World-renowned Japanese contemporary artist Takashi Murakami, best known for his signature rainbow-hued smiling flowers, is once again bending the lines between pop culture and profound social commentary. His latest exhibition, “Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow,” opened this week at the Cleveland Museum of Art, marking an evolved version of a previous showcase from The Broad in Los Angeles.
Spanning more than 100 works, the exhibition traverses paintings, sculptures and large-scale installations that, on the surface, dazzle with candy-bright palettes and cartoon-like forms. But beneath the whimsical exteriors lies a deeper meditation on collective trauma, cultural resilience, and Murakami’s dual experience of East and West.
“There’s a bit of a misunderstanding that my work is very easy and very popular,” Murakami told the Associated Press. “But this is okay because this is one of my tricks.”
Indeed, what a child may find playful in his work—a flower grinning, a creature mid-dance—can carry entirely different meaning when viewed through the lens of adulthood, history, and context.
A centrepiece sculpture titled “Pom and Me” features Murakami and his dog split anatomically down the middle—half internal organs and skeleton, half external form. It’s a surreal yet striking metaphor for cultural dissection, interpreted as the artist’s reflection on his life in the West through a deeply Japanese identity.
“Portraits, even whimsical ones, have historical roots,” says Ed Schad, curator from The Broad. “They can tell you a lot about how healthy a society is, and what it's reacting to.”
The Cleveland installation takes this idea further, positioning Murakami’s art within the historical framework of three defining moments in modern Japanese history:
The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, and the resulting Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster,
And the COVID-19 pandemic.
While none of the pieces directly reference these tragedies, their emotional echoes are felt throughout the space. A wall of square portraits—each featuring variations of Murakami’s iconic flower—captures a spectrum of emotion: one blooms with joy, another sheds a tear, one looks zombified, while another appears in awe of imagined fireworks. Together, they form a rainbow gradient across the gallery wall—beautiful, yet unsettling.
Before entering the main exhibit, visitors pass through a reimagined version of the Yumedono, an octagonal hall inspired by the Horyuji Temple in Nara, Japan. The idea for this architectural homage came, curiously, after Murakami watched the 2024 TV adaptation of Shōgun. Inside the wooden structure hang four new large-scale paintings:
Blue Dragon Kyoto
Vermillion Bird Kyoto
White Tiger Kyoto
Black Tortoise Kyoto
These mythical creatures—each representing a cardinal direction in East Asian mythology—were created between 2023 and 2025 and mark a return to tradition as much as a reinvention of it.
Murakami’s career spans collaborations with Louis Vuitton, album covers for Kanye West, and even Major League Baseball merchandise—a reach that’s helped blur the boundary between high art and mass appeal. But this show reiterates that, while his art may be accessible, it’s never shallow.
Open until early September, the Cleveland exhibit invites viewers to reconsider what lies beneath the surface of colour, character, and culture.