Nara Yoshitomo

signed in Japanese, titled in English and dated 2012 on the reverse, framed

Pace Gallery, London
Private European Collection
Acquired by the present owner from the above

Monthly Art Magazine Bijutsu Techno, Bijutsu Shuppan-Sha, Tokyo, Japan, September 2012 vol. 64 no. 973 (cover)
Nara Yoshitomo: A Bit Like You And Me..., Foil Co Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, August 2012, p. 109
Yoshitomo Nara: The Complete BT Archives 1991-2013, Bijutsu Shuppan-Sha, Tokyo, Japan, 2013, pp. 541 and 600
Yoshitomo Nara Self-Selected Works Paintings, Seigensha Art Publishing, Kyoto, Japan, 2015, p. 117

This work is generally in good condition. Having examined the work under ultraviolet light, there appears to be no evidence of restoration.
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From Me to You; From You to Me: Nara Yoshitomo’s Captivating Portraits

The powerful personal touch and compelling universality of Nara Yoshitomo’s portraits of infants and animals have been felt by both his admirers and critics alike. The dreamlike quality inherent to each of the artist’s works—filled with figures displaying varying amounts of mischief, drollness, and even apathy—has tugged at the heartstrings of countless individuals. The artist’s great success commercially has been matched by an extensive repertoire of exhibitions at significant global institutions, including countless international group shows, as well as solo exhibitions held at the likes of the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, the Santa Monica Museum of Art, as well as the Aomori Museum of Art in the artist’s hometown. On offer in the present Evening Sale are two striking and distinct works from two periods of Nara’s artistic development, which showcase different techniques as well as styles rare to be found in Nara's oeuvre. The two works include In the Darkland, painted during the late nineties, as well as Let’s Talk about "Glory", painted in 2012. When taken together, these two works are powerful enquiries into Nara’s artistic philosophy, and reveal the artist’s adept employment of various mediums and themes, at two very different junctions of his career. Moreover, In the Darkland stems from the prestigious Dr Takahashi Ryutaro's collection, and captures Nara's unparalleled artistic style, and is a rare piece to find on the market.

Nara was born in 1959 in Hirosaki in the Aomori Prefecture. His formative years were marked—if not marred—by intense feelings of isolation and loss, sentiments so penetrating that they would resurface in his later years as an adult artist. Growing up as the vastly younger sibling of three sons born to emotionally distant parents in post-war Japan, Nara’s childhood was for the most part spent alone. Several fragmented memories have recurred in the artist’s many interviews, including the adult Nara admitting, “When you are a kid, you are too young to know you are lonely, sad, and upset…Now I know I was.” It is unsurprising that this feeling would be immortalised in endless portraits of young solitary children, set against innumerable nebulous landscapes. One such work is In the Darkland from the Takahashi Collection, an uncommon work that possesses various unique aspects of Nara’s style. 

Lightness in Spirit and in Brush: Nara’s Little Sprites
An unidentifiable little girl stands at the left hand side of In the Darkland (Lot 1064), looking somewhat indifferent, as if she is about to disappear off-canvas. She dons a pale blue dress with a crisp white Peter Pan collar, and wears a bandage-like hair band, not dissimilar to a head scarf of sorts. Her beady green eyes are slanted and inquisitive, her arms held abreast from her body, in a comical stance resembling a flitting fairy, about to take flight. It likewise recalls the sleep-walking child in Night Walker painted in 2001, who is completely at peace and safely wandering in the realms of sleep. The present work has been purposefully rendered in a whimsical, slightly blurred manner, and resembles in many ways a watercolour work rather than a painting in oils.

Towards the late nineties, Nara produced a few works with darker colour palettes, though In the Darkland is the only work of that year to showcase so much of the artist’s chosen figure’s form. The little girl’s upper torso is portrayed in its entirety in the work, allowing the audience to feel in their full extents her isolation and aloneness. And yet, the little girl does not seem perturbed at all by her surroundings; on the contrary, the expression she wears is of alarming coolness. Such is the magic of Nara portraiture: though the works rouse deep feelings of sympathy or even concern for the children featured within, all apt representations of the artist’s own memories of loneliness, each child is safe in his or her own innocence, oblivious to any adult notions. 

