.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
The cardboard box - an endless source of entertainment for children - plays a prominent role in Yoshitomo Nara's Untitled (Lot 506) and Cardboard Tank 2 (Lot 507). In Untitled, Nara demonstrates a palpable sense of play by painting directly on cardboard. In Cardboard Tank 2, the cardboard box assumes a metaphorical representation of a military tank, in which a small child sits and plays by herself. The seemingly innocent image of a child at play is subverted by such an explicit symbol of violence. Surely, the child does not yet know the true and devastating effects of war, but is simply playing along.
Further violence is evident in Untitled, where a lone bodiless girl appears to have been stabbed in the heart with a knife. Her blank, wide-set eyes and her slightly opened mouth give her an apathetic look. Her large head hovers against an ambiguous light pink background. From the tip of the knife, an unrealistic spray of blood rains down on the artist's name, which is scrawled faintly across the bottom of the painting. The painting raises many questions: Did she stab herself? If not, who did? Is this a self-portrait of the artist himself? This is not unlikely considering Nara's own solitary upbringing and lifestyle, which seems to also be the key to an inexhaustible imagination.
Nara's use of particular colours and forms further contribute to the unsettling quality of the paintings. He painted Untitled in the middle of his residence in Germany (1988-93) and he painted Cardboard Tank after he left, four years later. The latter marks a departure from soft pastels to harsh, contrasting colours, very much in the spirit of German Expressionists like Kirchner, whose works Nara would have encountered in Europe. Further parallels can be found in Nara's solitary and distorted figures that verge toward abstraction. The combination of these visual elements in both paintings evokes a sense of anxiety and restlessness so characteristic of children.
Perhaps Nara is inclined to the Hobbesian notion that all men are "brutish and short," capable of inflicting pain and destruction on each other. In these paintings, however, the children are still quite innocent and ignorant of their potential for evil.
Further violence is evident in Untitled, where a lone bodiless girl appears to have been stabbed in the heart with a knife. Her blank, wide-set eyes and her slightly opened mouth give her an apathetic look. Her large head hovers against an ambiguous light pink background. From the tip of the knife, an unrealistic spray of blood rains down on the artist's name, which is scrawled faintly across the bottom of the painting. The painting raises many questions: Did she stab herself? If not, who did? Is this a self-portrait of the artist himself? This is not unlikely considering Nara's own solitary upbringing and lifestyle, which seems to also be the key to an inexhaustible imagination.
Nara's use of particular colours and forms further contribute to the unsettling quality of the paintings. He painted Untitled in the middle of his residence in Germany (1988-93) and he painted Cardboard Tank after he left, four years later. The latter marks a departure from soft pastels to harsh, contrasting colours, very much in the spirit of German Expressionists like Kirchner, whose works Nara would have encountered in Europe. Further parallels can be found in Nara's solitary and distorted figures that verge toward abstraction. The combination of these visual elements in both paintings evokes a sense of anxiety and restlessness so characteristic of children.
Perhaps Nara is inclined to the Hobbesian notion that all men are "brutish and short," capable of inflicting pain and destruction on each other. In these paintings, however, the children are still quite innocent and ignorant of their potential for evil.