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Lot Essay
“When you are a kid, you are too young to know you are lonely, sad, and upset… Now I know I was.”
Yoshitomo Nara
Yoshitomo Nara rose to international prominence with his signature style of big-headed menacing children in cartoonish proportions in the mid- 1990s. Since then, he was ceaseless in developing a depth of expressions, new techniques and experimented with diverse materials from wooden panels, cardboards, canvas collages, used envelopes, ceramics and even bronze.
This season, Christie’s Hong Kong is pleased to present two seminal artworks, Untitled (The Gaze: Galaxies in Eyes) from 2007 and Nagoya Girl I from 2008. Both are great examples to display Nara’s dexterity working with different mediums and a critical transition of depicting his subject’s eyes, which became a prevailing feature in his later works.
Nagoya Girl I is an accomplished piece with exceptional drawing technique that belongs to Nara’s more mature period. While the final output stays true to his distinctive style, the flat composition with exaggerated facial features and the choice of colour palette demonstrate his artistic endeavour to absorb techniques of old masters from Japanese ukiyo-e to Renaissance art and modern European paintings. Unlike most contemporary artists who take canvas in higher regard than paper, works on paper has been a crucial medium for Nara through which he conveys his creativity and most intimate emotions. American art critic Roberta Smith described Nara as “one of the most egalitarian visual artists,” as he resists being categorised by any social standard and it also applies to the way he treats all media equally, rejecting any hierarchy. Interestingly, the figure in Nagoya Girl I is evidently distinguishable from Nara’s other subjects - the girl’s budding breasts signals her transition from girl to woman. Nara’s lonely androgynous child is growing up here. But as her body transforms, so do her concerns and anxieties. In a cheerful mode, it echoes a complex concoction of vulnerability, rebellion, and ambivalent emotions, which every human being experiences to be a grown-up.
Yoshitomo Nara
Yoshitomo Nara rose to international prominence with his signature style of big-headed menacing children in cartoonish proportions in the mid- 1990s. Since then, he was ceaseless in developing a depth of expressions, new techniques and experimented with diverse materials from wooden panels, cardboards, canvas collages, used envelopes, ceramics and even bronze.
This season, Christie’s Hong Kong is pleased to present two seminal artworks, Untitled (The Gaze: Galaxies in Eyes) from 2007 and Nagoya Girl I from 2008. Both are great examples to display Nara’s dexterity working with different mediums and a critical transition of depicting his subject’s eyes, which became a prevailing feature in his later works.
Nagoya Girl I is an accomplished piece with exceptional drawing technique that belongs to Nara’s more mature period. While the final output stays true to his distinctive style, the flat composition with exaggerated facial features and the choice of colour palette demonstrate his artistic endeavour to absorb techniques of old masters from Japanese ukiyo-e to Renaissance art and modern European paintings. Unlike most contemporary artists who take canvas in higher regard than paper, works on paper has been a crucial medium for Nara through which he conveys his creativity and most intimate emotions. American art critic Roberta Smith described Nara as “one of the most egalitarian visual artists,” as he resists being categorised by any social standard and it also applies to the way he treats all media equally, rejecting any hierarchy. Interestingly, the figure in Nagoya Girl I is evidently distinguishable from Nara’s other subjects - the girl’s budding breasts signals her transition from girl to woman. Nara’s lonely androgynous child is growing up here. But as her body transforms, so do her concerns and anxieties. In a cheerful mode, it echoes a complex concoction of vulnerability, rebellion, and ambivalent emotions, which every human being experiences to be a grown-up.