Latest news with #YoshitomoNara
Asharq Al-Awsat
2 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Asharq Al-Awsat
‘Anything Goes': Yoshitomo Nara on His Creative Process as London Exhibition Opens
Artworks by Yoshitomo Nara go on display in London this week in what organizers say is the largest European retrospective of the Japanese artist. The show, running at the Hayward Gallery by the River Thames, features more than 150 works - drawings, paintings, sculptures, ceramics and installations - nodding to the longtime influences of Nara's works including music, nature, the importance of home and the peace movement. "This is about 40 years' worth of my work," Nara told Reuters at a press preview on Monday. "When I look at my work, I don't think what I'm trying to say has actually changed in that time. Whatever period I look at reflects a part of myself, which is why this exhibition is not done chronologically." Nara, 65, is best known for his portraits of child-like characters with big gazing eyes. "I think all the pictures I've created are like my reflections," he said when asked about them. On display are plenty of those kinds of paintings and drawings as well as sculptures. "Anything goes," says Nara, who was born in Aomori Prefecture in northern Japan and lived in Germany early in his career before moving back home, said of his creative process. "I don't think about what I'm doing, but when I've done something good, I can feel the reason behind it almost like a kind of hindsight." The show is an expanded version of a touring exhibition previously put on at the Guggenheim in Bilbao and Museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden. "What's quite interesting, I think, for audiences in London and in Europe overall (is)... we don't actually get to see Nara's work in person that often," exhibition curator Yung Ma said. "We've all seen his paintings and drawings on our I think all these kind of images, they don't do the works justice. So it's actually quite important to come and see because you can actually then understand (that)... he's a really good you can actually really see the texture of the works and the colors and the layering of the paint." The exhibition runs from June 10 to August 31.
Reuters
3 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Reuters
'Anything goes': Yoshitomo Nara on his creative process as London exhibition opens
LONDON, June 9 (Reuters) - Artworks by Yoshitomo Nara go on display in London this week in what organisers say is the largest European retrospective of the Japanese artist. The show, running at the Hayward Gallery by the River Thames, features more than 150 works - drawings, paintings, sculptures, ceramics and installations - nodding to the longtime influences of Nara's works including music, nature, the importance of home and the peace movement. "This is about 40 years' worth of my work," Nara told Reuters at a press preview on Monday. "When I look at my work I don't think what I'm trying to say has actually changed in that time. Whatever period I look at reflects a part of myself, which is why this exhibition is not done chronologically." Nara, 65, is best known for his portraits of child-like characters with big gazing eyes. "I think all the pictures I've created are like my reflections," he said when asked about them. On display are plenty of those kinds of paintings and drawings as well as sculptures. "Anything goes," says Nara, who was born in Aomori Prefecture in northern Japan and lived in Germany early in his career before moving back home, said of his creative process. "I don't think about what I'm doing, but when I've done something good I can feel the reason behind it almost like a kind of hindsight." The show is an expanded version of a touring exhibition previously put on at the Guggenheim in Bilbao and Museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden. "What's quite interesting, I think, for audiences in London and in Europe overall (is)... we don't actually get to see Nara's work in person that often," exhibition curator Yung Ma said. "We've all seen his paintings and drawings on our I think all these kind of images, they don't do the works justice. So it's actually quite important to come and see because you can actually then understand (that)... he's a really good you can actually really see the texture of the works and the colours and the layering of the paint." The exhibition runs from June 10 to August 31.
