A day after celebrating his 61st birthday, Takashi Murakami is feeling serene as he preps for the release of his third collaboration with Hublot, an all-black Classic Fusion with a multi-colored Flower graphic on its face that’s made of precious stones.”It’s gorgeous with those stones, isn’t it?” he muses, reclining in a booth at his hotel suite in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. And beautiful it certainly is. The design features the artist’s famous Flower done up in rubies, sapphires, amethysts, tsavorites and topaz, serving as the perfect middle ground between the all-black and clear/multicolor iterations of the Murakami x Hublot Classic Fusion that released in 2021.

The watch is undeniably luxurious, but, in classic Murakami fashion, there’s an element of playfulness involved as well. Thanks to a unique ball-bearing system, the pedals of the Flower spin with beautiful, reckless abandon, creating a kaleidoscopic effect. It’s both a feat of watchmaking and, undeniably, high-priced catnip for Murakami’s famous friends like J Balvin and Pharrell, but its inspiration comes from a playfully proletarian source. “The idea for the spinning face came from fidget spinners,” Murakami tells us with a grin. And thanks to its 72-hour power reserve, it can spin for days.

The watch may be a head-turner — and is certainly not for the faint of heart or light of wallet — but Murakami hopes that it can be enjoyed by all types of collectors. He notes that he sees two main types of watch aficionados who’d enjoy it: the ones that would “brag about [the watch] and show it off,” and the ones that would enjoy it in silence. “I have a whole flow of events in my head,” Murakami says, hypothesizing about this “second style” of collectors. “They buy the watch, they take the watch home, look at very carefully and smile, then wind it and let it spin for even more joy.”

Besides the watch, there’s another collector’s element: the launch of 13 new watches (which will be unveiled in full at Watches and Wonders 2023 in Geniva) and 13 NFTs, created to both celebrate the new designs while also rewarding the buyers of the past two models and the collectors of their accompanying NFTs. 12 of the 13 watches in question will be available exclusively through an online platform that can only be accessed by owners of the 324 NFTs Murakami and Hublot minted in April 2022. Previously, these NFTs could only be bought by owners of at least one of the first two Murakami x Hublot watches, but they’re now available on OpenSea.

If collectors are then lucky enough to purchase one of the 12 watches available for sale, they’ll get its matching limited NFT as well. Then, if one of these collectors is able to somehow accumulate all 12 of the exclusive NFTs — which can also be traded on OpenSea — by April 2024, they’ll be able to obtain this Classic Fusion Rainbow watch. If no collector can complete the task, the watch will be auctioned off by Hublot and all the proceeds will go to charity.

“We’re imagining new ways of accessing contemporary art.”

“When my collaboration with Hublot was announced, we made it known that we would be adopting new forms of artistic expression,” said Murakami. “After creating all the timepieces together, as well as the digital works of art, we’re imagining new ways of accessing contemporary art.”

The endlessly creative artist has plenty more on the way as well. The CGI film that stretched his creative studio to its limits before the COVID-19 pandemic? He’s going to finish it. “I’m going to begin working on the film again,” Murakami tells us. “When I do, I know that’ll generate a lot of new ideas and you’ll see that reflected in my art.”

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For more from the world of Takashi Murakami, see how his signature Flower artwork became a pop culture symbol.