And Then (Blue)

And Then (Blue) belongs to Murakami's long-running series depicting a single large chrysanthemum rendered in his signature flat graphic style. The blue colorway situates the flower within a cool, monochromatic register that draws explicit reference to traditional Japanese decorative arts — particularly Edo-period dyed textiles and Rimpa school botanical imagery — while flattening all illusionistic depth in accordance with Murakami's Superflat theory. As an offset lithograph, the print achieves hard, uniform color fields without tonal gradation, reinforcing the visual logic of mass-produced imagery. The chrysanthemum, an imperial symbol in Japan, gains an ambiguous charge when reproduced through commercial print processes, oscillating between reverence and commodity.