The superslick, super-flat, superexpensive paintings of Takashi Murakami

Jerry Saltz reviews the show in New York Magazine. “The main attractions of this exhibition are 50 little happy-faced flower paintings and six large portraits of a haggard-looking Zen patriarch. The flowers are insipid. So are the portraits, although at least with them Murakami is up to his old extreme stylization. But the real content of Murakamis art is money and marketability. Hence, each of the 50 silly flowers reportedly goes for $90,000; the portraits, about $1.5 mil per unit. Four better larger flower paintings run about $450,000; two boring pictures of severed hands, about $400,000. Needless to say, the gallery reports everything is sold.” Read more. Takashi Murakami “Tranquility of the Heart Torment of the Flesh – Open Wide the Eye of the Heart, and Nothing is Invisible” May 1 – June 9, 2007, Gagosian Gallery, 980 Madison Avenue, New York