Hindustan Times
3 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
'Anything goes': Yoshitomo Nara on his creative process as London exhibition opens
LONDON, - Artworks by Yoshitomo Nara go on display in London this week in what organisers say is the largest European retrospective of the Japanese artist. The show, running at the Hayward Gallery by the River Thames, features more than 150 works - drawings, paintings, sculptures, ceramics and installations - nodding to the longtime influences of Nara's works including music, nature, the importance of home and the peace movement. "This is about 40 years' worth of my work," Nara told Reuters at a press preview on Monday. "When I look at my work I don't think what I'm trying to say has actually changed in that time. Whatever period I look at reflects a part of myself, which is why this exhibition is not done chronologically." Nara, 65, is best known for his portraits of child-like characters with big gazing eyes. "I think all the pictures I've created are like my reflections," he said when asked about them. On display are plenty of those kinds of paintings and drawings as well as sculptures. "Anything goes," says Nara, who was born in Aomori Prefecture in northern Japan and lived in Germany early in his career before moving back home, said of his creative process. "I don't think about what I'm doing, but when I've done something good I can feel the reason behind it almost like a kind of hindsight." The show is an expanded version of a touring exhibition previously put on at the Guggenheim in Bilbao and Museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden. "What's quite interesting, I think, for audiences in London and in Europe overall ... we don't actually get to see Nara's work in person that often," exhibition curator Yung Ma said. "We've all seen his paintings and drawings on our I think all these kind of images, they don't do the works justice. So it's actually quite important to come and see because you can actually then understand ... he's a really good you can actually really see the texture of the works and the colours and the layering of the paint." The exhibition runs from June 10 to August 31.
The Guardian
4 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Yoshitomo Nara review: cutesy terrors swear, smoke, play guitar and burn down houses
There's a video online of 100 kids playing football against three adult pros. The kids get absolutely annihilated. But they'd do a whole lot better if they were more like the menacing, knife-wielding little terrors who populate Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara's world. Try dribbling past a toddler when he's just jabbed a shiv in your calf, Lionel Messi. For 40 years now Nara has been dealing in cutesy kitsch with a vicious edge. His paintings and drawings of adorably bug-eyed little nippers are singularly Nara: love it or hate it, he's carved out his own instantly recognisable aesthetic path. Me, I quite like it. It's full of punk rock attitude, dark humour and comic book immediacy. This huge show at the Hayward kicks off with a ramshackle shed in the middle of the gallery, filled with empty beer cans, coffee cups and hundreds of drawings on paper and cardboard. A speaker blasts out rock'n'roll and folk classics by Nick Drake and David Bowie. A painting on the outside shows a blissed out little kid in a serene green field: 'place like home', it says in big bold all-caps. The huge wall opposite is lined with old prog and rock LPs. This could've been the whole show and it would have been perfect; it's everything Nara needs to say. Here in this little wooden shack sanctuary he loses himself in music and draws his heart out. The images all over the floor show punk-rocking kids blasting out chords on electric guitars, protesting against war and shooting pistols while standing on a snarling dog, yelling 'I'm a son of a gun'. It's Nara summed up: a joyful mashup of music nerdery, political anxiety and the uncontrollable urge to draw, draw, draw. You get the sense that if his career had started and ended in this shack, no success, no big museum-style shows, just music and art, he'd have been pretty happy. But this is a big show so there's a lot more to get through. His early work is more expressionistic and dark, a little more scrawly and angry, like a pissed off Basquiat, or George Grosz drawing comics. But by the mid-90s he'd figured himself out and stripped everything back. His cartoon-y grumpy kids now sit against plain backgrounds, there's nothing to distract you from them as symbols of Nara's emotional states: boredom, anger, loneliness, sadness, frustration. That's all that's here, emotion pure and simple. A little girl with a bandaged face is livid about having the mumps, a figure (dressed as kitty) sitting on duck-shaped potty is seriously angry that you're having a peek, and the world's naughtiest child is grinning demonically after cutting a flower down with a saw, a big 'fuck you' painted on the back of her jacket. It's super-direct, simple, funny, emotional painting. Nara repeats this approach over and over across the years. His figures burn down houses, swear, smoke, brandish weapons, play guitars. It's the punk rebellion of youth continuing to find a voice. The kids resemble a take on forest sprites, little mythological figures used to tell stories, express emotions. It's not all angry self-reflection. More recent work finds Nara fighting for peace. One girl wears a 'no war' T-shirt, another stands under a massive 'stop the bombs' banner. Things change in 2011, when the tragedy of Fukushima sends