Takashi Murakami - DOB in the Strange Forest - 1999

"Dob in the Strange Forest" is a collection of works by Takashi Murakami, one of Japan's leading artists. Murakami, who majored in Japanese painting at Tokyo University of the Arts, started his career as a contemporary artist in the early 1990s and has steadily created the character "Dob" ever since. This book was published in April 1999 to coincide with the exhibition of the same name held at Parco Gallery and is Murakami's first book. The name "Dob" is a word forcibly combined from two completely different phrases: Noboru Kawasaki's "Inakappe Taisho" and the great comedian Yuritoru's "Dobochitte dobochitte, oshamanbe." DOB initially began as a full-fledged creative work in which "imitation" was sublimated into "originality," but it gradually evolved into a mirror reflecting the times, and ultimately transformed into something like a self-portrait of Takashi Murakami.