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Lot Essay
Acquired directly from the artist the year it was made, The Girl with a Knife (1998) is a charming example of the dainty yet devilish protagonists that lie at the core of Yoshitomo Nara’s practice. Rendered in a combination of acrylic, gouache, coloured pencil and ink on paper, a little girl stands against a pale background with a knife in her hand, her piercing green eyes flashing us a stern, menacing glare. Face scrunched, lips pursed, and fist clenched firmly on her weapon, she confronts us with a quiet assertiveness, evoking a sense of defiance that is equal parts impish and unnerving. Created at a pivotal moment of the artist’s early career, shortly before he returned from Cologne to his native Japan, the work embodies the punk-inspired aesthetic that would soon garner him international acclaim. His cast of child characters, cutesy in their appearance yet sinister in their stares, would quickly become global superstars, often styled as tiny rebels armed with miniature weapons.
Since its depiction in the seminal The Girl with the Knife in her Hand (1991, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art), the knife in particular would become a recurring motif for the artist. Despite its dark connotations, it was not intended to be read as an instrument of destruction. ‘Look at them, they are so small, like toys’, Nara has said of his knives. ‘Do you think they could fight with those? I don’t think so. Rather, I kind of see the children among other, bigger, bad people all around them, who are holding bigger knives’ (Y. Nara, quoted in ‘Why does Yoshitomo Nara’s girl have a knife in her hand?’, Phaidon Magazine, 31 March 2020). In The Girl with a Knife, Nara presents us with a skilful combination of playful wit and childhood anxiety, marking an early example of the core themes that would come to define his practice.
Born in the rural city of Hirosaki in 1959, Nara grew up as a latchkey kid in post-war Japan, spending the majority of his time in the company of his own imagination. Alone and curious, he found entertainment in the Western pop culture that was flooding the nation at the time, particularly Walt Disney movies, American comic books, and the rock and roll music that was played on the radio. ‘In my lonely room, I would twist the radio dial to the American military base station and out blasted rock and roll music’, he recalls. ‘One of history’s first man-made satellites revolved around me up in the night sky. There I was, in touch with the stars and the radio waves’ (Y. Nara, quoted in ‘Nobody’s Fool’, in N. Miyamura and S. Suzuki (eds.), Yoshitomo Nara: The Complete Works, Vol. 1., San Francisco 2011, p. 42). In this moment, imbued with a subversive spirit, Nara developed the vocabulary that would later manifest in his daring, radical cartoon characters. Meanwhile, the young Nara also drew inspiration from traditional Japanese art such as the ukiyo-e prints of the Edo period, leading him to develop a visual language that was grounded in both Eastern and Western cultural elements. Demonstrating qualities of independence and rebellion, the heroic protagonist of The Girl with a Knife bears the traces of Nara’s own complex childhood.
Whilst studying at Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts in the 1980s, Nara began to use scraps of paper as the foundation for his work, a process he began to refine during his years at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where he was encouraged by A. R. Penck to adopt a collaboration of painting and drawing. Complementing one another’s properties, the two mediums would become almost interchangeable for the artist, and came to inform the more mature, nuanced style seen in the present work. With its complex surface, pastel-toned palette and meticulous attention to detail, The Girl with a Knife marks a moment in which Nara’s protagonists inclined towards a markedly softer appearance, becoming less caricatured, with smaller heads, and gentler outlines. This transition can be considered a homage to the early Renaissance. ‘I especially love the translucent colours of Giotto and Piero della Francesca’, Nara noted in 2001. ‘The surface texture of fresco painting contains a space that I can enter easily’ (Y. Nara, quoted in M. Matsui, ‘An Interview with Yoshitomo Nara’, Index, February/March 2001). While The Girl with a Knife bears all the hallmarks of Nara’s newly delicate approach, his protagonist’s eyes continue to emit a fierce, luminous green glow. Charming yet mischievous, The Girl with a Knife is a magnificent example of his masterfully evolved iconography.
Since its depiction in the seminal The Girl with the Knife in her Hand (1991, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art), the knife in particular would become a recurring motif for the artist. Despite its dark connotations, it was not intended to be read as an instrument of destruction. ‘Look at them, they are so small, like toys’, Nara has said of his knives. ‘Do you think they could fight with those? I don’t think so. Rather, I kind of see the children among other, bigger, bad people all around them, who are holding bigger knives’ (Y. Nara, quoted in ‘Why does Yoshitomo Nara’s girl have a knife in her hand?’, Phaidon Magazine, 31 March 2020). In The Girl with a Knife, Nara presents us with a skilful combination of playful wit and childhood anxiety, marking an early example of the core themes that would come to define his practice.
Born in the rural city of Hirosaki in 1959, Nara grew up as a latchkey kid in post-war Japan, spending the majority of his time in the company of his own imagination. Alone and curious, he found entertainment in the Western pop culture that was flooding the nation at the time, particularly Walt Disney movies, American comic books, and the rock and roll music that was played on the radio. ‘In my lonely room, I would twist the radio dial to the American military base station and out blasted rock and roll music’, he recalls. ‘One of history’s first man-made satellites revolved around me up in the night sky. There I was, in touch with the stars and the radio waves’ (Y. Nara, quoted in ‘Nobody’s Fool’, in N. Miyamura and S. Suzuki (eds.), Yoshitomo Nara: The Complete Works, Vol. 1., San Francisco 2011, p. 42). In this moment, imbued with a subversive spirit, Nara developed the vocabulary that would later manifest in his daring, radical cartoon characters. Meanwhile, the young Nara also drew inspiration from traditional Japanese art such as the ukiyo-e prints of the Edo period, leading him to develop a visual language that was grounded in both Eastern and Western cultural elements. Demonstrating qualities of independence and rebellion, the heroic protagonist of The Girl with a Knife bears the traces of Nara’s own complex childhood.
Whilst studying at Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts in the 1980s, Nara began to use scraps of paper as the foundation for his work, a process he began to refine during his years at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where he was encouraged by A. R. Penck to adopt a collaboration of painting and drawing. Complementing one another’s properties, the two mediums would become almost interchangeable for the artist, and came to inform the more mature, nuanced style seen in the present work. With its complex surface, pastel-toned palette and meticulous attention to detail, The Girl with a Knife marks a moment in which Nara’s protagonists inclined towards a markedly softer appearance, becoming less caricatured, with smaller heads, and gentler outlines. This transition can be considered a homage to the early Renaissance. ‘I especially love the translucent colours of Giotto and Piero della Francesca’, Nara noted in 2001. ‘The surface texture of fresco painting contains a space that I can enter easily’ (Y. Nara, quoted in M. Matsui, ‘An Interview with Yoshitomo Nara’, Index, February/March 2001). While The Girl with a Knife bears all the hallmarks of Nara’s newly delicate approach, his protagonist’s eyes continue to emit a fierce, luminous green glow. Charming yet mischievous, The Girl with a Knife is a magnificent example of his masterfully evolved iconography.