The artist from Tokyo who created his own contemporary art genre is teaming up with the Swiss watch brand.

 

Murakami's "Superflat" style can be seen on paintings depicting bright motifs from popular culture. They're flat like the composition of traditional Japanese paintings. Murakami's famous Mr. DOB — a crazy Micky Mouse lookalike — has now been joined by new characters including panda cubs and smiling Murakami flowers.

 

The artist's creative toolkit has grown extensively, whose signature characters are no longer confined to flat paintings. One of these smiling flowers pops on the dial of Hublot's new watch. This is the second model the watchmaker has created in partnership with this Japanese artist.

 

Takashi Murakami, the artist
Takashi Murakami, the artist
Hublot Classic Fusion Takashi Murakami Sapphire Rainbow
Hublot Classic Fusion Takashi Murakami Sapphire Rainbow

While the first watch was rendered in black — an unusual choice for Murakami — the multicolored pop-art flower is more typical of the artist's work. Creating rainbow patterns with precious stones is also becoming more common for Hublot. Just think of models like the Hublot Big Bang Unico Sapphire Rainbow, Spirit of Big Bang King Gold Rainbow or Big Bang Unico High Jewelry Rainbow.

 

The explosion of colors in the Classic Fusion Takashi Murakami Sapphire Rainbow is created by 487 precious stones: pink, blue, yellow and orange sapphires, rubies, amethysts and tsavorites. The flower's "face" in the center is encrusted with 103 precious stones of various different cuts with another 384 stones set in the twelve petals.

 

One of this model's interesting features is that the petals rotate around the center of the flower. They're driven by a ball-bearing system set in motion by the self-winding HUB1214 UNICO manufacture movement. It's comprised of 256 components and runs at a frequency of 4 Hz.

 

Hublot Classic Fusion Takashi Murakami Sapphire Rainbow
Hublot Classic Fusion Takashi Murakami Sapphire Rainbow
Hublot Classic Fusion Takashi Murakami Sapphire Rainbow
Hublot Classic Fusion Takashi Murakami Sapphire Rainbow

The movement has a three-day power reserve which is convenient for owners who take the watch off on the weekends or prefer to wear some kind of indestructible military model for outdoor activities. What kind of case should frame this work of modern art? One which is as neutral as possible to foreground the extraordinary masterpiece itself.

 

While the first model cerated in partnership by Hublot and Takashi Murakami matched black ceramic with black diamonds, the designers decided to pair the colorful flower with a transparent 45 mm polished sapphire crystal case and transparent lined rubber strap.