Isle of the Dead is a 141 3/4 x 189 inch (360 x 480 cm) acrylic painting created by Japanese artist Takashi Murakami in 2014.
In was but one of several paintings created in response to the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami
, paintings depicting crowds of nightmarish (yet candy-colored) portraits of arhats, Buddhist monks near-enlightenment that dedicate themselves to helping in a world of suffering.
Not to be confused with the famous series of paintings made by Arnold Böcklin of the same name.
This artwork contains examples of:
- Amazing Technicolor World: The old men's clothes look as if someone spilled a batch of rainbow inks all over them and the background is a red, theatre-like curtain.
- The Place: The painting is named Isle of the Dead, where the corrupted arhats live.
- Postmodernism: Normally, the arhats are Buddhist monks helping out suffering people. However, the Tōhoku natural disasters have caused the world to go so mad, that the arhats have turned into nightmarish, trippy creatures.
- Senior Creep: So many old men with extra or deformed body parts that stare right at the viewer's soul.
- Wingding Eyes: One of the larger monks on the right side has the most pronounced amount of swirls in its eyes with black sclera.
- World Gone Mad: While all of the arhats are exaggerated to great absurdity, some of them take it a few horizon lines too far, be it one of the largest ones sporting eight-eyes, one being literally black-skinned with a tree growing out of its head and various, arguably mythical animals among them.
- The X of Y: The title is fashioned this way: The Isle (x) of the Dead (y).
