Introducing Japanese artists
and works based on Japan
Yoshitomo Nara
Midnight Truth, 2017
(227.3 × 181.8 cm), National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., gift from Lisa and Steve Tannanbaum. © Yoshitomo Nara, 2017, photo by Keizo Kioku, courtesy of the artist.
Yoshitomo Nara (1959-) is one of the most-loved and recognised Japanese artists of his generation. Nara’s international retrospective held over the past year (April 2021-Jan 2022) at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presented work spanning over 36 years of his practice from 1984 to the present day, including 100 paintings, sculptures and installations as well as 700 works on paper.
Curator, Mika Yoshitake, embraced Nara’s fondness for music and perhaps the driving creative influence behind his conceptual process. The 350 record covers collected by Nara, of mostly ‘60s and ‘70s artists, fill a part of the exhibition space. Like a skilled seamstress, Yoshitake seamlessly threads a musical note to the collection fusing memory and expression. In conversation with Curator Yoshitake, Nara expresses his feelings of anxiety and sorrow to events such as the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami and the current pandemic. Nara’s quest is to find spiritual appeasement with life’s tragic and joyous moments through his art.
Nara’s contemporary figurative work takes inspiration from fairy tales, Betty Boop, and the childhood novella, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Often miscategorised as a neopop artist, Nara’s style is more broadly manifested in what abstract artist, Victor Sellu, describes as Pata-Popism–a style that reaches for the “important things“ of grown-ups and “correcting“ their fantasies or realities. Nara exposes a realm where the whimsical and serious are difficult to be simply defined and are imaginary solutions.
Nara achieves this carefully balanced expression with Midnight Truth, 2017, incorporating layers of intense emotions, contrasting colours and images. His pictorial depiction of a vulnerable, wide-eyed child with a somewhat menacing look, like that of a horror movie figure, stares directly at your soul. Nara narrates a sombre story of society and politics compounded by fear, anger, and loneliness with the power to confront and heal as we all face an uncertain future.
Web: Web: www.yoshitomonara.org
Columnist
Lucy Miles
Over 25 years of experience in the arts sector as a fine art consultant/valuer, writer, and curator in Australia and Japan. Studied Fine Arts at QCA with honours in art history at UQ.
■Instagram: @lucymilesfineart
■Web: www.lucymilesfineart.org
■Email: info@lucymilesfineart.org
