727-727

A painting on three panels

The image behind 727-727 is Murakami's painting 727 of 1996. It is acrylic on canvas mounted on board, in three panels that together measure 9 feet 10 inches by 14 feet 9 inches (299.7 x 449.6 cm). A stylized wave crashes across all three panels against a mottled purple-blue ground, and at the center a round creature with red eyes and spiky teeth surfs the spray.

The Museum of Modern Art, which owns the painting, describes the wave as strongly suggestive of the woodblock prints of Hokusai, and the three panels as evoking a painted Japanese folding screen. The dappled background was made by building up and then sanding or scraping away some twenty layers of acrylic paint, a nod to nihonga, the traditional Japanese painting style in which Murakami was trained.

Murakami himself has played down any hidden meaning. 'The work is not particularly representative of anything,' he said. 'It is simply a combination of all the available techniques that I had at the time.' The museum explains the title as referring both to a Japanese cosmetics brand whose billboards stand in rural fields, best seen from passing trains, and to the Boeing airliner. Other accounts say the artist has given the number no specific meaning.

Murakami and Mr. DOB

Takashi Murakami was born in Tokyo on February 1, 1962. He studied nihonga at the Tokyo University of the Arts, earning a master's degree in 1988 and a Ph.D. in 1993.

Mr. DOB appeared in 1993. His name is a contraction of the Japanese slang expression 'dobojite,' or 'why?', and the letters D, O and B are spelled out in his ears and face so he stays recognizable however much he mutates. MoMA calls him an endlessly morphing alter ego for the artist, one who turns up in paintings, sculptures, key chains and plush toys.

In 1996, the year of the painting, Murakami launched the Hiropon Factory as a production workshop; it was incorporated as Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. in 2001. Kaikai Kiki published 727-727, as it publishes the artist's offset prints. In 2000 Murakami published his Superflat theory, which MoMA says 727 anticipates in its flattening of past and present, fine art and pop culture.

A Murakami boom

MoMA acquired the painting as a gift of the collector David Teiger and showed it in New Work/New Acquisitions in the summer of 2005, the year before the print appeared. It has since hung in the museum's contemporary galleries from 2011 to 2014 and in a contemporary collection exhibition in 2015-16.

The print arrived as Murakami was reaching the peak of his mainstream fame. In 2007 he designed the cover of Kanye West's album Graduation, and his retrospective, titled with a copyright sign, opened in 2007 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, where it ran through February 11, 2008, before moving to the Brooklyn Museum from April 5 to July 13, 2008, then to Frankfurt from October 27, 2008, and to Bilbao in 2009. The show had more than ninety works.

In May 2008 his sculpture My Lonesome Cowboy sold at auction for $15.2 million, and that year Time named him one of the 100 most influential people, the only visual artist on the list.

What the print has sold for

727-727 was one of several offset versions of the composition. An earlier 727 offset lithograph, dated 2003, was also issued in an edition of 300, and a collector's account says the 727-727 variant is slightly larger than the 2003 print and uses a rust-colored palette. In 2016, for the painting's 20th anniversary, Murakami released new offset variants and the first 727 silkscreen, in an edition of 100.

On April 18, 2023, impression 209/300, signed and numbered in silver ink and unframed, was offered at auction in New York with an estimate of $1,000 to $2,000. It sold for $6,350.

Six months later, on October 3, 2023, impression 53/300, framed and offered from the estate of Elliot Roberts of Los Angeles, sold at auction in Los Angeles for $3,200 including premium. Roberts, who died in 2019, was the music manager who co-founded Asylum Records with David Geffen in 1970 and managed Neil Young for more than 50 years.

How to identify it

The print is an offset lithograph in colors made with a four-color process plus silver, on smooth wove paper with full margins. Catalog measurements vary slightly by sheet: one gives the image as 64.1 x 98.7 cm and the sheet as 65.7 x 99.7 cm; another gives 64.2 x 99.2 cm for the image and 65.7 x 100 cm for the sheet. A collector's account gives the paper size as 999 x 657 mm.

Genuine impressions are hand signed and numbered out of 300 in silver ink; catalogs credit Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd., Tokyo, as publisher. Sources disagree on the date: the auction catalogs and dealers of 2023 mostly say 2006, while one Los Angeles catalog of 2023 and one collector account say 2007.

MoMA's own design store sells an unsigned 727 poster for $24.95. It is a reproduction, not the signed edition.

The numbers

Medium

Offset lithograph, four-color process with silver, on wove paper

Dimensions

Sheet about 65.7 x 99.7 cm; image about 64.1 x 98.7 cm

Edition size

300, signed and numbered in silver ink

Publisher

Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd., Tokyo

Source painting

727, 1996, acrylic on canvas mounted on board, three panels, 299.7 x 449.6 cm

Painting's home

Museum of Modern Art, New York, gift of David Teiger, object number 251.2003.a-c

Timeline

1. Feb 1, 1962

   Takashi Murakami is born in Tokyo.

2. 1988

   Murakami earns a master's degree in nihonga at the Tokyo University of the Arts.

3. 1993

   Murakami creates Mr. DOB and completes his Ph.D. in nihonga.

4. 1996

   Murakami paints 727, three panels nearly 15 feet wide, and launches the Hiropon Factory.

5. 2000

   Murakami publishes his Superflat theory.

6. 2001

   The studio is incorporated as Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd.

7. 2003

   Kaikai Kiki publishes the first 727 offset lithograph, in an edition of 300.

8. Jun 29, 2005

   The painting 727, a gift of David Teiger, goes on view at MoMA in New Work/New Acquisitions.

9. 2006

   727-727 is published as an offset lithograph with silver in an edition of 300 (some sources say 2007).

10. 2007

    Murakami's retrospective opens at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; it runs there through February 11, 2008.

11. Apr 5, 2008

    The retrospective opens at the Brooklyn Museum, running to July 13.

12. 2016

    For 727's 20th anniversary, Murakami releases new offset variants and a 727 silkscreen in an edition of 100.

13. Jun 21, 2019

    Music manager Elliot Roberts, owner of impression 53/300, dies in Los Angeles.

14. Apr 18, 2023

    Impression 209/300 sells at auction in New York for $6,350.

15. Oct 3, 2023

    Impression 53/300, from the Roberts estate, sells at auction in Los Angeles for $3,200.

The world in 2006

• Jan 19, 2006

  NASA launches the New Horizons probe to Pluto.

• Feb 10, 2006

  The Winter Olympics open in Turin, Italy.

• Mar 21, 2006

  Twitter launches.

• Jun 3, 2006

  Montenegro declares independence.

• Jul 9, 2006

  Italy beats France in the World Cup final in Germany.

• Jul 12, 2006

  The Lebanon War begins.

• Aug 24, 2006

  The International Astronomical Union redefines 'planet,' demoting Pluto.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, 727-727 is number 88 of 100 in the art entries of the FLOAT 100. 88 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (82 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The painting's mottled background was made by building up and then sanding away about twenty layers of acrylic paint.
• Mr. DOB's name comes from the Japanese slang 'dobojite,' meaning 'why?', and his face spells out D, O and B.
• Murakami has said 727 is 'not particularly representative of anything.'
• MoMA links the title both to a cosmetics brand's billboards seen from trains and to the Boeing 727.
• One impression came from the estate of Elliot Roberts, the manager of Neil Young for more than 50 years.
• MoMA's design store sells an unsigned 727 poster for $24.95; the signed print is limited to 300.