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Lot Essay
“Nara works alone in his studio, usually late at night, with punk rock screaming from speakers. He chain-smokes as he concentrates on channeling all of his past ghosts and present emotions into the deceptively simple face of his current subject. Each painting- each figure- is typically executed in the span of one night, capturing both a range of emotion and a specific mood.” (K. Chambers, Nothing Ever Happens, Cleveland, 2003, p. 26)
One of the first contemporary Japanese artists to become a global art sensation, Yoshitomo Nara’s boldly irreverent paintings combine impish children, sleepy dogs, and striking text with a deft handling of surface and an eye for traditional figurative painting. Known for his surly confluence of punk aesthetics and the Japanese concept of kawaii (the shy, charming cuteness embodied by characters like Hello Kitty and the melancholy egg Gudetama), Nara’s subjects exist in a transitional space between the innocence of youth and the harsh reality of adulthood. Works like Fuck! are prime examples of the artist’s mature style, and are a “symbolic representation of the dominant feelings of Japanese youth in the late 1990s and early 2000s, chracterised by a sense of uncertainty about the future, vulnerability, and a yearning for the innocence preserved in the inner child” (M. Matsui, “Art for Myself and Others: Yoshitomo Nara's Popular Imagination,” M. Chiu et al. (eds.), Yoshitomo Nara: Nobody's Fool, New York, 2010, p. 13). By striving toward a more edgy take on the melding of popular culture with traditional Japanese art, Nara continues to push through overly bombastic rhetoric in favor of works that invite careful introspection infused with humor and unconventional subjects.
In Fuck!, a small girl dressed in a shapeless blue nightgown with a prominently displayed round gold button shifts her gaze sideways and mutters the work’s title. In Nara’s unmistakable style, the figure is rendered simply with black outlines and minimal surface or background details. The child’s head is round and bean-shaped with a shock of brown hair that curls over the forehead and ducktails in the back. Her green eyes suggest a furrowing of the brow even though she is without eyebrows, while two small nostrils and a slit of a pink mouth add to a feeling that the subject has either just been caught in the act or is expressing extreme exasperation with her predicament. The bold letters of the profanity are rendered in simple red brushstrokes on the right side of the canvas. Reading from top to bottom inside a white cartoon speech bubble that hugs the right side of the frame, the girl’s outburst draws visual allusions to both the panels of Western comics and the textual additions in Japanese ukiyo-e prints of the Edo Period. In the latter, the artist or studio name would frequently adorn a blank space within the composition, and on some occasions a seal (often in a red color similar to the text in Fuck!) would be used to identify the author. In Nara’s case this reference to historical Japanese art is intentional and helps to bridge the divide between contemporary practice and the more widespread traditional notions of Asian art.
Beginning with the Meiji Revolution in 1868, the aesthetics of Western culture began to permeate Japan. The resulting amalgamations and influences are easily observable in the evolution of traditional ideologies and visual culture. Nara was born in 1959 at a time when the United States and other European nations were exerting considerable influence over Japanese society. The artist benefited from this dialogue, and has since developed it into a concise iconography and signature graphic language. After studying at the Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Art and Music, where he received his MFA in 1987, Nara moved to Germany where he enrolled at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf until 1993. Staying another five years in Europe, the artist began working in his instantly recognizable style. A brief teaching appointment at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1998 further instilled him with Western pop culture before his return to Japan in 2000. Fuck!, along with a number of other works in a similar vein, were completed before this triumphant homecoming and illustrate a high point of the artist’s career.
Particularly noteworthy in pieces like the present work is the artist’s use of an rough surface made from cut and layered pieces of canvas. Looking closely, one can readily observe the loose threads of the support splaying out from each individual strip and square affixed to the work’s ground. In contrast, Nara’s impeccably smooth application of line and paint over the disrupted terrain speaks to his incredible talent in rendering such a seemingly simple subject. Throughout his oeuvre, the artist seems to meditate on his gently evolving characters through a mixture of surface and style that continues to hold as unquestionably his own. Stephan Trescher notes this progression, writing, “What he paints always remains more or less the same; the artist paints faces, faces, and faces again. Gradually, slight alterations set in, circular eyes become crooked, menacingly squeezed thin; aviator caps mutate into animal ears, pointed caps turn into the chickpea shape of a face. Surfaces change from smooth to rough and back again, the colours from bright and colourful to milky, pale colourations - and it always remains a Nara face” (S. Trescher, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog”, in S. Trescher et al., Yoshitomo Nara: Lullaby Supermarket, Munich, 2001, p. 15). By continuing to develop his racy rascals within the confines of a carefully-constructed iconography, Nara is able to go beyond the one-liner in order to tap into a cultural undercurrent that appreciates the past but must exist in the present.
Nara’s practice, along with that of his contemporary Takashi Murakami, signaled a new development in a succinctly Japanese wave of Pop Art. Finding inspiration in but significantly diverging from traditional figurative works, these new artists challenged centuries of visual ideas in order to bring them to bear in a modern age. Whereas Murakami’s practice works with anime, manga, and other popular media in an effort to reconcile post-WWII Japan with global capitalism and traditional values, Nara eschews this connection in favor of a more personal style influenced by Japanese and European artists alike. The artist has noted in response to critics connecting him to a larger idea of Japanese Pop, “I don't dislike manga, but I'm not interested in it, and I don't watch animé at all.” (Y. Nara, interview with M. Chiu, “A Conversation with the Artist”, M. Chiu et al. (eds.), op. cit., p. 175). While Murakami borrows from animation, Nara revels in the illustrations of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince or the early 20th century illustrations of Takeshi Motai. Furthermore, looking at the ukiyo-e prints of the Edo Period, or the influence of Zen Buddhism on figurative painting, Nara brings multiple representational ideologies into the current era.
