Takashi Murakami exhibition explores Japonisme and artistic influence at Gagosian New York

Takashi Murakami’s new exhibition, JAPONISME → Cognitive Revolution: Learning from Hiroshige, opens May 8th at Gagosian’s West 21st Street gallery in New York and runs through July 12, 2025. The exhibition presents 121 new and recent works, deepening Murakami’s long-standing dialogue with the ukiyo-e tradition—particularly Utagawa Hiroshige’s 100 Famous Views of Edo. Through bold reinterpretations, Murakami fuses iconic Edo-period prints with his signature characters and visual elements drawn from other ukiyo-e masters, creating a rich visual commentary on cultural transmission and historical layering.

The Takashi Murakami exhibition also turns toward the legacy of 19th-century Japonisme—the wave of Western fascination with Japanese aesthetics. Reworking artworks by European painters influenced by Japanese design, Murakami focuses on figures like James McNeill Whistler, whose Nocturne: Blue and Gold – Old Battersea Bridge is transformed through the lens of Japanese visual language, including flat planes of color and asymmetry.

In a further expansion of cross-cultural reflection, the exhibition includes a series of paintings that reimagine the history of the Louis Vuitton logo and its signature checkerboard motif. Drawing from traditional Japanese kamon (family crests) and the Ichimatsu pattern, Murakami reframes contemporary luxury branding as part of a broader visual and cultural continuum.

Altogether, the Takashi Murakami exhibition at Gagosian presents a vivid meditation on influence, originality, and identity—where past and present, East and West, high fashion and historical craft converge on canvas.