NFT collapse and monster egos feature in new Murakami exhibition
Even if you aren’t personally familiar with famed Japanese contemporary artist Takashi Murakami, you have surely seen his work.
The pop artist’s brightly colored signature characters have appeared on everything from limited edition Louis Vuitton bags to Supreme shirts to Vans skateboarding shoes.
Having collaborated with celebrities like Drake, Kanye West and Billie Eilish, and institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art and Gagosian, Murakami is, without a doubt, one of the biggest “conventional” artists to try their hand at making nonfungible tokens (NFTs). Despite this, his projects still haven’t blown up to the extent of other prominent contemporary artists like Beeple.
Many are convinced that is set to change, claiming Murakami’s flowers are well on their way to becoming as iconic as CryptoPunks and Bored Apes. After a hotly anticipated but ultimately disappointing NFT launch that coincided with the 2022 crypto collapse, the artist is finally having another go at the medium. A new exhibit at San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum shows how Murakami creates original tokens from scratch.
High art and low art
While many take Murakami’s flowers at face value, there is more to them than meets the eye. Inspired by the postwar Japan in which he grew up, these deceptively jolly icons critique the perversion and violence that underscore the country’s otaku and kawaii subcultures.
The stylized imagery of these cultures is becoming increasingly popular in western countries thanks to the export of Japanese manga, anime and video games, and Murakami — taking a page out of Andy Warhol’s book — exposes the commercialization of these mediums by way of embracing and even exploiting them. His studio isn’t so much a studio as it is a full-fledged factory, operated by 25 assistants who help him satisfy the demand for his personal brand.
Unifying Murakami’s scattered oeuvre is his “Superflat” theory, which not only refers to the two-dimensional quality that bridges traditional Japanese visual culture to its contemporary counterparts, but also to the idea that Japan, as a society, makes little distinction between “high” and “low” art — between the art you find in a museum and the art you find on billboards or the pages of a manga.
This, Murakami says, is in stark contrast to the West, where professional critics decide what kind of creative output deserves to be displayed in galleries and what does not. Presently, NFTs are still largely relegated to the second group — a classification he hopes to change.
After finding huge success with traditional media, uncontrollable events and poor timing conspired against the artist’s NFT efforts. Murakami’s first flowers launched right before the downfall of FTX, causing their value to plummet from $260,000 to just $2,200 per token on OpenSea. Displaying a level of humility seldom seen in the worlds of both art and crypto, Murakami paused his sales and apologized to his investors.
He followed up this apology with a lengthy statement saying he would take a step back from the NFT marketplace and figure out how to create digital art that matched the value of its real-world counterparts. He asked himself the kinds of questions that confuse the non-initiated. Should he use ERC-721 or 1155? Did he need IPFS or independent smart contracts? What about opening his own physical storefront?
Unfamiliar people
The crypto collapse left a mixed impression on Murakami, who will be exploring his frustration with the volatility of the metaverse in an exhibit he calls “Unfamiliar People — Swelling of Monsterized Human Ego.” Running from Sept. 15, 2023, until Feb. 12, 2024, it largely consists of mixed media pieces depicting humanoid monsters.
Influenced by traditional ukiyo-e woodblock prints, his familiar kawaii style, and even Spanish painter Francisco Goya’s nightmarish painting “Saturn Devouring His Son” (which a young Murakami remembers seeing on a museum trip with his parents), the distorted figures presented in Murakami’s exhibit comment on the corroding influence of digital technology: the relentless self-promotion on social media and the adulterating anonymity of internet message boards.
His core theme — the swelling ego — not only applies to toxic online discourse but also to the mismanagement of media personalities like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Bankman-Fried, whose irresponsible behavior has tarnished the reputations of entire industries and technologies.
Despite his negative experiences with making and selling NFTs, Murakami isn’t pessimistic. He believes the crypto collapse, far from bursting an already oversized bubble, will go down in financial history as little more than a temporary setback.