One of the first contemporary Japanese artists to become a global art sensation, Yoshitomo Nara’s boldly irreverent paintings combine impish children, sleepy dogs, and striking text with a deft handling of surface and an eye for traditional figurative painting. Known for his surly confluence of punk aesthetics and the Japanese concept of kawaii (the shy, charming cuteness embodied by characters like Hello Kitty and the melancholy egg Gudetama), Nara’s subjects exist in a transitional space between the innocence of youth and the harsh reality of adulthood. Works like Fuck! are prime examples of the artist’s mature style, and are a “symbolic representation of the dominant feelings of Japanese youth in the late 1990s and early 2000s, chracterised by a sense of uncertainty about the future, vulnerability, and a yearning for the innocence preserved in the inner child” (M. Matsui, “Art for Myself and Others: Yoshitomo Nara's Popular Imagination,” M. Chiu et al. (eds.), Yoshitomo Nara: Nobody's Fool, New York, 2010, p. 13). By striving toward a more edgy take on the melding of popular culture with traditional Japanese art, Nara continues to push through overly bombastic rhetoric in favor of works that invite careful introspection infused with humor and unconventional subjects.
In Fuck!, a small girl dressed in a shapeless blue nightgown with a prominently displayed round gold button shifts her gaze sideways and mutters the work’s title. In Nara’s unmistakable style, the figure is rendered simply with black outlines and minimal surface or background details. The child’s head is round and bean-shaped with a shock of brown hair that curls over the forehead and ducktails in the back. Her green eyes suggest a furrowing of the brow even though she is without eyebrows, while two small nostrils and a slit of a pink mouth add to a feeling that the subject has either just been caught in the act or is expressing extreme exasperation with her predicament. The bold letters of the profanity are rendered in simple red brushstrokes on the right side of the canvas. Reading from top to bottom inside a white cartoon speech bubble that hugs the right side of the frame, the girl’s outburst draws visual allusions to both the panels of Western comics and the textual additions in Japanese ukiyo-e prints of the Edo Period. In the latter, the artist or studio name would frequently adorn a blank space within the composition, and on some occasions a seal (often in a red color similar to the text in Fuck!) would be used to identify the author. In Nara’s case this reference to historical Japanese art is intentional and helps to bridge the divide between contemporary practice and the more widespread traditional notions of Asian art.
Beginning with the Meiji Revolution in 1868, the aesthetics of Western culture began to permeate Japan. The resulting amalgamations and influences are easily observable in the evolution of traditional ideologies and visual culture. Nara was born in 1959 at a time when the United States and other European nations were exerting considerable influence over Japanese society. The artist benefited from this dialogue, and has since developed it into a concise iconography and signature graphic language. After studying at the Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Art and Music, where he received his MFA in 1987, Nara moved to Germany where he enrolled at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf until 1993. Staying another five years in Europe, the artist began working in his instantly recognizable style. A brief teaching appointment at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1998 further instilled him with Western pop culture before his return to Japan in 2000. Fuck!, along with a number of other works in a similar vein, were completed before this triumphant homecoming and illustrate a high point of the artist’s career.
Particularly noteworthy in pieces like the present work is the artist’s use of an rough surface made from cut and layered pieces of canvas. Looking closely, one can readily observe the loose threads of the support splaying out from each individual strip and square affixed to the work’s ground. In contrast, Nara’s impeccably smooth application of line and paint over the disrupted terrain speaks to his incredible talent in rendering such a seemingly simple subject. Throughout his oeuvre, the artist seems to meditate on his gently evolving characters through a mixture of surface and style that continues to hold as unquestionably his own. Stephan Trescher notes this progression, writing, “What he paints always remains more or less the same; the artist paints faces, faces, and faces again. Gradually, slight alterations set in, circular eyes become crooked, menacingly squeezed thin; aviator caps mutate into animal ears, pointed caps turn into the chickpea shape of a face. Surfaces change from smooth to rough and back again, the colours from bright and colourful to milky, pale colourations - and it always remains a Nara face” (S. Trescher, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog”, in S. Trescher et al., Yoshitomo Nara: Lullaby Supermarket, Munich, 2001, p. 15). By continuing to develop his racy rascals within the confines of a carefully-constructed iconography, Nara is able to go beyond the one-liner in order to tap into a cultural undercurrent that appreciates the past but must exist in the present.
Nara’s practice, along with that of his contemporary Takashi Murakami, signaled a new development in a succinctly Japanese wave of Pop Art. Finding inspiration in but significantly diverging from traditional figurative works, these new artists challenged centuries of visual ideas in order to bring them to bear in a modern age. Whereas Murakami’s practice works with anime, manga, and other popular media in an effort to reconcile post-WWII Japan with global capitalism and traditional values, Nara eschews this connection in favor of a more personal style influenced by Japanese and European artists alike. The artist has noted in response to critics connecting him to a larger idea of Japanese Pop, “I don't dislike manga, but I'm not interested in it, and I don't watch animé at all.” (Y. Nara, interview with M. Chiu, “A Conversation with the Artist”, M. Chiu et al. (eds.), op. cit., p. 175). While Murakami borrows from animation, Nara revels in the illustrations of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince or the early 20th century illustrations of Takeshi Motai. Furthermore, looking at the ukiyo-e prints of the Edo Period, or the influence of Zen Buddhism on figurative painting, Nara brings multiple representational ideologies into the current era.