Acrylic on urethane foam sculpture, accompanied with acrylic protective cover

雕塑: 18.3 x 21.9 x 12 cm. 7 1/4 x 8 5/8 x 4 3/4 in.；含壓克力罩: 30.5 x 33.5 x 17. cm. 12 x 13 1/4 x 6 3/4 in.

Signed in English and dated on the reverse

LITERATURE
2011, Yoshitomo Nara: The Complete Works, vol. 1: Painting, Sculptures, Editions, Photographs 1984 - 2010, Bijutsu Publishing House, Tokyo, p.260
PROVENANCE
30 May 2010, Christie's Hong Kong Spring Auctions, Lot 1795
Important Private Collection, Asia

Mask or Unmask
A Rare Work of Faith by Yoshitomo Nara

“The true spirit of my works can only be let out when people appreciate my works entirely from their personal perspective.”
——Yoshitomo Nara

In August, LACMA will hold a retrospective exhibition for Nara. Before that, Mori Art Museum in Tokyo will host the exhibition STARS in April that also features Nara as well as Takashi Murakami and Yayoi Kusama, which all together make three icons of Japanese contemporary art. It will serve as a warm-up for the Tokyo Olympics. These two events speak volumes for the unstoppable Nara frenzy both in Japan and throughout the world.

The Sojourning Life Behind Mask

Nara's early creations are more of a monologue. In 1987, he finished his 7-year studies at Nagoya and left for Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in Germany. This 12-year self-initiated exile helped him figure out his artistic style. Nara started experimenting with 3D presentation in 1994 and impressed the world with the Aomori Dog series at his solo exhibition in Tokyo in the following year. The big white dog signifies his ambition in the field of sculpture, which later on stands in parallel with painting in the artist's portfolio. Nara later leveraged FRP to transform the children and animals on canvas into a 3D format. Every three-dimensional piece is a mini-documentary of his inner thoughts and life journey, lending more room for viewer's imagination. Back then, Nara travelled frequently between Japan and Germany to draw more inspirations from the traditional culture of his motherland. Object (Untitled) was born out of such context. It is the artist's first attempt to integrate Japanese and exotic elements into his portrait sculpture, and an embodiment of Nara's ever-growing passion for art in the mid and late 1990s.

Created in 1996, Object (Untitled) features a child portrait in a light-colored frame. The sculpture texture adds another dimension to the pseudo-painting and subtly gives off a gust of power to calm the bustling world down. The child has a white face with pink cheeks and surrealist countenance. The “expressionless” mask-like face reminds the viewer of traditional Japanese theater Noh. The artist had Noh masks as the prototype in mind and painted out an innocent yet spooky child subject with a big forehead, chubby cheeks and crowded facial features. It bears a striking resemblance with koomote masks that represent loveliness and contain boundless vitality. On top of that, the extraordinary hair style, the floppy eyes and the thin lips, all of which carry the signature of the artist, together build the foundation for the Sleepwalking Doll series.

An Internal Dialogue to Involve the Reality

The sculpture follows the minimalist style in Nara's paintings. Given the subject being constrained in the frame, the artist minimized the distracting details to keep the viewer focused. The unconcerned countenance and thoughtful expression add a sense of divinity and solemnity to the sculpture, as if the subject was leveraging the face of a child to ask for understanding and forgiveness. The sculpture may strike all the viewers as a fake mask, but there is no deny that it is a serious self-talk of the artist.

Even though the sculpture features his signature subject, the strong sense of loneliness and countercultural elements in the works of his later days are nowhere to be found. It nevertheless comes off as peaceful and zen and somehow connects with the relief technique in Western traditional sculpting practices. The portrait is placed against a white background with marble-like texture. The out-of-proportion facial features make the child look pure and unconcerned. The artist stepped away from Lichtenstein, who paid tribute to mass consumerism, and instead sided by Brancusi's independent and revolutionary style. Nara creatively resorted to urethane foam to shape the head and smooth out its creases before carving and coloring the facial features. Compared with the later FRP version, this piece contains more hand work. Even for such a productive sculptor like Nara, there are only 15 pieces with child portrait as the subject, and as few as two statues that use Styrofoam as the sculpting material. All the above reasons demonstrate the rarity of the item on sale. In Object (Untitled), Nara incorporated Japanese traditional elements and initiated an attempt to innovate the Western sculpting style. It both exhibits the fluidity of German expressionism and the mystery of Japanese traditional art, creating a kind of visual appeal that transcends age, gender, race and geography.

Price estimate:
HKD: 800,000 – 1,500,000
USD: 103,200 – 193,500

Auction Result:
HKD: 1,298,000