Often Nara marries these contraries on the same canvas: while the children in his portraits are, for the most part, innocent, he places them in unknown lands, sometimes with obscure words and phrases. In the work In the Darkland however, one detects many rich layers, and showcases Nara's deft but rare application of thin layering. Each individual layer is applied thinly onto the canvas to create an effect of lightness and transparency of light. In its feathery and soft finish lies the very essence of childhood itself, perpetually capturing the fairy-like quality of the child. In the Darkland also displays a likeness to pastel works, which predates even Night Walker painted two years later, which exhibits the same technique. In this way, he is most successful in achieving a mix between childlike innocence and adult cynicism by using a watercolour style finish. The dreamlike texture to the figure blurs the line not only between mediums, it also adds a sense of magic that makes the work both relatable—in the sense that it reminds one of fairy tales or of a dream—and distant—the hazy quality to the work makes it remote and hard to pinpoint. The employment of this technique is extremely unusual in Nara’s oeuvre, which accentuates the rarity and allure of In the Darkland. 

In many ways, this work and the techniques inherent to the piece are highly reminiscent of Balthus’ works, and in particular, Chassy by the Fireplace at Workshop (1955). In the work, dark hues cradle a huddled figure who faces away from the audience, sat in front of an extinguished fireplace. Balthus, whose own oeuvre famously featured a vast array of young children and cats, is a befitting comparison to Nara, whose works heavily revolve around youth and animals. The most telling similarity however is that in their almost singular preoccupation with their most famous motifs, they have successfully ascribed an adult gaze to inherently innocent figures. Driven by an overwhelming sense of nostalgia, many of both Balthus and Nara’s most committed fans find in their works both an irretrievable sense of innocence as well as adult mischief. It is this seemingly irreconcilable difference that has made their portraits so endlessly relatable. Perhaps more so than Balthus, Nara has perfected this technique to an even greater degree, and has created works that are neither Eastern or Western, and universally accessible by all. Although works such as In the Darkland are based heavily upon his own childhood, there is something undeniably familiar about the work. 

A Childhood for All of Us
By the time Nara creates Let’s Talk About "Glory" (Lot 1063), the style of his portraiture had greatly changed. It had moved away from the self-reflective portraitures of the late eighties and nineties that were intimately personal. Writing in 2012 for the preface of ‘a bit like you and me’, the very show that would exhibit Let’s Talk About "Glory", Nara revealed, ‘Up until now, I have been feeling that my works were a part of my body, for they were inseparable from me no matter how physically far away they actually were…Whether I like it or not, the things I make [now] are no longer self-portraits, but belong to the audience who find themselves, their friends or children they know in my paintings.’ Painted after the 2011 earthquake in Japan, the important of collective memory has also become all the more apparent in Nara’s works.  

This sentiment is reflected in sundry ways in Let’s Talk About "Glory". The depiction of the child at the centre of the work has been heavily refined, and was created using many faint layers of different colours and outlined in a cartoonish dark line. This time, the child holds its audience’s gaze, staring emotionlessly outwards. This feeling is similarly emphasised by the pursed thin lips portrayed as a mere red line, and the slightly awkward, hunched posture of the figure. The eyes have likewise been simplified: they appear as an elongated set of narrow, flattened ovals with a dark olive-coloured centre. The image of the child has been distilled: it is an abridged version of sorts, even rendered in a child-like manner: the disproportions, the helmet-like three dimensionality of the hair, the simple colours. 

Yet, this work is powerfully universal. The androgynous nature of the child makes him, or her, an immediate potential reflection of anyone. The simplicity of its depiction likewise boosts this sensation; and the artist’s use of a recycled billboard as the canvas of the piece adds a certain degree of attainability and relatability to the work. Moreover, Let’s Talk About "Glory", even in its title, beckons a reciprocal relationship between painter and viewer. Coupled with the fact that the piece has been created on a billboard, an added level of proximity has been created.

Both In the Darkland and Let’s Talk About "Glory" are significant works that underscore the exploration of Nara’s development of portraiture. While the former is figurative, and injects an illusory aesthetic in order to create a fanciful sense of nostalgia, the latter is a bold work; a distillation of the artist’s most recognisable themes, and even in its use of title and canvas, is the very embodiment of universality. While these two works differ in many ways, they are strong and distinct representations of Nara’s constantly evolving style. Through these two works, one can feel the full extent of not only the artist’s compelling narrative of his own childhood, but the ones of all adults. As Nara explains, his portraitures are both an extension of his own selfhood, but also a part of all of his audience. It is this mélange of both the personal and public that has garnered the artist an immense amount of international support and admiration since the beginning of his career, and one that will no doubt continue to do so for the remainder of his legacy.