Sommersonnenwende – Summer solstice by Takashi Murakami.
Though the title says Solstice – it is actually the longest day in summer not the first. 🙂
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Murakami (not sure if he’s related to one of my favorite authors, Haruki), is a Japanese contemporary artist who was once a follower of Nihonga – literally “Japanese-style paintings,” the traditional Japanese art, techniques and materials. Somewhere along the lines he crossed-over to the otaku side of culture and he now blurs the boundaries between high and low art.
Murakami’s style is definitely influenced by his Western predecessors, Warhol, Oldenberg and Roy Lichtenstein, as well as Japanese predecessors and contemporaries of anime and manga. His style has been called Superflat, characterized by flat planes of color and graphic images involving a character style derived from anime and manga.
He has successfully marketed himself to Western culture and to Japan and today has been commissioned by google for googledoodle.
