Living the Artistã¢ââ¢s Life a Guide to Growing Persevering and Succeeding in the Art World
ten things to know about Yoshitomo Nara
We look at how the creative person'due south work blends new and old ideas of Japanese identity — illustrated with lots offered at Christie's
1. Nara was transformed past his time in Germany
Yoshitomo Nara was born in 1959 in Hirosaki, a city known for its traditional Edo Period (1603-1868) architecture and cherry flower copse, in Japan's mountainous northern Aomori Prefecture. The youngest of 3 boys of working parents, he spent much of his gratuitous time lost in Japanese comic books. 'I was lonely, and music and animals were a comfort,' he admitted. 'I could communicate improve with animals, without words, than verbally with humans.'
Nara moved to Tokyo in his teens, and then to Nagakute when he was 21 to report art at the Aichi University of the Arts, before leaving Nihon for Germany. At the prestigious Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where he studied from 1988 to 1993, Nara became fascinated with Neo-Expressionism and punk rock; both of these movements would shape his creative style, although he denies punk was his simply musical influence. He settled in Cologne in 1994, a pivotal time for the artist as he began to incorporate Japanese and Western popular culture into his work.
'It is a big mistake to connect my art to punk alone,' he told the Financial Times in 2014. 'My work is always linked to recognisable punk albums [including covers for Shonen Knife and Bloodthirsty Butchers], but folk music tape covers are really important. There was no museum where I grew up so my exposure to art came from the anthology covers.'
Living in Germany farther shaped his outlook. 'I was a foreigner and I had no language skills, so I felt very much isolated,' he said. 'It was like growing upward in Aomori, which is very much disconnected from Japan. Information technology reminded me of who I am and helped me rediscover myself.'
2. His manner blended former and new
After 12 years in Germany, Nara returned to Japan, where a seminal solo exhibition I DON'T Mind, IF YOU FORGET ME was held at the Yokohama Museum of Art in 2001. In his work, he began fusing elements from his past; he painted portraits of children with facial features adopted from traditional Japanese Otafuku and Okametheatrical masks, and in poses lifted from themanga he read as a child. His compositions likewise nodded to historical Edo catamenia ukiyo-e woodblock prints.
View summit-priced Nara works sold at Christie's
3. He became part of the Superflat grouping of artists
Around 2001, Nara became associated with an avant-garde group of Japanese artists known as Superflat, which also included Takashi Murakami and Chiho Aoshima. They used bright colours, patterns, and Japanese cartoon motifs to examine the land's hyper-marketed and hyper-consumerist culture, which was increasingly mistrusted by Japanese youth.
4. Nara'south portraits hibernate a darker side
Nara presently became known amongst his Superflat peers for his pictures of young children. Seemingly innocent at commencement glance, a closer look reveals a darker side to these boys and girls, who display knives, crucifixes and flaming torches, or sport vampire fangs and smoke cigarettes.
Nonetheless if Nara'south mini subjects are no angels, their aggressive posturing is mayhap a necessary defense force. Every bit Nara once said of his work, 'I kind of see the children among other, bigger, bad people all effectually them, who are holding bigger knives.'
five. Nara's reputation has grown with his oeuvre
In the 2000s Nara's work began to bout in group and solo exhibitions in Japan and America, and his prices rocketed. In 2008 Christie'southward sold Nara's 1995 painting of a kid in an orange lid,Yr. Babyhood, for HK$half-dozen,487,5000. It sold once more at Christie's in Hong Kong for HK$19,720,000 in 2015.
Nara also began experimenting with other mediums, sculpting heads of figures from his paintings. These works, which retain impressions from the artist'south hands, are often coated in liquid metal that cracks like the glaze on Song dynasty Chinese ceramics. In sculpture as in painting, Nara again harmonised modern and centuries-quondam crafts.
6. The Cracking East Japan Earthquake of 2011 had a profound touch on his production
Disturbed past the earthquake and tsunami, Nara found himself temporarily unable to work. 'I think what is different about those artists who were affected by the convulsion is that I grew upwards in Aomori, which is on the border of Fukushima,' Nara revealed in 2016.
'The whole surface area between us and Fukushima was devastated; the whole scenery I was familiar with has been destroyed. For some people with no relation to the expanse they may be affected as an artist, but in my case I was a lot more than affected on a personal level because I know people who were lost.'
Nara visited the site of the devastation several times, and took up a residency at his alma mater, Aichi University of the Arts, in a bid to reignite his inventiveness.
7. Nara has been exhibited all over the world
Nara's reputation outside of Asia had already been cemented by a major 2010 show at New York'due south Asia Gild, Yoshitomo Nara: Nobody'southward Fool. This was bolstered by permanent acquisitions by MoCA in Los Angeles and MoMA in New York, which at present houses more than than 130 of his works. In 2021, the Los Angeles County Museum of Arts held a major retrospective.
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Yoshitomo Nara (b. 1959), Can't Await 'til the Nighttime Comes, 2012. Acrylic on canvass. 193.2 x 183.two cm (76⅛ 10 72⅛ in). Sold for HK$92,875,000 on 23 November 2019 at Christie's in Hong Kong. Artwork: © Yoshitimo Nara
The monumental Can't Wait till the Night Comes (2012), which is over vi anxiety in meridian and sold for HK$92,875,000 in its ain dedicated auction in Hong Kong on 23 November 2019, has been selected for forthcoming exhibitions planned around the world.
eight. Nara denies that his work contains overt cultural or political letters
'In my case, it is not about the land or the people or categories,' the artist told Ocula magazine in 2016. 'I am just trying to express private things, so for people slap-up to empathize things on that level my work will probably resonate. Basically my approach is that it doesn't thing if there is an audition out there. Even if I knew there would be no one out there to wait at my work, I would still make the exact same thing.'
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9. He resists beingness categorised
In a 2015 interview Nara said, 'Humans might take a mutual personality based on the town and environment they were raised in... only y'all shouldn't exist able to judge people nether the same standard.' Information technology is an approach that has been warmly received by the art world; Roberta Smith, the respected American art critic, has described Nara as 'one of the about egalitarian visual artists since Keith Haring'.
x. He likes to keep his profile low and his volume high
Today, Nara's images of children from the early on 2000s — described by a 2020 Phaidon monograph equally 'those arrogant girls' — are considered amongst his about important and sought-later compositions.
He continues to work in a diversity of materials at his home studio in Tochigi Prefecture, but prefers to go on a low profile. He claims that social media is a distraction to his artistic pursuits merely admits to playing 'deafeningly loud' music while he works.
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Source: https://www.christies.com/features/yoshitomo-nara-10-things-to-know-8655-1.aspx
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