Takashi Murakami uses AI to help recreate ancient Japanese paintings in latest show

By Leah Dolan, CNN

London (CNN) — For those unable to visit the Tokyo National Museum, where Iwasa Matabei’s famous 17th-century epic gold leaf painting “Rakuchu Rakugai Zu Byobu” currently hangs, the Gagosian gallery in London is displaying a large-scale replica this December. Look closer, however, and not all is quite as it seems.

In his first solo exhibition in the UK for more than 15 years, Takashi Murakami, one of Japan’s most successful post-war artists, has recreated Iwasa’s sprawling artwork, which was painted onto a six-panel folding screen circa 1615. Like the original, it depicts life in Edo-period Kyoto in painstaking detail, from the buzzing red-light district of Misuji-machi to a cherry blossom procession crossing the Gojo Ohashi Bridge.

But Murakami has made a few key additions. His signature flower characters, rendered in rainbow hues, stand tall against the medieval landscape, while tiny anime animals are scattered throughout — waving at viewers from the banks of the Kamo River or roaring atop the roof of a traditional Japanese longhouse. Iwasa’s use of gold leaf has been reimagined, too: In this 21st-century version, each light-reflecting cloud is embossed with even more of Murakami’s trademark flower people.

Yet, despite these notable amendments, it is a near-perfect copy of a painting designated a “National Treasure” by the Japanese government — rendered, in part, using artificial intelligence.

“The original painting was super old,” Murakami told CNN at the exhibition opening. “There was a lot of scarring and paint missing. About 80% was OK, and for the other 20% I asked AI to fill in the drawing and color.”

A conversation ensued between AI and artist, as the program got closer to filling in the blank spaces accurately. “We went back and forth so many times until I thought it suggested a good answer,” Murakami said of the process, which from drawing the outline to painting the minutiae took around 10 months to complete. “Then it looked like a patchwork — a collage of AI images.”

AI tools are controversial in many industries, as debate rages over whether they pose an existential risk to human creativity and artistic professions. In October, more than 11,000 artists, including painters Amoako Boafo and Joanna Pousette-Dart, signed an open letter demanding that AI companies stop using their work to train their algorithms. “The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works,” read the statement.

Murakami, who has previously experimented with augmented reality and minted his own NFT collection in 2023, feels differently. “I’m 62 years old,” he said. “When I was 28 or 29 (before personal computers were commonplace), being a designer meant creating handmade designs.”

“The old-school designers hated (digital drawings), saying it wasn’t real design or wasn’t creative because it was computerized,” he added. “But who has that opinion now? Maybe in another 10 or 20 years, no one will have an issue with AI.”

Iwasa isn’t the only artist who Murakami has chosen to resurrect using the most cutting-edge instrument of the information age.

Elsewhere in the exhibition, classic Edo-period artworks by Ogata Kenzan, printmaker Utagawa Kuniyoshi and painters Tawaraya Sotatsu and Kano Eitoku have been similarly restored — some more heavily reinvented than others. In a reimagining of Sotatsu’s 17th-century ink screen work “Wind God and Thunder God,” haunting deities are recast in contemporary anime style (though the hypnotic, threatening aura of Sotatsu’s original is somewhat diminished by Murakami, whose gods look more like cartoon characters).

But despite his use of burgeoning technology, Murakami — whose factory-style gallery, Kaikai Kiki, acts like a large-scale production line staffed by teams of artistic assistants who help create his work — employed 30 additional people to work on his Iwasa replica (which he titled “Rakuchuu-Rakugai-zu Byobu: Iwasa Matabei RIP”). As many of his contemporaries struggle — or refuse — to embrace AI, Murakami’s huge community of workers help him keep pace with changing attitudes to technology.

“Some of my young assistants have never touched a pencil or a pen,” he said. “Anytime they work, it’s with a mouse or a tablet or something,” he said. “Maybe it’s very early, but in seven or 10 years time, people could be using AI to make fast drawings.”

“For me it’s very curious. But this is human beings, it’s evolution.”

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