous Superflat works is the teddy bear on the cover of the Graduation album by American rapper Kanye West.

In 1993 Murakami earned his Ph.D. from Tokyo University of the Arts, where he was trained in nihonga, a style of painting that originated in the late 19th century by artists who worked to preserve and promote the conventions and processes associated with traditional Japanese art. While practicing nihonga, Murakami began to realize that his beliefs didn’t align with the tradition, so his art subsequently took on a satirical feel that embodied a critique of the movement. Before long, his style took a drastic turn, embracing otaku, a rising postwar cultural phenomenon among Japan’s younger crowd who loved anime and manga. (Otaku is also integral to Superflat.)

This is when Murakami’s most well-known character, Mr. DOB, was born. This anime-inspired icon, which Americans might interpret as a cross between Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse and Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire Cat given its pronounced ears and broad and menacing grin, was part of the artist’s endeavor to elevate the otaku subculture but also to target mass consumerism. While Murakami conceived of Mr. DOB years ahead of his 2000-era Superflat theory, there is much common ground between the two. Not unlike his other creations, Murakami’s Mr. DOB is equal parts erotic, disturbing and cartoonish — an incisive mockery of the mingling of commerce and fine art so prevalent in Japanese popular culture.

Find original Takashi Murakami prints, sculptures and other art on 1stDibs. 

Beginning in the early 20th century, abstract art became a leading style of modernism. Rather than portray the world in a way that represented reality, as had been the dominating style of Western art in the previous centuries, abstract paintings, prints and sculptures are marked by a shift to geometric forms, gestural shapes and experimentation with color to express ideas, subject matter and scenes.

Although abstract art flourished in the early 1900s, propelled by movements like Fauvism and Cubism, it was rooted in the 19th century. In the 1840s, J.M.W. Turner emphasized light and motion for atmospheric paintings in which concrete details were blurred, and Paul Cézanne challenged traditional expectations of perspective in the 1890s.

Some of the earliest abstract artists — Wassily Kandinsky and Hilma af Klint — expanded on these breakthroughs while using vivid colors and forms to channel spiritual concepts. Painter Piet Mondrian, a Dutch pioneer of the art movement, explored geometric abstraction partly owing to his belief in Theosophy, which is grounded in a search for higher spiritual truths and embraces philosophers of the Renaissance period and medieval mystics. Black Square, a daringly simple 1913 work by Russian artist Kazimir Malevich, was a watershed statement on creating art that was free “from the dead weight of the real world,” as he later wrote.

Surrealism in the 1920s, led by artists such as Salvador Dalí, Meret Oppenheim and others, saw painters creating abstract pieces in order to connect to the subconscious. When Abstract Expressionism emerged in New York during the mid-20th century, it similarly centered on the process of creation, in which Helen Frankenthaler’s expressive “soak-stain” technique, Jackson Pollock’s drips of paint, and Mark Rothko’s planes of color were a radical new type of abstraction.

Conceptual art, Pop art, Hard-Edge painting and many other movements offered fresh approaches to abstraction that continued into the 21st century, with major contemporary artists now exploring it, including Anish Kapoor, Mark Bradford, El Anatsui and Julie Mehretu.

Find original abstract paintings, sculptures, prints and other art on 1stDibs.

Explore a vast range of abstract prints on 1stDibs to find a piece to enhance your existing collection or transform a space.

Unlike figurative paintings and other figurative art, which focuses on realism and representational perspectives, abstract art concentrates on visual interpretation. An artist may use a single color or simple geometric forms to create a world of depth. Printmaking has a rich history of abstraction. Through materials like stone, metal, wood and wax, an image can be transferred from one surface to another.

During the 19th century, iconic artists, including Edvard Munch, Paul Cézanne, Georgiana Houghton and others, began exploring works based on shapes and colors. This was a departure from the academic conventions of European painting and would influence the rise of 20th-century abstraction and its pioneers, like Pablo Picasso and Piet Mondrian.

Some leaders of European abstraction, including Franz Kline, were influenced by the gestural shapes of East Asian calligraphy. Calligraphy interprets poetry, songs, symbols or other means of storytelling into art, from works on paper in Japan to elements of Islamic architecture.

Bold, daring and expressive, abstract art is constantly evolving and dazzling viewers. And entire genres have blossomed from it, such as Color Field painting and Minimalism.

The collection of abstract art prints on 1stDibs includes etchings, lithographs, screen-prints and other works, and you can find prints by artists such as Joan Miró, Alexander Calder and more.