One of the most famous and best paid contemporary artists Takashi Murakami is launching this spring a revived NFT collection called “Murakami.Flowers”. However, Murakami and his team have originally entered the space back in 2020, one year before the boom of the NFTs.
As humble as in his interviews, Takashi Murakami explains in the statement published on the official website why he took this pause and accepted to only team up with RFTKT — for a better understanding of the crypto market. The launch date is apparently related to the Chinese New Year in February, as well as the year of the tiger according to the zodiac, when the creator will celebrate his 60th anniversary. During the last couple of years, he took a notable step back from the contemporary art market to dive into the explorations of what is called the metaverse with the idea of integrating his constantly evolving art there.
Knowing Murakami’s thirst for the trends and development of the market, it was a logical point in his career to create his own NFT project. The generative pixel PFP collection will feature the artists’s signature smiling flower, one of the Japanese “traditional themes of natural beauty”. To learn more how it became part of the pop culture, i recommend you to watch this video on HypeBeast’s Youtube channel.
The “really handmade” Murakami.Flowers NFTs will have unique traits, expressions and background : “we are doing our best”, Murakami claims. The 12 petal flower design approach is obvious for Murakami’s work and unique for the market at the same time, and, as for me, is the quintessence of the creator’s vision of the space. The unconditionally happy flowers, the way we saw them normally, are questioned in this project.
Apart all these explorations of the crypto and metaverse spaces in 2021, Murakami has also announced a Tamagotchi-like mobile game launch by the end of this year, meaning he will also break in the game universe.
Even if the project’s roadmap has not been announced yet, we can assume future collaborations with world-known brands and maybe a charity-orientated utility due to his previous projects supporting homeless families during the pandemic and the BLM movement.
In fact, why do we all know Takashi Murakami? For his creative collaborations with musicians (Kanye West, Billie Eillish, Pharrell Williams), high-fashion (Louis Vuitton) and streetwear brands (Vans, Supreme). Considering the community’s overall passion for Japanese art and the artist’s previous success in the NFT market with “Clone X” in collaboration with RFTKT Studios, that blew up the market in December 2021 as we all remember, Murakami.Flowers is probably the most expected project of Q1 2022, and will definitely be long-term, like CryptoPunks and BAYC. So it is better to stick to it.
