Acrylic on canvas

150 × 100 cm. 59 × 39 3/8 in.

Titled in English, signed in Japanese and dated on the reverse
PROVENANCE
Gallery d'Eendt, Amsterdam
Private Collection, Amsterdam
Private Collection, Asia
29 May 2016, Seoul Auction Hong Kong Spring Auction, Lot 39
Important Private Collection, Asia

This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity issued by Rabbit Hills Co,Ltd.(Yoshitomo Nara Studio)

Note: This work is registered in the website of The Yoshitomo Nara Foundation, registration No. YNF979

Let's Rock It!
A Global Declaration from Yoshitomo Nara

“Even if it isn't love of affection, I have a single strong power that will never be defeated.”

This is a line from a song by The Blue Hearts, a punk band popular in Japan in the early 1990s, translated into English and written down as a source of self-encouragement in the studio of artist Yoshitomo Nara. Over the past 30 years Nara has honestly and tirelessly sought to face himself and creation itself through childhood reminiscences, while expressing ideas and concerns about life and the world in which we live. In this context, the artist found inspiration in exploring culture and through his creative work has stands at the very forefront of international contemporary art. As US art critic Roberta Smith has written: “Yoshitomo Nara is one of the most widely accepted visual artists since Keith Haring. His works have never encountered a cultural barrier or generation gap they could not overcome. To a large extent his art is an amalgam, representing a combination of high art, lowbrow art and kitsch. It is both a blending of East and West and a harmonious accommodation of adulthood, adolescence and childhood.” Indeed, Nara invented a brand new artistic language positioned between mainstream culture and sub-culture which he uses to transcend the boundaries of region, nationality and age. This in turn enables him to speak directly to viewers, reawakening the most innocent part of our memories and those feelings have long since worn down by adulthood.

Today, Nara is a guaranteed box office hit at international art museums and galleries with countless fans around the world. In addition to private collectors, a sizeable number of major public and private art museums in the East and West, such as the British Museum, Museum of Modern Art in New York and The Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art in South Korea have collected the artist's works. In 2010, Nara became the first Japanese artist to receive the New York International Culture Award an indication of his continued international renown. In recent years, the artist has used his amazing vitality and influence to show works at various exhibitions as he continues to write his modern legend. In 2021, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Dallas Contemporary held a large touring exhibition of works by Nara from 1987-2020, which moved to the Yuz Museum in Shanghai in March 2022, Yoshitomo Nara's first exhibition in China, which is attracting much interest. After that the exhibition will visit the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain and will feature at the Rotterdam Art Center in Netherland.

Nara's works can be broadly divided into five periods: The learning art at a Tokyo cram school to Aichi Prefectural University Graduate School period (1978-1987), Dusseldorf period (1988-1993), Cologne period (1994-1999), Return to Japan period (2000), Post Eastern Japan Earthquake period (2011). On this occasion, we are honoured to auction O.T, a work from the artist's first creative peak painted two years after Nara's classic thick black line big-headed girl piece The Girl with the Knife in Her Hand (1991). Moreover, this richly meaningful rare full-body depiction of a girl was only completed in 1993, when the artist was in his mature self-confident period.

First Blush of the Yoshitomo Nara Girl – Creating an Era Classic

“Nara's works are time machines ... The reason I have been attracted to Nara in the process of collecting is that every single movement he makes when painting is in accordance with the principles of art history. Good works should be more inclusive, so that people can see at a glance ‘the truth of human nature'”

