Ahead of two important solo
exhibitions in Hong Kong, the Japanese artist with a global cult following is
dismissive of the way others interpret his work, saying: 'This is just what
comes out.'
David McNeill
Like the trademark childlike
characters in his work, neo-pop artist Yoshitomo Nara seems both vulnerable and
prickly. Although famously reserved, he was once arrested for drawing graffiti
in New York's Union Square underground. He generally shuns face-to-face
interviews and dislikes questions probing his art. "People who see my
works are free to understand them in any way they want," he says via
email. "But I think that one of art's good points is that you can
ambiguously perceive and feel based on the viewer's personal experiences and
living environment."
Fusing anime, pop art and punk
rock, Nara has been sculpting, painting and drawing his nightmarish children
and animals for more than two decades. His gallery of alluringly sinister
characters, racing from the mad dreams of a childish imagination, has a
worldwide cult following, making him one of Japan's few globally known art
celebrities. Hong Kong gets its first close-up look at what all the fuss is
about this month, with the opening of two exhibitions running almost
simultaneously at Pace Hong Kong and the Asia Society.
For Nara, the Hong Kong
exhibitions bring his relationship with China full circle. He first visited the
Chinese countryside in 1983, when Japanese tourists were as rare as sparrows in
winter.
"I communicated by writing
kanji [Chinese characters] on a piece of paper," he recalls. "With
people in the countryside who couldn't read kanji, I drew pictures on paper.
Everyone was very kind, and I think we understood each other." Despite the
intervening years and China's enormous leap forward, he believes his drawings
can still connect on an instinctual level. "If my feelings are conveyed to
those who have a heart, then I think that is a good thing."
Nara's work has been seen both
as a detached commentary on the pressures of Japanese adolescence and a symptom
of it. He once explained he started drawing during his latchkey childhood
because "it was an emotional landscape that I could understand". The
youngest of three boys, he had workaholic parents during the rapid-growth era
of the 1960s and '70s, taking refuge, like many Japanese boys, in the cartoon
world of Astro Boy and Speed Racer.
His flat, two-dimensional
pictures have the clear lines of manga cartoons and are often populated by
sulky, bulbous-headed children sporting knives, saws, clenched fists or
cigarettes. The pictures draw on the rebellious motifs of punk rock, a point
reinforced by references throughout Nara's work to New York rockers The Ramones
and other musical icons.
He plays "deafeningly
loud" music while painting and once designed a CD cover for Japanese punk
girl band Shonen Knife. Canadian rock veteran Neil Young, however, is his
all-time favourite artist. "He [Young] has a spirit of equality and
freedom, bravely singing his songs that make us think what's around us,"
Nara says.
The darker undertone of
alienation, anxiety and impotent anger in his art, however, inevitably reminds
Japanese viewers of the murderous children who pop up from time to time in the
nation. The most infamous of these, a 14-year-old known as "Boy A",
killed two pre-teens in 1997. More recently, a Nagasaki teenager bludgeoned her
classmate to death last year, then hacked off her head with a hacksaw. Are the
girls in Nara's pictures similarly angry, dangerous, helpless or isolated?
"I don't know
myself," says Nara. "If I can explain it in words, then I don't think
there's any need to make it into a picture."
Nara invariably rejects simple
categorisations of his work as a "commentary" on this or that, and
bristles at the suggestion that he himself is someone who has not grown up. He
says he was raised "to not draw a line on things".
"I don't understand the
definition of 'adult' that questioners use," he continues, declaring that
he dislikes simple binaries such as "child" and "adult" or
even "Japanese" and "Chinese". "Humans might have a
common personality based on the town and environment they were raised in, to
some extent, but you shouldn't be able to judge people under the same standard.
I think the same goes for categorising people as adults or as children."
Critics praise that dismissive
approach to cultural, political and even generational boundaries. American art
critic Roberta Smith calls Nara "one of the most egalitarian visual
artists since Keith Haring".
Nara with his Wall Painting for
Nara’s Cabin. Photo: AFP
"He seems never to have
met a culture or generation gap, a divide between art mediums or modes of
consumption that he couldn't bridge or simply ignore," she said. His art
bridges "high, low and kitsch; East and West; grown-up, adolescent and
infantile", and is "so seamless as to render such distinctions almost
moot".
It also clearly resonates with
his fans. In Japan, Nara has become something of a franchise, lending his
images to T-shirts, picture books, key chains and alarm clocks. That popularity
speaks volumes, say some, about the emotional dislocation of many Japanese
youth. But if so, it is a dislocation that travels well: American TV shows such
as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dawson's Creek have also borrowed his menacing
shtick as shorthand for teenage passive aggression.
The artist is also a favourite
among international art collectors; last September auction house Sotheby's Hong
Kong held a three-week-long solo selling exhibition titled "The World
According to Nara", showcasing more than 15 works covering paintings,
drawings and sculptures dated between 1988 and 2010.
Nara's art has been praised for
empowering adults by "inducing self-reflection and promoting
self-discovery", in the words of one critic. Typically, the artist himself
waves away highbrow interpretations of what he does. "I don't think too
hard about it," he says. "This is just what comes out."
Some have detected a softening
of the adolescent angst in his later work, resulting in less confrontational
art. Instead of green-eyed malevolence, his children appear to be dreaming, or
to have their eyes closed. One of the newer pieces shows a typically
saucer-eyed adolescent holding flowers. Is that a peace offering? Nara
reluctantly admits that reflects his own changing relationship with the world:
"I think that being able to see things from a broader perspective as I
aged and gained more life experience has had an influence."
Several prints in his Pace Hong
Kong exhibition, part of Art Basel, shows his figures interacting with golden
four-point stars. The motif suggests typically ambiguous Nara concerns: are the
gold stars a reward for schoolwork or a cynical nod to "the optimism of
childish bromides such as 'shoot for the stars' and 'wish upon a star'"
asks the blurb for the Pace show. "The many facial expressions of Nara's
figures suggest these meanings, be it the hopefulness of a child gazing up at
the stars or a more adolescent cynicism, chary of any sense of hope."
The Hong Kong shows will widen
the debate on Nara's work. The artist says he is "not unhappy" at his
growing popularity with Western collectors, but says he hopes his work
"will be spread not only among Westerners and not only among art
collectors but naturally among those who have a good heart". He insists he
gives little thought to his place within contemporary art, Western or Japanese.
"What I should be doing
is, first of all, producing art that I think is good," he says. "I
think what made me the person that I am now is creating works of art that I
want to see myself and not being concerned about who will acquire my works or
presenting my works."