A little girl and a neutral background: these are the two elements that describe the art of Yoshitomo Nara, the Japanese artist who has made his mark in the major contemporary art collections of recent years.
Nara's style is uncluttered, his pastel colours almost self-effacing, and yet he is enjoying an unprecedented meteoric rise.
Nara was born in 1959 in a small town in northern Japan (Hirosaki, Aomori). A solitary, shy child, for whom art was a welcome escape from a youth marked by isolation, the beginnings of his artistic passion were to be found in the pages of sketchbooks, drawn from an early age. At the age of 21, he began his artistic apprenticeship at Aichi University. In 1988, the distant horizons of Germany beckoned. At the Staatliche Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, he continued his apprenticeship under the enlightened tutelage of A.R. Penck, a period that lasted six years. He then moved to Cologne before returning to Japan in 2000. During the 1990s, his talent began to blossom, punctuating the walls of Nagoya and Tokyo with his works, testifying to his growing assertiveness in the art world. In the 1990s, his style was quite different from the one we know today. The strokes were thicker, almost coarse, and the colours brighter and sharper.
In the 2000s, Nara returned to her native land, her success took hold and her style changed. Shaping an innovative trajectory, Nara began by working on large canvases, giving life to full-length portraits that emerge from a vibrant pearlescent background, a refined elegance that reveals itself with apparent ease.
By meticulously refining the proportions and features of the young girls he immortalised, Nara succeeded in imbuing their silhouettes with an enigmatic aura, a bewitching fascination. The child, going beyond the mere pretext of a ‘cute’ representation, is transformed into an artistic vehicle, the bearer of a subversive allegory. The artist's canvases transcend the contours of the charming to explore allegorical depths, revealing a new dimension to her artistic expression.
Beneath the apparent stylistic candour of the children immortalised by Nara lies a hint of subtle irony, a rebellious energy and an inclination towards conflict. These young girls, with their round, sulky faces, sometimes reveal oblique glances, tinged with latent anger. Are they arming themselves to take on stronger opponents? These children do not reflect a paradise of carefree innocence, but rather an acute awareness of the dangers of a social world under constant pressure.
One of the characteristic tricks of Nara's trade is his ability to fuse traditional Japanese forms with a popular contemporary aesthetic, while conveying the ambivalent feelings of a youth often tinged with melancholy.
In the end, Nara won unanimous acclaim on the art market, with a meteoric rise that reached both discerning collectors and young pop culture enthusiasts.
In 2007, he shook up the art market, selling his work Night Walker (2001) for over a million dollars for the first time. 8 years later, his artistic reputation continues to grow, enabling him to enter the ranking of the 100 best-performing international artists of 2015.
In 2019, he shattered his record with the sale of his painting Knife Behind Back (2000) for almost $25 million at a sale organised by Sotheby's in Hong Kong, enabling him to take first place in the ranking of Asian contemporary artists.
Today, he has emerged as the 20th most successful artist in the world, all periods combined. A position that testifies to Nara's meteoric rise in the world's artistic firmament.
Knife Behind Back (2000), Yoshitomo Nara
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