The Japanese artist Takashi Murakami titled his new exhibition at L.A."s Blum & Poe gallery "Arhat," after Buddhist monks who achieve nirvana. More than 200 Arhats are immaculately rendered in psychedelic paintings, all completed, like most of Murakami's work, by assistants who follow his exacting specifications. The Arhats do not look happy. They have bulging, bloodshot eyes and wear dismal frowns. "They've been meditating too long," said one woman standing in front of painting at Saturday night's opening. Like that one's getting frustrated. He's about to pull his hair out. Near a 16-foot-wide painting of 48 Arhats, two demons and swirls of color that seem to represent toxic fumes, the gallerist Tim Blum talked with two visitors about Fukushima and Chernobyl. Murakami has not had a solo show in the United States since 2009 or in L.A. since 2008, when "© Murakami," a phantasmagoria of smooth pop that caused ire by including a Louis Vuitton gift shop in the galleries, was installed at MOCA. His Blum & Poe shows, however, feel less like extravaganzas, the pieces more approachable. Still, Murakami has star power most local artists can't command and draws a crowd, no matter the venue. At the opening, the line to get in stretched down the block. Inside the gallery, hovering security guards were a constant reminder that Murakami's works are multi-million-dollar objects. But you can still get close. Gallery visitors leaned in, taking cellphone photographs of specific details, like one Arhat's bent, colored toenails or another's bristly nose hairs. "Arhat" coincides with Murakami's first feature film, a live action drama called "Jellyfish Eyes"; it was shown at LACMA last week and will be released more widely by the artist's own production studio, Kaikai Kiki Co., on April 26. "It's like Hieronymus Bosch on acid," said the artist Leila Hamidi, responding to the enormous Arhat paintings in the first Blum & Poe gallery, every inch of which have been perfectly plotted. The subsequent two spaces, filled with smaller Arhat paintings and Murakami's signature canvases of skulls and smiling flowers, look toned down in comparison. The last room is full of self-portraits: Murakami standing on piles of skulls. In the center of the floor is a sculpture of the artist and his dog Pom, both smaller than life, lying on a low pedestal, looking sad and like they might be dead. So the show that began aggressively ends with a kind of silence. "Arhat" is on view at Blum & Poe (2727 South La Cienega Boulevard, Los Angeles) through May 25.