And Then and Then and Then and Then and Then — Takashi Murakami

And Then, And Then, And Then, And Then, And Then

And Then, And Then, And Then, And Then, And Then is one of Takashi Murakami's most psychedelically charged and conceptually layered series—a body of 33 artworks produced between 1996 and 2006 that traces the full arc of his development from emerging artist to global art world phenomenon. The series takes its title from Natsume Soseki's 1909 novel Sorekara (And Then), a work of Japanese modernism that grapples with the passage of time, regret, and the gap between desire and fulfilment. Murakami translates this literary inheritance into vivid print form through Mr. DOB, his totemic cartoon alter-ego, placing the character within psychedelic mushroom landscapes of hallucinatory intensity. The mushroom imagery carries its own layered meaning—simultaneously evoking Japan's post-Hiroshima atomic legacy, the counterculture associations of the 1960s West, and the fantastic visual vocabulary of Japanese video games and animation.

Across the 33 works in the series, colour shifts dramatically: early editions tend toward saturated, confrontational palettes of acid yellow and electric blue, while later works introduce subtler, more complex chromatic relationships that reflect Murakami's growing technical and artistic sophistication. The series spans lithographs and prints produced in limited editions, with signed works and earlier editions from the mid-1990s commanding the strongest collector premiums. Mr. DOB's visual evolution across the series is itself a document of Murakami's expanding ambitions—from a figure rooted in anime parody to something stranger, more threatening, and more formally accomplished. The series was historically subject to a severe title truncation issue on the gallery's platform, with the maximum character setting rendering titles effectively invisible; this has been fully resolved, restoring proper discoverability across all 33 works.

For collectors, And Then, And Then, And Then, And Then, And Then offers a rare opportunity to trace a major artist's development across a decade-long body of work. The series is simultaneously a pop cultural artefact, a meditation on Japanese literary and atomic history, and a formally inventive sequence of print works that demonstrate Murakami's mastery of colour, composition, and the serialised image. The secondary market for Murakami prints has deepened considerably over the past decade, with key works from this series achieving strong auction results as the artist's institutional reputation continues to consolidate. These are works that belong in serious collections of contemporary Japanese art.

Guy Hepner specializes in museum-quality prints from Takashi Murakami's most significant series, including authenticated works from And Then, And Then, And Then, And Then, And Then.