Murakami Takashi

Best known in America for doing the cover art for Kanye's Graduation and his Louis Vuitton installation, Murakami has an extensive body of art and is the pioneer of the supposed "Superflat"

Milk

he "Superflat" concept is an attempt to form marketable characters and cute figures that could potentially appear as cell phone charms, toys, figurines, and comics a la Andy Warhol or another of those pop artists selling low culture as high art. In Murakami's case, this attempt is wholly unsuccessful. The otaku culture, though widespread, is still something despicable to the art set, since anime and manga, though it requires drawing skill, is highly stylized, and not viewed as art. 

A woman transforms into a jet

On the same token, otaku don't view Murakami's art as something they can relate to either. It lacks the moe that inspires such strong desire and adoration. Murakami's art isn't a negative criticism of the otaku culture; I actually find it to be one that embraces it and wants to raise it to lofty new heights, but because he seeks to take it somewhere else, he can't be a part of it. His figurines are original, but they are too mannequin-esque. They don't have the flaws that creates the endearing sensation that is "moe". They borrow heavily from anime and manga without giving anything back.

My Lonesome Cowboy

I personally like Murakami's figurine/statue series. I am not as interested in the paintings, which are for the most part bland and uninteresting. However, even the figurines don't stimulate the imagination to fill in the back story for them. And that is the problem. I like the commentary on the overly sexual nature of otaku culture, somewhere between ecchi and hentai, at the border of art.

Murakami would be much more sale-able if he just embraced the moe database and worked harder on creating characters that inspired some interest instead of something slightly shocking but overall forgettable.