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“Both economically and conceptually,” he tells Magazine, “the current decline of virtual currencies simply marks a shaky transitional period. Therefore, I am not worried at all, and am still running several NFT projects. I will continue to bridge the metaverse and the real world in the art scene.” He thinks that “in the near future, with the rise of young critics and creators who understand the concept, NFT art will become common all at once.”
Standing in contrast to Murakami’s “Unfamiliar People” series are various physical reimaginings of his NFTs, including painted renditions of the Murakami.Flowers. Previously sold at Gagosian, Murakami created these paintings to help secure and stabilize the value of his NFTs, whose floor price on OpenSea remains “as low as it can be.” Some of the paintings, meanwhile, have sold for upwards of $70,000.
Also present at the exhibit is a sculpture of the digital avatars Murakami made in collaboration with RTFKT, a digital fashion and collectible organization known for its work on video game engines, blockchain authentication and augmented reality, in addition to its futuristic sneaker designs.
Inspired by Snapchat’s Bitmoji, Murakami and RTFKT created over 20,000 character models to represent players in online games, each with uniquely designed eyes, mouths, clothes and even behavioral traits. Murakami describes his sculpture as a “cyborg.” Not only because it has a reflective silver surface with mechanical patterns etched into it, but also because the digital avatars on which it is based are part human and part machine.
Changing value in contemporary art
When asked if making NFT art is in any way different from making “traditional” art, Murakami answered: yes and no.
“Contemporary art since Marcel Duchamp has clearly been a world of transcendental conceptual art,” he says, “so I thought that an understanding of the metaverse would come somewhat naturally for the fans of contemporary art. I instantly understood and entered into that worldview, but to my surprise, others didn’t follow. I think the big deterrent has been a certain inability to change the value system of the contemporary art world, and a resulting unwillingness to understand NFTs. Right now, these two words are still completely separated.”
At the moment, most western critics do not see NFT art as art. They think the imagery is “poorly executed and childish,” and insist “the concept of the metaverse is a fraud,” according to Murakami. Their aversion to NFTs — fueled in part by self-preservation — is so fervent that they reject Murakami’s tokens whilst celebrating their painted equivalents. No doubt, the swollen egos of “Unfamiliar People” contain traces of these individuals as well.
Perhaps the western art world should be more like Japan’s. There, the destruction of the Second World War and subsequent occupation by the U.S. army completely dismantled the country’s traditional social structure. As a result, says Murakami, Japan found itself “in a very unique situation where ‘high’ art could not be established” since there were no elites to claim it as theirs and theirs alone. He adds:
“In Japan there is no distinction between high art and low art, and we are bound by the obsession that high art must also be dragged down to the realm of the low and be enjoyable to everyone.”
This, paired with the “demand for iconography reminiscent of Japanese manga and anime,” indicates that Japan should have a rich and vibrant NFT market. However, this is not the case. According to Murakami, plenty of Japanese artists — especially manga artists — are interested in making the switch, but are prevented from doing so by strict regulations that make such ventures unprofitable.
“The virtual currency ecosystem the Japanese government has thought up,” he explains, “is so complicated and negative that the manga or anime creators would not be enticed to leave their normal economic sphere. Therefore, there has been no sign of the NFT market developing at all here.”
The situation isn’t much better in America — at least, not right now. Although the crypto world is gradually picking itself up from the FTX fiasco, NFTs are yet to recover.
After hitting their peak value in January 2022, many tokens plummeted. By September of that year, volumes had all but disappeared and demand had vanished. Murakami’s flowers aren’t the only NFTs raise their floor price; BoredApes and CryptoPunks are in the same boat.
The current situation is so bad that many NFT creators don’t know what to do or where to go next. Murakami is the rare exception, but perhaps that is because — as a renowned artist — his source of status and income isn’t exclusively tied to tokens. For him, creating NFTs is an artistic experiment as much as it is an act of embracing what he (and many others) still believe to be the future of both creativity and commerce.
