Tomoharu Murakami was born in Fukushima in 1938, and is currently based in Tokyo. Drawn to Tohaku Hasegawa’s works, Murakami entered the Japanese Painting Course at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts to study ink painting. He enrolled in the graduate program in the same department, but had been unable to adapt to the new method of Japanese painting that entailed the use of mineral pigments. As a result, he increasingly devoted himself to making abstract expressionistic pictures made solely in black paint comprising of a mixture of Japanese pigments and oil paints. Shocked by the American abstract expressionist works he saw in 1964 upon his invitation to participate in the Guggenheim International Award Exhibition, Murakami abandoned conventional Japanese painting techniques and began employing a new method in which he painted the canvas with a black undercoat and applied multiple layers of black paint on top of it to gradually build up a thick surface.
Many of Murakami’s paintings are covered entirely with a color palette primarily constituted by jet blacks and reds. His works on canvas are made by mixing charcoal powder into the paint to absorb the oil and using a knife to work the paint onto the support. “Untitled,” 1983-1984 is a great result of the technic and shows the unique presence. On the other hand, his works on paper are made with a combination of acrylic and oil paints, which are normally thought to be incompatible. For “Transfiguration,” 1995, he applies the acrylic paint with a pencil and oil paint with a knife to create finely distinguished layers of paint that give depth to the picture plane. Murakami continues to produce works on both canvas and paper that he develops over a long period, sometimes taking years to create a single work.
Since converting to Catholicism in 1979, Murakami has fashioned his life after that lead in a monastery, waking up late at night, painting till dawn, going to a church in the morning to pray, working between meals and a nap until he sleeps. These labor-intensive works made over long durations of time are drastically different from modern art based on self-expression. They are instead products of selfless acts akin to prayer that make an approach towards “eternity” and “unselfconsciousness.” These works are marked by a process in which man devotes his life to the attainment of a sublime spirit.
Murakami’s works have been included in numerous group exhibitions including the “Guggenheim International Award Exhibition,” Guggenheim Museum (New York, 1964); “Tomoharu Murakami / Satoru Shoji,” Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art (1981); “Cadences: Icon and Abstraction in Context,” The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (1991); “Painting-Singular Object: A Perspective on Contemporary Art,” National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (1995) and ”OUT OF SILENCE: Tadaaki Kuwayama / Tomoharu Murakami,” Nagoya City Art Museum (2010).
