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Lot Essay
“They say human eyes are the mirror of the soul, and I used to draw them too carelessly. Say, to express the anger, I just drew some triangular eyes. I drew obviously-angry eyes, projected my anger there, and somehow released my pent-up emotions. About ten years ago, however, I became more interested in expressing complex feelings in a more complex way.”
Yoshitomo Nara
The figure’s mesmerizing big eye filled with a gleaming iridescence and myriad galaxies in Untitled illustrates his comment, “I became more interested in expressing complex feelings in a more complex way.” It exemplifies the important development from rather simply executed eyes in his previous period. Throughout the 1990s when establishing his signature children with the expressions of defiance and hubris on their faces, Nara primarily employed solid lines and simple colour fields to depict his subject’s body and face including eyes. From the early 2000s, his palette and lines have been softened to express “complex feelings” and to elaborate delicate ethereal depth in his subject’s eyes “in a more complex way” as this work presents.
In Untitled, a delicately painted, large-headed girl with one eye hidden by her hair evokes the mystery and questions: Why is she hiding one eye? Is she shy? Does she want to look eccentric? In this way, this magnificent painting becomes a bundle of intriguing paradoxes, from readily accessible yet enigmatic, to sweet yet menacing, and introspective yet superficial. Her mysterious atmosphere enchants viewers regardless their age or gender. “Rather than merely offering the work for the viewers to see face-on, I want to trigger their imaginations,” Nara once said of his ethos. “This way, each individual can see my work with his or her own unique, imaginative mind… Maybe an exhibition is not where I present my achievement but an experimental place where visitors find an opportunity to see themselves reflected as though my work were a mirror or a window”.
As Nara has emphasized the strong influence of his childhood upon his art, Untitled can be interpreted as a reflection of his inner self, whose inspiration taken from memory of his childhood. Nara grew up in Hirosaki, a rural village in the northernmost province in Japan. With working parents and far older siblings, he was naturally often left alone. To spend the time by himself, Nara would draw and paint every day, playing with animals around his house. In an interview, Nara stated “When you are a kid, you are too young to know you are lonely, sad, and upset… Now I know I was.” These deeply felt childhood experiences and the desire to reclaim childhood innocence have followed Nara into adulthood, manifesting in his unusual approach to figuration. The girl with galaxies in her eyes in the present work is nothing but a reflection of Nara’s life and personal experience, profound loneliness from his childhood, true love for music and literature, and his artistic exploration from old masters to modern art from Europe and Japan with the rigorous formal artistic training that he received in Japan and Germany.
Yoshitomo Nara
The figure’s mesmerizing big eye filled with a gleaming iridescence and myriad galaxies in Untitled illustrates his comment, “I became more interested in expressing complex feelings in a more complex way.” It exemplifies the important development from rather simply executed eyes in his previous period. Throughout the 1990s when establishing his signature children with the expressions of defiance and hubris on their faces, Nara primarily employed solid lines and simple colour fields to depict his subject’s body and face including eyes. From the early 2000s, his palette and lines have been softened to express “complex feelings” and to elaborate delicate ethereal depth in his subject’s eyes “in a more complex way” as this work presents.
In Untitled, a delicately painted, large-headed girl with one eye hidden by her hair evokes the mystery and questions: Why is she hiding one eye? Is she shy? Does she want to look eccentric? In this way, this magnificent painting becomes a bundle of intriguing paradoxes, from readily accessible yet enigmatic, to sweet yet menacing, and introspective yet superficial. Her mysterious atmosphere enchants viewers regardless their age or gender. “Rather than merely offering the work for the viewers to see face-on, I want to trigger their imaginations,” Nara once said of his ethos. “This way, each individual can see my work with his or her own unique, imaginative mind… Maybe an exhibition is not where I present my achievement but an experimental place where visitors find an opportunity to see themselves reflected as though my work were a mirror or a window”.
As Nara has emphasized the strong influence of his childhood upon his art, Untitled can be interpreted as a reflection of his inner self, whose inspiration taken from memory of his childhood. Nara grew up in Hirosaki, a rural village in the northernmost province in Japan. With working parents and far older siblings, he was naturally often left alone. To spend the time by himself, Nara would draw and paint every day, playing with animals around his house. In an interview, Nara stated “When you are a kid, you are too young to know you are lonely, sad, and upset… Now I know I was.” These deeply felt childhood experiences and the desire to reclaim childhood innocence have followed Nara into adulthood, manifesting in his unusual approach to figuration. The girl with galaxies in her eyes in the present work is nothing but a reflection of Nara’s life and personal experience, profound loneliness from his childhood, true love for music and literature, and his artistic exploration from old masters to modern art from Europe and Japan with the rigorous formal artistic training that he received in Japan and Germany.