Nara spiralling. Now the kids are all hazy and heartbroken. They're not ranting and raving any more, they just seem to haunt the canvases, barely there, sad and forlorn. I don't think these are good paintings for the most part, despite being about something incredibly sad: they're just too washed out and overthought, a bit mawkish and soft focus. And there's something not quite right about giving these big canvases all this space, and these benches for you to contemplate them from, in a show that's otherwise all chaos and energy. I'm not totally convinced the work warrants this many rooms. It all gets a bit repetitive and stretched. And the ceramic heads dotted around the space, especially the tea cup fountain at the end, add absolutely nothing to the exhibition. But the best work here can be so joyful, approachable, angry and relatable that you can forgive these faults. Nara is best when he's being direct and immediate, when his art is about rocking out, fighting back and letting his heart spill on to the canvas. When he's hey ho-ing and let's going like his beloved Ramones. I've never encountered a show less in need of explanatory wall texts, or more resistant to artsy over-intellectualising: Nara tells you exactly what he feels, all the time. He just does it with the stereo blasting, and a knife behind his back. At the Hayward Gallery, London, from 10 June to 31 August
Telegraph
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
How Yoshitomo Nara's moody kids conquered the art world
Yoshitomo Nara's children don't seem very happy. The 65-year-old Japanese artist has been painting them since adolescence: small bodies with big heads, soft cheeks and hard stares. What are they thinking, these little ones? Their fixed expressions are less likely to suggest innocence than malice – or misery. Sometimes a slogan in English, daubed by Nara onto an otherwise plain background, might offer a clue. 'Stop the Bombs,' says one, above a scrappy figure who eye-balls the viewer furiously, two small fangs emerging from the corners of her downturned mouth. 'Don't Waste Another Day,' implores another, over a kneeling figure, her legs tucked beneath her in supplicatory seiza pose. Whatever it means, during the past few decades, Nara's cartoonish art has become serious business: in 2019, Knife Behind Back, a characteristic work of a scowling green-eyed girl in a red dress, sold at auction for £20 million. This summer, the Hayward Gallery, in London, is staging Nara's biggest European exhibition to date. Here, the artist introduces eight artworks, from the 150 that will be on show, which chart the evolution of his now unmistakable style. With Horses? 1984 This early work is from my fourth year as a student at Aichi University of the Arts. I began doodling on an envelope I happened to have at hand and liked the way the coloured pencils appeared against the tone of the paper, so I ended up drawing several pieces. This was a brand-new envelope, but later when I was studying abroad in Germany, I started drawing on discarded envelopes I found in the rubbish bin in the school office. People on the Cloud, 1989 I produced this picture during my first year at art school in Germany. I wanted to bring together the many interesting elements in my mind into a single world. It's as if the things I finally managed to fit in were walking on the very edges... an excess of elements. Sleepless Night (Sitting), 1997 In the 1990s, I started to treat my backgrounds with a single colour while still maintaining a sense of nuance. If you look at this painting up close, I think you will see that the surface is very delicate. I made an effort to make the atmosphere surrounding the figure blend over the entire image, otherwise the figure would look like it had just been cut out and stuck on. Missing in Action, 1999 Missing in Action represents the style of mine that is most recognised by viewers. This style began developing at the beginning of the 1990s and was established by the end of that decade. I try to express both colour and motifs with a minimum of simple elements. Cup Kid, 2000 This image shows a little child playfully added into a ukiyo-e postcard. Adding something to an existing printed piece like this can serve as training to strengthen the imagination. My Drawing Room 2008, Bedroom Included, 2008 I actually prefer drawing in a small room, the size of a child's bedroom, rather than in a large studio. It connects me back to my childhood, when I would doodle for fun. The things I have studied and learnt about art since my adolescence are important, but there's also something in those earlier feelings that shaped my individuality. For me, this piece feels like returning to the cocoon from before I hatched into the person that I am today. One Foot in the Groove, 2012 I joined together six old window frames with the glass removed to create one board, then painted onto it a child lying on the clouds. After I had finished, I added the words 'One Foot in The Groove' in red... but realised immediately afterwards that they were unnecessary, and painted over them. I didn't come to this realisation until I had finished writing the words, so it ended up becoming a little detour. But being able to laugh at myself and think, 'I'm such an idiot,' is part of the fun of creating. Miss Moonlight, 2020 It's difficult to look directly at the sun, but you can stare as much as you want at the moon. And, of course, moonlight is a reflection of sunlight, so you can also quietly feel the presence of the sun in it. Yoshitomo Nara is at the Hayward Gallery, London SE1 (), from June 10-Aug 31