And Murakami really does believe that. Years after coming up with his idea of Superflat, he argues that the digitization of art has not just verified his theory, but taken it to its logical conclusion:
“I believe the era of Superflat has come to an end, at least for the time being, along with the pandemic. The reason is because the full perfection of the web-based society has now been achieved. In other words, the real Superflat society has now become a reality. And with the rise of the metaverse, unknown zones have emerged that will add even more depth to that definitively flattened society; we could say we are now heading for a hyper-Superflat world.”
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Politics
Conservative Party pledges £1.6bn ICE-style ‘removals force’ to deport 150,000 illegal migrants a year
The Conservatives are pledging to create a new “removals force” to detain and remove 150,000 a year as part of a broad plan to tackle illegal immigration to the UK.
Modelled on the “successful approach” of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, this new force would be given “sweeping new powers”, and over £1bn in funding.
The pledge is part of the Conservative Party’s broad new plans to stop illegal migration to the UK, set to be unveiled by Kemi Badenoch on the first day of their annual conference on Sunday, where reducing immigration and creating “Strong Borders” will be one of the key themes.
Tap here to follow the latest from Tory conference in Manchester
Speaking to Sky News’ Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips ahead of her speech, shadow home secretary Chris Philp insisted this is a “detailed and comprehensive plan to get control of this country’s borders”.
However, Ms Badenoch did not provide specifics when asked on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg where migrants being removed would go, claiming that question was “irrelevant”.
She said: “I’m tired of all of these irrelevant questions about where should they go. They will go back to where they should do or another country, but they should not be here.”
Pressed again, she added: “They will go back to where they came from.”
The new “removals force” that she will unveil later will replace the existing Home Office Immigration Enforcement (IE) and will be given broad new powers, including being able to use facial recognition without warning in order to spot illegal immigrants.
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Sam and Anne discuss how comments made by their leader will be received by Conservatives ahead of their conference
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It will be given funding of £1.6bn a year, up from the existing £820m a year, to increase the number of removals annually from 34,000 to 150,000 – which would represent “at least 750,000 removals” across a five-year parliament.
The Tories say this increase in funding would come from the closure of asylum hotels and “tackling the wider costs of our out-of-control asylum system”.
Expanding the use of live facial recognition technology is likely to attract criticism from within the Tory Party itself, on the grounds of it being a threat to individual freedom and privacy.
And ICE in the US has been heavily criticised by politicians and the public in recent months, with the agency accused of arresting both legal migrants and US citizens and targeting people based on their race.
The Trump administration has faced heavy criticism and lawsuits for deporting illegal migrants and foreign offenders to El Salvador’s notorious mega-prison, the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), including a man who was wrongly sent there, having been granted permission to remain in the US.
Nigel Farage has said violent UK offenders could be jailed overseas under his plans to cut crime by half. The Reform UK leader named El Salvador as a likely destination, though he said he has not held conversations with officials there and “multiple” partners would be considered.
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Sky’s Mark Stone speaks to an undocumented migrant living in fear of detention and deportation in the US
Tories to withdraw from multiple conventions
In addition to confirming plans to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), announced on Saturday, Ms Badenoch will also vow to fully repeal the Human Rights Act, and leave the Council of Europe Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings.
This, the Tories say, would “end the legal blocks that allow illegal immigrants, and in some cases foreign criminals, to stay in the UK based on flimsy claims”.
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The clamour from the right for the UK to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights has been growing – would it make a difference?
A radical overhaul of the asylum system would see refugee status granted only to those threatened by a foreign government, and those fleeing conflict or “less tolerant” laws on religion or sexuality would not be eligible, with the party saying “few people will qualify”.
Read more:
Tory conference – a chance for Badenoch to turn her fortunes around?
Leaked data shows Tory conference might have smaller crowd this year
Badenoch says Tories will quit ECHR if they win next election
The plan will also see the immigration tribunal abolished, with all decisions on migration taken by the Home Office with only limited rights of appeal in cases where officials have acted without statutory authority.
Immigration cases will be denied legal aid, with the Tories accusing solicitors of having “defrauded” the UK by “coaching” applicants and arguing there is “no need for lawyers” as people “should simply tell the truth about their circumstances”.