――Takashi Murakami

At the time he painted O.T in 1993 Nara had already travelled extensively across Europe, seen many classic works by such Western art masters as Leonardo Da Vinci, Pablo Picasso, Mark Rothko and Henri Matisse and researched Japanese classic Ukiuo-e and modern art. In 1988, the artist was admitted, in the first place, to Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and throughout his time in Germany constantly thought about and explored his own unique artistic language rather than merely follow tradition. For example, although he thought Da Vinci's Mona Lisa is very good, he also considered it to embody the aesthetics and humanism of an earlier century. Nara wanted to create art that belongs exclusively to him and reflected the contemporary era, though he gained considerable sustenance from reading extensively about the strengths of modern art masters. He once pointed out: “I greatly appreciate the clear way in which Italian Renaissance painter Piero Della Francesca deals with shadows, in as much as he almost doesn't paint shade, but rather relies on the powerful coloured blocks in the background to serve as a contrasting foil, with accompanying strange ceramic tiles or people, using these to emphasise the existence of people. When I saw the graphic style, cuting and pasting of Francesca, I guess I subconsciously started to use similar methods.” In this sense, Nara stood on the shoulders of giants to create his own era classics. In addition, his works are always deeper than the cute-looking figures they appear, taking much from art history and tradition, transforming and combining it with the sparks from his new creations. This is precisely the process behind the painting O.T.

In 1993, Yoshitomo Nara painted the girl with large eyes and orange hair in pigtails who appears in O.T on three occasions. The first was the work Girl in Blue in which only the girl's head is depicted, while the second is The Mirage of the Heavenly Child Appears in front of the Rusty Cockpit, in which the girl is depicted full, stood in front of a cloud-like abstract background. Ultimately, Nara deliberately narrowed the square canvas he used for the earlier pieces and added more detail than previously when he painted the work O.T. These three works also showcase the artist's repeated pursuit of perfection and evolutionary approach. The comparatively long and narrow canvas used for O.T represents a move away from the spacious feel of the earlier square canvas and against a background of repeatedly brushed different colour saturation green-and blues Nara employed rough, powerful and solid lines reminiscent of those from traditional Japanese Ukiyo-e art to depict a little girl standing and leaning slightly forwards. From the long unbroken line we can see the artist's skilful control and complete self-confidence, with the girl taking up two-thirds of the canvas, full frontal and central focal point composition that makes the girl impossible to ignore. If we look in more detail at the central figure, then her body, eyes, eyebrows, hands, feet and hairstyle are almost perfectly centrally aligned, conveying an absolute balance, with left and right sides practically symmetrical. As with Francesca, he did not use any shade which is traditionally used to construct a sense of three dimensions, preferring instead to utilise the distribution of lines and coloured blocks to ingeniously open up the space and distance. Nara deliberately used powerful and saturated impasto light orange, light skin tone and block-shaped colours to construct his real world figure against a background comprised of relatively unsaturated hues, with horizontal traces of trickling paint, automatic technique and brushstrokes with a strong feel to them. These skillfully showcase conflicting contrasts and complete consistency, created by the co-existence of subject and object, real and virtual, front and backspace, vertical and horizontal, representation and abstraction binary minimalist doodling and abstract expressionism. In other words, the birth of a brand new expressive language imbued with tension. Within this, we see the artist's connection to tradition, but also how he grew up influenced by subcultures, and how his exciting bold new creativity led to this contemporary classic.

Nara completed this painting during his sixth year in Germany at which time he had already exhibited work at the annual student painting exhibition in Dusseldorf and demonstrated his extraordinary talent at the graduation exhibition, resulting in him being invited to show work at galleries looking for the next big star of the art world. For example, beginning in 1990 he was invited to hold solo exhibitions at Galerie d'Eendt in Amsterdam, Kinderspielhaus in Dusseldorf and Galerie Johnen & Scottle in Cologne, Germany. As gallery owner Jorg Johnen recalled: “The first time I saw Nara's work at a graduation exhibition in Dusseldorf I was taken aback. His works differed from those of his peers which mainly focused on humour and powerful expressionism, with Nara's art combining aspects of Pop art, anime and ‘real painting'.” Moreover, following the gallery sales of his work Nara no longer needed to work in local Japanese restaurants to make a living. He was now able to focus fully on painting and soon found his footing in the notoriously fickle and demanding art world. This self-confidence and fertile state of mind is clearly showcased in the artist's wonderful presentation of the girl in O.T.

