Humanness and vulnerability transcend the art of Yoshitomo Nara

Yoshitomo Nara has a deep-seated belief that art needs to have the affective capacity to generate empathy and affinities between people, Professor Yeewan Koon, author of Nara Yoshitomo (Phaidon, 2020), said in conversation with Elaine Kwok and Alexandra Seno at Asia Society.

“The challenge Nara sets for himself is for his work to resonate to a wider audience, and doing so requires him to transcend his own ego so that his girl figures can independently create connections with their viewers,” Koon said.

“I think he is a very successful artist because he has created a language and brought all of us into his world in many ways,” Seno said.

The crucial turning point of Nara’s career is in 1991 when he produced a painting A girl with a knife in her hand, 1991. This work, very well received, gave him the confidence to continue to nurture the girl subject. A subject dear to him and well rooted in his childhood memories soon became his signature style and the perfect vehicle to communicate his ideas through his entire body of work.

“In fact, the central theme of his work that of a little girl has a lot has to do with his relationship with his mother. Before he left to study at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in Germany in 1988, his mother shared the story that he had a sister, who died at birth. On some level the depiction of the girl relates to his relationship with this sister and his mother: two key figures in his life,” Koon said.

“What is very immediate is that Nara is trying to represent empathy and survival under the many layers of color” - Yeewan Koon

Yoshitomo Nara, White Ghost, 2010. Photo Courtesy of Shawn Hoke.

The thought of his little sister deeply affected his work. Towards the late 1990s, Nara gradually developed and refined his painterly technique: his surface work became increasingly fine, emanating gentle depth and luminosity.

Rendered in exquisitely flawless execution, and towering at larger-than-life dimensions, the representation of our radiant petite heroine appears to grows in parallel with the artist himself, perhaps dreaming of how his sister would have become.

“He is fighting with the representation of this girl and seeking to find new ways to express her as she evolves and grows into an adolescent-like figure. In a way, she grows up and out of the canvas, which too become larger in scale, Koon said.” By 2011, it all comes together with a figure really looking out to the audience. She has abandoned in her works her means of defence such as the knives, chainsaws, pistols, and clubs of the 1990s, the girl is now standing still, confident with gentler expressions. Something to pay attention to also is that he starts to paint the eyes using a wide colour spectrum, which appear like a bright macrocosm of the entire painting.” Koon added.

Nara softened his palette to pastel hues and dissolved the harsh outlines of his previous work to create a progressively sensuous and mature affect.

As the girl evolves, Nara seems to be willing gradually to distance himself from her. These girls have now grown with their own identity and names such as “Miss Spring” for instance. Their representation have too shifted.

“What is very immediate is that Nara is trying to represent empathy and survival with an underlying theme often overlooked that of vulnerability. This is really, what he is talking about through his 30-40 years of career, under the many layers of color and the incredible network of texture that absorbs us,” Koon said.

When you start to look at his work you start to create a connection. It is not so much about the vulnerability of the girl but about the vulnerability of the artist. Nara aspires the viewer to peel back the layers of his work, to live in the moment and share that same moment with the artist,” Koon said.

“There is one color he does not like which is bright fuchsia. At times, you can see the color on the borders; it is the color he painted over. Nara invites you to see that process.”

Via the depiction of the little girl, Nara’s works exhibit a wide range of emotions, most of which may act as a catharsis which he may project through a variety of mediums.

"I don’t paint when I am happy. I only paint when I am angry, lonely, sad, when I am able to talk to the work," Nara said.

Through a variety of works of houses Nara opens up on his personality, drawing the audience closer to him while remaining private about his personal life. A key side of his personal life he opens up on is on his interest for music.

“In the houses that he likes you can find his favorite playlist that he shares with his public,” Koon said.

“I was lonely, and music and animals were a comfort,” Nara admitted. “I could communicate better with animals, without words, than communicating verbally with humans. My work is always linked to recognisable punk album covers, but folk music record covers are important. There was no museum where I grew up so my exposure to art came from the album covers.”

Nara’s work spans painting, drawing, photography, large-scale installations, and sculpture in ceramic, bronze, and fiber-reinforced plastic. Through different the vases and the plates is where you see the explosion, the lyrics, and the memories of childhood and current events, which all come out in ceramics.

Around 2001, Nara became associated with an avant-garde group of Japanese artists known as Superflat, amongst which featured world-renown artist Takashi Murakami. They used lurid colours, patterns, and Japanese cartoon motifs to examine the country's hyper-marketed and hyper-consumerist culture, which was increasingly mistrusted by Japanese youth.

Yoshitomo Nara’s Knife Behind Back (2000) broke a new record of $25 million at Sotheby’s contemporary evening sale in Hong Kong in Oct 2019 for his largest canvas ever to come to auction, Artprice Database showed.