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Prime minister rules out leaving ECHR
‘Labour is fixing the Tories’ mess’
The plans come as Ms Badenoch faces continued pressure on her right flank from Reform UK, which has already pledged to leave the ECHR and deport up to 600,000 people over five years if it comes to power.
But the party leader said the plans put forward by Nigel Farage’s party are “nothing but announcements that fall apart on arrivals”.
She also said the Labour government offers “failed gimmicks”, adding: “Our Stronger Borders plan is serious and credible and backed by a comprehensive legal analysis. That is the difference the next Conservative government will deliver.”
Kemi Badenoch wants to create a ‘Removals Force’ modelled on the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. Pic: Reuters
A Labour Party spokesperson said: “The Conservatives’ message on immigration is: we got everything wrong, we won’t apologise, now trust us.
“It won’t wash – Kemi Badenoch’s party enabled record high net migration as removals plummeted, opened over 400 asylum hotels and wasted £700 million of taxpayers’ money to send just four volunteers to Rwanda.
“This Labour government is fixing the Tories’ mess by smashing the people-smuggling gangs running the vile small boats trade, closing asylum hotels, deporting foreign criminals and signing international returns deals to bring order to Britain’s borders.”
Hear more about the plans from shadow home secretary Chris Philp, live at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester on Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips from 8.30am.
Will as many people as last year come to Tory conference? I have a leak that helps explore this – and it reveals the party itself is expecting fewer.
Normally you don’t get any detailed breakdowns of conference data – who is coming and in what category.
But I’ve been shared an early cut of the numbers from this year. What you can see above is a screenshot of the data sent to the party board.
I am told this table is from 11 August and shows the then-current attendance figures which were sent to the Conservative Party board. They revealed numbers due to be coming to Manchester this week, lagging on last year.
You can see that at that stage, there are more than 1,000 fewer members due to come to conference than had been listed in early August 2024.
Supporters at this year’s Tory party conference greet their leader Kemi Badenoch. Pic: PA
Indeed, the party’s target is markedly lower. There are also fewer Young Conservatives, though by a much smaller margin.
However, the number of commercial guests is up on last year, as is donors, known as ‘Treasurer’s Guests’, although the number planning to attend Business Day on Monday is down.
Read more:
Tory conference – a chance for Badenoch to turn her fortunes around?
Tories pledge £1.6bn ICE-style ‘removals force’ to deport 150,000 a year
Badenoch says Tories will quit ECHR if they win next election
The ‘Margaret Thatcher 100th,’ a commemoration of her life, is a new event to mark the centenary of the former Conservative prime minister’s birth which is on 13 October.
I’m told the current number of members coming to Manchester is 3,500, although that is calculated on a different basis to these – and includes Young Conservatives.
Another source told me the number of members coming to conference – calculated on the above basis – is around 2,800 but it was not possible to verify that.
A Conservative spokesman said: “This out-of-date report does not reflect the strength of Conservative Party conference 2025.
“There are thousands of members – many new to the party – hundreds of businesses, and many other delegates attending to hear Kemi Badenoch‘s bold new vision for the country.
“This conference the Conservatives will demonstrate they are the only party that can be trusted to deliver a stronger economy and stronger borders for the country.”
In response to the leaked data, Reform UK posted on X, “The Conservative Party is finished.”
Politics
A subdued Tory conference could be a chance for Badenoch to turn her fortunes around – but will she?
Conservative Party conferences of old were packed out events bustling with ministers, MPs, lobbyists and members.
Roll on just over a year after their biggest defeat ever, and the Tories’ gathering in Manchester, from 5-8 October, will be a more sober affair.
Despite their recent loss, last year’s conference was anything but subdued as it was turned into a hustings for their new leader to replace Rishi Sunak. Cue: a bit of a bun fight.
A month later, Kemi Badenoch was crowned leader. So this conference not only marks a year after that abysmal result but also nearly a year of Ms Badenoch in charge.
A series of policy announcements are expected throughout the conference, with the first today being an eye-catching vow to create an ICE-style “removals force” to tackle illegal immigration to the UK, which follows her pledge to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
“Stronger borders” is one of the two key themes of this conference, along with “stronger economy” – slogans set to feature on banners throughout the conference venue.
