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Lot Essay
With closed eyes depicted through the most calligraphic crescents, the mouth a curved bow-like mark and the nose portrayed through the oval nostrils alone, Yoshitomo Nara's Well presents the viewer with the figure of a child, the artist's most recognised subject, painted with a sublime elegance and subtlety. This picture dates from 1999, at the point when Nara was gaining international recognition for his work, which fuses elements of Japanese culture, both ancient and modern, with other aspects of the Western tradition to which he was exposed during his years living in Germany. This picture was painted only a few years after Nara's first one-man exhibition, and just before his work gained a serious critical reception with the publication of such monographs as Lullaby Supermarket, in which this picture appeared. It was during the course of 1999, the year before Nara returned to Japan, that the artist began a blog, gaining an increasing following, and also that one of his pictures was used as a cover illustration for a book by the celebrated author Banana Yoshimoto.
In Well, both Western and Eastern influences are clear: much of the canvas has been left in luminous cream that resembles a sheet of paper, with the majority of the surface painted so as to appear as though left 'in reserve', echoing the draughtsmanship and restraint of traditional Japanese artists. Nara's relationship to his Japanese artistic forebears is clear in the depiction of the face, which has been rendered with a minimal vocabulary that recalls the ukiyo-e pictures which, during the same year, he was revisiting, adding punkish elements to pictures by such artists as Hiroshige and Hokusai. Meanwhile, the Peter Pan collar and the large round button underneath this exaggeratedly large head speak of a Western childhood and children's books. In Well, the protagonist appears to be a young girl, smiling contentedly and indeed with some self-absorption. The figure seems both cherubic, and lost in some form of meditation, blissed out, recalling paintings of angels rather than the courtesans of ukiyo-e.
Nara is one of the foremost members of a generation of Japanese artists who are often considered Neo Pop, alongside Takashi Murakami. Like Murakami, Nara has developed his own highly-recognisable aesthetic in response to the incredible influx of Western media and culture that hit Japan in the wake of the Second World War, and to a lesser extent during the earlier Meiji period. Japanese culture responded in various ways to this, in some cases taking the incoming influences and making them their own, as demonstrated by Disney, which was soon rivalled by the kawaii figures who inhabit the universes of anime and manga. This is a factor that Murakami and Nara have confronted in different ways: where Murakami has embraced the multi-media nature of contemporary culture, Nara remains firmly rooted in the actual craft and activity of painting and of sculpture. This is clear in the surface of Well: Nara has explained that his paintings often evolve over several sittings, yet they tend to be the vigorous product of one final epic session which sees the work's conclusion. Nara has used a visual language that owes much to Japanese precedents from both the Twentieth and earlier centuries. However, he has also allowed his craft to be informed by Western traditions.
Intriguingly, Nara cites Giotto as one of his influences in this, and certainly Well, with its arc-like eyes, recalls some of the figures of the mediaeval Italian painter, as well as the stillness and serenity that suffuses so many of his works. Nara's years spent in Germany, especially his years as a student in Dusseldorf, gave him a chance to immerse himself in the Western history of art and to see paintings in the flesh, rather than in reproduction; but crucially it also allowed him to see his own native Japanese culture from a new perspective. Looking at Well, which presents the viewer with a deceptively simple image of a young girl which nonetheless appears to form a part of some larger, deliberately unspecified narrative, we realise that the figures in Giotto's paintings and in Japanese manga and children's books alike all tell stories using equivalent means. It is this timeless activity that Nara explores, eking out an emotional response from the transcendent image of the girl in Well.
In Well, both Western and Eastern influences are clear: much of the canvas has been left in luminous cream that resembles a sheet of paper, with the majority of the surface painted so as to appear as though left 'in reserve', echoing the draughtsmanship and restraint of traditional Japanese artists. Nara's relationship to his Japanese artistic forebears is clear in the depiction of the face, which has been rendered with a minimal vocabulary that recalls the ukiyo-e pictures which, during the same year, he was revisiting, adding punkish elements to pictures by such artists as Hiroshige and Hokusai. Meanwhile, the Peter Pan collar and the large round button underneath this exaggeratedly large head speak of a Western childhood and children's books. In Well, the protagonist appears to be a young girl, smiling contentedly and indeed with some self-absorption. The figure seems both cherubic, and lost in some form of meditation, blissed out, recalling paintings of angels rather than the courtesans of ukiyo-e.
Nara is one of the foremost members of a generation of Japanese artists who are often considered Neo Pop, alongside Takashi Murakami. Like Murakami, Nara has developed his own highly-recognisable aesthetic in response to the incredible influx of Western media and culture that hit Japan in the wake of the Second World War, and to a lesser extent during the earlier Meiji period. Japanese culture responded in various ways to this, in some cases taking the incoming influences and making them their own, as demonstrated by Disney, which was soon rivalled by the kawaii figures who inhabit the universes of anime and manga. This is a factor that Murakami and Nara have confronted in different ways: where Murakami has embraced the multi-media nature of contemporary culture, Nara remains firmly rooted in the actual craft and activity of painting and of sculpture. This is clear in the surface of Well: Nara has explained that his paintings often evolve over several sittings, yet they tend to be the vigorous product of one final epic session which sees the work's conclusion. Nara has used a visual language that owes much to Japanese precedents from both the Twentieth and earlier centuries. However, he has also allowed his craft to be informed by Western traditions.
Intriguingly, Nara cites Giotto as one of his influences in this, and certainly Well, with its arc-like eyes, recalls some of the figures of the mediaeval Italian painter, as well as the stillness and serenity that suffuses so many of his works. Nara's years spent in Germany, especially his years as a student in Dusseldorf, gave him a chance to immerse himself in the Western history of art and to see paintings in the flesh, rather than in reproduction; but crucially it also allowed him to see his own native Japanese culture from a new perspective. Looking at Well, which presents the viewer with a deceptively simple image of a young girl which nonetheless appears to form a part of some larger, deliberately unspecified narrative, we realise that the figures in Giotto's paintings and in Japanese manga and children's books alike all tell stories using equivalent means. It is this timeless activity that Nara explores, eking out an emotional response from the transcendent image of the girl in Well.