Takashi Murakami JAPONISME → Cognitive Revolution: Learning from Hiroshige
Wed, May 28
|Gagosian
Takashi Murakami returns to Gagosian NYC with JAPONISME → Cognitive Revolution, reinterpreting Hiroshige's Edo and reimagining European Japonisme, on view May 8–July 11, 2025.
Time & Location
May 28, 2025, 7:00 PM – Jul 11, 2025, 11:00 PM
Gagosian, W 21st St, New York, NY, USA
About the event
Takashi Murakami: JAPONISME → Cognitive Revolution: Learning from Hiroshige opens at Gagosian, 522 West 21st Street, from May 8 to July 11, 2025. This major solo exhibition boldly explores the cycles of artistic influence—East to West, and back again.
Murakami presents 121 new paintings inspired by Utagawa Hiroshige’s iconic 100 Famous Views of Edo, blending traditional ukiyo-e aesthetics with his own contemporary characters and visual vocabulary. These dynamic works reframe Edo-period scenes in a new light, creating a dialogue between past and present, reality and fantasy.
The exhibition also revisits nineteenth-century Japonisme, where Murakami turns his lens on Western artists like Whistler and the Impressionists, who were originally inspired by Japanese woodblock prints. Murakami’s reinterpretations of works like Nocturne: Blue and Gold – Old Battersea Bridge bring the influence full circle—Japanese art, Westernized and reclaimed.
Highlights include:
121 canvas works remixing Hiroshige’s famous prints
New interpretations of European masterworks influenced by Japonisme