It is part of her bid to scrape back her party’s position in the polls as Nigel Farage’s continues to lead in the national polls.
Kemi Badenoch’s performance at PMQs has not always been complimented
Just three weeks before this year’s gathering, one of her ministers, Danny Kruger, became the first serving Tory MP to defect to Reform.
Eleven former Conservative cabinet members, ministers and MPs had switched to Reform this year ahead of Mr Kruger. Ex-health minister Maria Caulfield defected after Mr Kruger.
Sub-optimal for Badenoch, but an issue she has brushed off, accusing them of “running away rather than solving problems”.
The threat of Reform, which has led the polls for weeks, dominated the Lib Dem and Labour conferences but, if PMQs is anything to go by, there is no guarantee Ms Badenoch will put Mr Farage’s party at the forefront of her two conference speeches.
Ms Badenoch at a farm in September. Pic: PA
Rather than just the traditional leader’s speech at the end of the conference, Ms Badenoch will deliver an additional one today, in which she will set out the party’s broad new plan to tackle illegal migration.
Some 34,401 people have crossed the Channel in small boats so far this year, according to PA news agency analysis of Home Office figures, putting 2025 on course to break the record for most arrivals in a single year.
The traditional end-of-conference speech will still take place on Wednesday, as she seeks to grab headlines and cut through the electorate in a way she has failed to do so far.
Also overshadowing the party as they head to Manchester is the High Court ruling that a PPE company linked to Tory peer Baroness Michelle Mone must repay the government £122m for breaching a contract for medical gowns during COVID.
Ms Badenoch said Lady Mone had brought “embarrassment and shame to the party” and should have the “book thrown at her”.
Read more:
What happens when an MP defects to another party?
Badenoch branded ‘delusional’ as she makes ‘serious offer’ to help PM
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A £122m bill that may never be paid
The Tory leader has faced criticism over her leadership style, initially because she carried out very few media interviews.
But she has said this was because the party was close to bankruptcy when she took over.
“I basically inherited a distressed asset and my first job was to just make sure we didn’t go bust,” she told The Spectator this week.
“Most of my first three to six months were spent on that. I just couldn’t get out there much. The opportunity cost was perhaps not doing much media.”
But she has since failed to unify the party, which was illustrated by another disastrous result in the May 2025 local elections.
And the latest results from a bimonthly YouGov poll, which tracks her performance as Tory leader, show Conservative voters have their lowest opinion of her since she became leader, with 38% thinking she should remain as leader.
The highest number of Tory members (39%) now think she should stand down and let someone else take over – a rise of 10% since July.
So, this conference is an opportunity to get members – and MPs – behind her.
Kemi Badenoch arriving at Conservative Party conference on Saturday. Pic: PA
One of those MPs who has been unsubtle about his ambition to replace her is shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick, who lost out to Ms Badenoch in the leadership race.
Ms Badenoch has brushed off his attempts to outshine her, saying many of the views he offers so readily beyond his brief “are my thoughts repackaged”.
“I don’t mind that he says what he thinks,” she told The Spectator.
“The advantage of having a leadership contest is that you’ve kind of already said what you think.
“Repeating it, which is what Rob tends to do, is not new information.”
Robert Jenrick challenged Kemi Badenoch for the Tory leadership. Pic: Robert Jenrick
Also, days before the conference starts, former Conservative prime minister Baroness Theresa May gave a rare public rebuke of Ms Badenoch after the Tory leader pledged to replace the UK’s world-leading Climate Change Act with a strategy for “cheap and reliable energy”.
Baroness May said she is “deeply disappointed by this retrograde step” and that to row back on the strategy to tackle climate change “would be a catastrophic mistake”.
The Tory conference could be a chance for Ms Badenoch to turn her fortunes around, but she will have to work at getting her MPs – and Tory members (those who are left) – behind her and the party she promised to “renew” and to “prepare over the course of the next few years for government”.
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