This book was published on the occasion of Takashi Murakami: Flowers & Skulls at Gagosian, Hong Kong, the artist’s first exhibition in that city. Featuring new paintings, the presentation juxtaposed the artist’s natural optimism with his critical perspective on postwar Japan, symbolizing the dichotomy through the stark contrast of smiling flowers with menacing skulls. Whether pictured in single “portraits” or complex groups, these resonant memento mori are treated in Murakami’s distinctive Superflat style, in which he employs classical Japanese painting techniques to represent a blend of anime, otaku, and pop-cultural aesthetics on a two-dimensional picture plane.

Fully illustrated with color reproductions and details of the works in the exhibition, the bilingual (English/Chinese) catalogue also includes “Potlatch of Skulls and Flowers,” an essay on the work’s iconography by Mika Yoshitake, and a conversation between the artist and Hans Ulrich Obrist.