While Vuitton was manufacturing the handbags and accessories he designed, Murakami worked with his bevy of assistants to create dozens of paintings, like this one, splattered with colorful LV monograms. This strategy of cross-branding and positioning products at different price points—a few thousand dollars for the handbags, a few hundred thousand for the paintings—is the key to Murakami's overarching vision as an artist, designer, and entrepreneur.

"Business art is the step that comes after art," Warhol wrote in 1975. "I started as a commercial artist and I want to finish as a business artist. Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art." Warhol never truly fulfilled this ambition during his lifetime. Most of his business ventures lost money, and the widespread licensing of his images came only after his death. Now, with Murakami, the age of business art has arrived. Leaving behind the old-fashioned idea of art as an autonomous form of individual expression, Murakami has fashioned himself as a brand, a trademark, and a corporate identity.