The Power of Art

Murakami presents artworks, and especially portraits, as having various powers across Killing Commendatore, and these include the power to contain extreme emotions, the power to reveal an individual's inner being or essence, and the power protect an individual. The narrative of the novel follows the artist as he moves from a generic style of portrait painting — simply representing people's faces — to a more powerful and experimental style.

The painting "Killing Commendatore" is Tomohiko Amada's successful attempt to tell the history of the failed assassination attempt in Vienna, which the Japanese authorities forbade him to speak of after the war. However, the painting becomes imbued with Tomohiko's own sense of loss, over the murder of his friends and his lover, and over the death of his brother, and it takes on a supernatural force. It is never fully explained how the painting becomes connected...