Behind the Mystery: Soaring, Youthful Invincibility

“At the age of 28 I went to study in West Germany and lived there for 12 years. Life was filled with brand new things, with anxiety but also fun. However, after I managed to catch my breath while living there, what drifted into my mind was my childhood in Hirosaki ... the emotional side of childhood, and this started to appear in my daily painting, becoming the source of my creative work.”

――Yoshitomo Nara

Nara has said that prior to 1998 his works were inspired by childhood memories and the main figures are akin to self-portraits. Moreover, this approach has also influenced his interpretation of the figures he paints. For example, the young child depicted in O.T is an allusion to a certain open-minded approach to the world and all things during childhood, as well as the physiological stage in which one grows and develops. At this stage in life, the system of moral standards that exists in the adult world has not yet taken hold and everything is imbued with the possibility of openness. The artist deliberately simplified the girl's fingers into a rounded and smooth shape to highlight her hands and feet. In addition, she has round buttons and a round dress that opens like an umbrella. This echoes traditional Japanese minimalist aesthetics - expressing the essence of an object in the most refined language possible – but the shape of the figure also brings to mind a stuffed doll Nara had when he was left home alone as a young child and thereby similarly awakens in viewers a sense of nostalgia for childhood. However, for the artist this is insufficient, he also imbued the figure in the painting with personality and a soul. For example, the girl leans slightly forward, her deliberately magnified head creating a posture whereby she seems to actively stare back at viewers as if about to engage in conversation. In addition, her smiling quirky expression as she looks directly upwards gives the impression she is planning something, while the fact she is standing in the middle and her hands seem to be holding something creates a situation where viewers can't help but guess the meaning of her body language. If we compare this work with the title chosen for the second earlier work to feature the girl The Mirage of the Heavenly Child Appears in front of the Rusty Cockpit and look back at Hirosaki City where Nara grew up, an answer is to be found in the fact that it was formerly the location of a Japanese army base and later a US military base. The girl's hands are holding a virtual cockpit steering wheel, ready to take off at a moment's notice or perhaps flying a plane as it soars through the sky. In addition, the girl's outward pointing braids allude to signs of the wind blowing, while her young face brims with self-confidence, forging ahead with indomitable spirit as she explores the unknown world, reminiscent of the enthusiasm and fearlessness displayed by 28-year-old Nara when he undertook advanced studies in West Germany. In this sense, the girl symbolises free spirit, giving voice to the idea of youthful invincibility and burning desire.

The Coexistence of Humanity and Nature in a World of Chaos

Nara chose to mainly use green as the background colour in O.T with green the colour of flora and symbolises “life and nature” in Japanese culture. The artist once recalled that Hirosaki where he was born was a small rural town 400km from Tokyo and when he was young, the family home was on a hilltop, from which he could look out over an expansive grassland and roads with had no asphalt extending as far as the eye could see into the distance. In spring, Nara would “ride my bike while trying to avoid the tadpoles spawned in puddles by frogs waking from hibernation.” In summer he would“watch the rain clouds in the sky while heading to a nearby swimming pool” and as an adult “the university campus was like a golf course, full of greenery and detached from the outside world, giving one a sense of freedom as if time had stopped.” From these comments we can see the connection between people and nature in the artist's childhood. In O.T Nara took this and transformed it into background colours, his tactile brushstrokes awakening in viewers a yearning for the boundlessness and life energy of nature.

In a sense, the artist used O.T as a mirror through which he could review his past and present while predicting the future. In the work, the little girl faces the unknown future with a determined and resolute pose, as if freely, high-spiritedly grinning and saying: “Let's rock it!” As such, the painting is the artist's ultimate confession to the world, one that touches and inspires everyone who sees it.

Price estimate:
HKD: 23,000,000 - 35,000,000
USD: 2,929,900 - 4,458,600

Auction Result:
HKD: 26,970,000