Picking some of the most delectable mushroom art
Václav Hálek, photo from Vice, 2011.
Václav Hálek, a Czech composer, records the 'sounds of mushrooms'. Before his death in 2014 he had 'transcribed' almost 6,000 mushrooms 'translations', each piece unique to a particular fungal species. Listen to Boletus edulis below.
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Boletus edulis by Václav Hálek
Mushrooms appear frequently in traditional Japanese art, such as in Ito Jakuchu’s eighteenth Century screens and Yumeji Takehisa‘s early-twentieth-century textiles. Japan's artistic past and present can be threaded by the common admiration of these fungal subjects.
A detail from Ito Jakuchu's handscroll 'Compendium of Vegetables and Insects.'
Wine bottle by unknown artist, 1392–1910.
The *Lingzhi or* the divine mushroom also appears frequently in Chinese art.
Army of Mushrooms by Takashi Murakami, 2003.
Takashi Murakami, 2010
When it comes to contemporary art, Takashi Murakami is one of the most visible artists today. Mushrooms are a motif for the Murakami, who is drawn to how they invoke a feeling of fantasy and magic. In Army of Mushrooms, the fungi are drawn with bold outlines, conforming to a two-dimensional plane, in line with the artist's Superflat pop art style.
Mushrooms (obst) by Yayoi Kusama, 2003.
Mushrooms are a part of the iconography of anime, but the history of mushrooms in Japan's visual culture predates these contemporary works.
Another prominent Japanese artist, Yayoi Kusama has also used these fruiting bodies widely throughout her psychedelic work, featuring her trademark polka dots. Her body of work has gone on to inspire other pop art greats like Andy Warhol.
Yayoi Kusama, 2016.
From the anime Full Metal Alchemist. Mushrooms are used in anime to convey a character's depressive mental state.
In Western pop culture, mushrooms are also ever-present, albeit with a stronger reference to the Psilocybins and the mushroom's fantasy-inducing abilities.
Still from SZA's mushroom-laden music video.
Illustrations of fungi can serve as a way of documenting and 'preserving' specimens that have forms and colors that are otherwise difficult to retain.
Boletus in Malaysia by Edred John Henry Corner, 1972. From the collection of the National Library, Singapore.
Even in our everyday, fungi are used decoratively to beautify our spaces.
Photo taken by this author at Marina Bay Sands, 5 April 2021. A mushroom-forward floral display being set up.
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Gyroporus Cyanescens by Václav Hálek
Photo by Choo Yut Shing, 2016. Floral display of Ladybugs and the Mushrooms at the Changi Airport Terminal 2 Departure Hall.
Photo by Rubendene, 2012. Metropol Parasol.
The Metropol Parasol is a building in Seville, Spain, designed by Jürgen Mayer-Hermann and is popularly known as Las Setas de la Encarnación, or Incarnation's mushrooms.
Photo from r2k Architects. Quai de la Graille.
Photo from r2k Architects.
Ganoderma-shaped balconies adorn this residential building in Grenoble, France.