When Takashi Murakami wandered through Claude Monet’s house and gardens in Giverny, the visit unfolded less as a pilgrimage and more as a provocation. The manicured paths, the water lilies, the controlled spontaneity of nature refracted through art history—all of it stirred a question that has long animated Murakami’s practice: how deeply intertwined are Japanese and European visual traditions, really?

That question pulses through Hark Back to Ukiyo-e, Murakami’s latest solo exhibition at Perrotin in Los Angeles. Comprising 24 paintings, the show stages an audacious conversation between Japanese ukiyo-e prints and European Impressionism, illuminating not a one-way influence but a looping exchange—an aesthetic tide that has flowed back and forth for more than a century.

Ukiyo-e and the Shock of the New

The late 19th century marked a tectonic shift in global art. After over 200 years of self-imposed isolation, Japan reopened its borders, unleashing a wave of cultural exchange that electrified European artists. Ukiyo-e prints—portable, affordable, and radically different from Western academic painting—circulated widely, captivating figures such as Edgar Degas, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and, most notably, Claude Monet.

Murakami zeroes in on bijinga, a central ukiyo-e genre devoted to depictions of women: courtesans, geishas, and teahouse attendants rendered with sensual linework and poised elegance. These images offered Impressionists a new visual grammar—flattened space, daring cropping, decorative patterning, and an intimacy that felt both exotic and modern. Monet’s fascination with Japanese art is well documented; his collection of ukiyo-e prints hung prominently in his home, and their influence quietly permeated his canvases.

Copying as Revelation, Not Imitation

At the heart of Hark Back to Ukiyo-e lies a provocative gesture: Murakami’s meticulous reinterpretation of Monet’s Woman with a Parasol (1875), a portrait of the artist’s first wife, Camille. Murakami’s version remains strikingly faithful to the original—yet its context transforms its meaning. Surrounding it are twelve monumental enlargements of ukiyo-e prints by Kikukawa Eizan and his teacher, Kitagawa Utamaro.

Seen together, the lineage becomes unmistakable. The parasol viewed from below, the wind-lifted fabric, the emphasis on outline and gesture, the fleeting presence of cherry blossoms—Motifs often attributed to Monet’s originality reveal their deeper roots in Edo-period printmaking.

In Japan, copying has never been a mark of inferiority. As Murakami himself has noted, it functions as a method of learning, a way of clarifying one’s position within a continuum. By copying Monet, Murakami isn’t diminishing him; he is exposing the connective tissue that binds ukiyo-e, Impressionism, and modern abstraction into a single, evolving visual language.

Superflat Meets Impressionist Light

For longtime admirers of Murakami, another section of the exhibition feels instantly familiar—yet subtly transformed. His signature Superflat aesthetic returns: radiant colors, polished surfaces, and “kawaii” characters hovering between pop culture and fine art. This time, however, they collide directly with Impressionist sensibilities.

The results are unexpectedly harmonious. Murakami’s cartoonish flowers and animated figures absorb Monet’s atmospheric light, while Impressionist softness sharpens against Superflat precision. Rather than parodying art history, Murakami proposes continuity. Cultural exchange, the exhibition suggests, did not end with japonisme; it remains a living force within contemporary art.

Art History as Living Material

Hark Back to Ukiyo-e extends a trajectory Murakami has been pursuing for years. His 2024 exhibition at Gagosian London, Japanese Art History à la Takashi Murakami, reworked ancient Japanese motifs through anime palettes, commercial gloss, and the ever-present grin of Mr. DOB. Those paintings challenged the sanctity of national heritage, treating art history as material to be sampled, remixed, and reanimated.

Here, the scope widens. Works such as Claude Monet’s “Woman with a Parasol – Madame Monet and Her Son” A Spacetime of Awareness – SUPERFLAT (2025–2026) and Kitagawa Utamaro’s “Parody of an Imperial Carriage Scene” Cherry Blossoms Dancing in the Air – SUPERFLAT (2025–2026) collapse centuries into a single visual plane. Acrylic, gold leaf, and platinum leaf shimmer across aluminum-mounted canvases, merging luxury craft with contemporary sheen.

Murakami does not treat art history as a closed archive. He treats it as a feedback loop—one in which influence ricochets across borders, eras, and styles, accumulating meaning rather than losing it.

A Two-Way Mirror

What makes Hark Back to Ukiyo-e resonate is its refusal to frame influence as appropriation or hierarchy. Instead, Murakami offers a two-way mirror. Europe looked to Japan to escape academic rigidity; Japan, in turn, absorbed and transformed European modernity. Murakami stands squarely in that in-between space, translating both traditions into a language that feels unmistakably contemporary.

The exhibition leaves a lingering impression: that art history is not a linear progression but a series of returns, revisions, and reflections. In tracing how ukiyo-e shaped Impressionism—and how Impressionism now refracts through Superflat—Murakami reminds us that cultural exchange is not an episode of the past. It is the engine that keeps art alive.