On the level.

THE FIRST TIME I EVER SAW A WARHOL WAS ABOUT TWENTY-five years ago. It was at an import bookstore in Tokyo, on the cover of Interview magazine. A full ten years passed before I finally got the chance to see his work up close in galleries and museums. Just recently, I selected one of Warhol's "Camouflage" paintings for an artist's-choice exhibition at Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York. I chose this work because it represents the culmination of Pop, completely eliminating narrative and emotion, i.e., the conventional elements in the history of painting. As someone who is always looking to what lies beyond Pop, I feel that a work such as this that stands at its pinnacle represents, for me, a kind of starting point.

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Warhol laid the foundations for an art world where artists such as myself and Yoshitomo Nara, armed with contemporary Japanese culture, or even those already at its center, such as Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst, are able to climb free and unrestrained up and down the societal ladder. I have named this unique characteristic "superflat," as a catchphrase of a theory that I hope will succeed Pop.

Warhol often remarked that differences between "high" and "low" were disappearing. Perhaps at the beginning of his career the differences between high and low in American society were great. Of course, I can superficially understand these differences, but I cannot grasp them on an essential level, because I am Japanese and I was never in the US during that period.

However, when I glimpsed the worlds of the unimaginably wealthy art collectors (who buy my works), I was able to understand in a small way the differences that Warhol spoke of. After Japan's defeat by the US in World War II, the taxation system was fully redeveloped according to the American model, and a social structure was established where the very rich could not survive beyond a generation. The gap between high and low cultures is now almost gone. In a literal sense, a "superflat" culture has emerged. Our work is born from such a context.

In this sense as well, Warhol marks the starting point for my artistic career. As for the guiding principles of my creative activity ever since, I have incorporated the methodologies of various film directors, such as Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Walt Disney, the Japanese-animation filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, and Peter Jackson. These directors are important to me because each of their works combines artistic creation with commercial production and distribution, allowing an even wider audience than Warhol's to enjoy art of the highest quality, while remaining by nature "flat."

I think Warhol was always exploring ways to survive in America and, more specifically, in New York society. I believe that he carefully constructed for himself a mysterious public persona through his appearance and what he said during interviews. Being Japanese, and not possessing Warhol's dexterity, I shall simply explain my concept to the public as one does in a film promotion, and as I have done here.

--As told to Katy Siegel

Takashi Murakami, a New York--and Tokyo-based artist, will be curating an exhibition on Japan's otaku subculture, tentatively titled "Superflat III: Little Boy, Pop Culture in Japan," opening next March at the Japan Society Gallery in New York.

Katy Siegel is a contributing editor of Artforum.