PRESENTATION: Yoshitomo Nara-I Draw the Line         

Yoshitomo Nara has been prolific in his output over the past thirty years, but regardless of the choice of media his artworks are all consistently a portrayal of himself. While many of Nara’s contemporaries make their work with an audience in mind, he typically creates his works in a more personal mode; they originate from a struggle to express the self.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Blum Gallery Archive

The figures portrayed in Yoshitomo Nara paintings are born out of his deep introspection and his layering and erasure of colors on the canvas; only the most sincere elements are allowed to remain. Likewise, Nara’s unfiltered thoughts and feelings are vividly ingrained in the rhythm and vigor of the figures and words depicted in his drawings on notepaper and used envelopes. In his sculptural practice, which dates back to the beginning of his career, he seeks to create new life through an intimate dialogue with material. In Nara’s photographs, which he began exhibiting in recent years, the depiction of individual moments in his art-making and his travels as something irreplaceable reveals the artist’s sense of frugality toward the world. All of Nara’s work is born out of a spiritual, ritualistic pursuit of the transcendental. The body of work that  Yoshitomo Nara presents in his solo exhibition “I Draw the Line”, produced over the past summer, features Nara’s familiar wide-eyed, large-headed figures, often accompanied by declarative slogans or lyrics, which readily come to mind as he works. The words and phrases, in Japanese and English, are an expression of Nara’s ideas and emotions—they are integral to the communication of his potent, thought-provoking messages. Painted on large wooden panels and bearing phrases such as “CHEER FOR YOU” and “WE ARE OUTLAWS YES!”, Nara’s recent paintings resemble placards, making pronouncements in a public forum. A number of these works are based on sketches Nara made earlier this year, bold, simple outlines in black marker pen on small sheets of notebook paper. Using a projector, he enlarged these images onto wood, thereby maintaining his initial creative energy while adding surface texture and a limited, muted color palette. Nara captures in paint the same freedoms he finds in drawing—the possibilities of rapid execution, fluid delineation, and strong definition. The wooden panels are found objects, repurposed from everyday life. Nara appreciates the familiarity of used, discarded materials that he feels at ease with them. His resources, including old envelopes and fabrics, are readily available and sustainable. The panels bear the rough edges, nicks, and embedded nails of their previous use—their depth and “lived” characteristics emphasize their weight and physicality. Nara utilizes these properties and the natural textures—unique grains—to animate the surface of his paintings and suggest other associations. Nara began to “draw” with paint in the late 1980s, on the advice of A. R. Penck, the German Neo-Expressionist painter whom he studied under at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Penck advised Nara to introduce his drawing style into his painting practice. This led Nara to simplify his narrative compositions, pare down his use of color, and introduce the same economy of line. This change gave rise to striking painted images, widely recognized for their individuality and originality, echoing the spontaneity and immediacy of his drawings, which remain central to Nara’s practice—he sketches constantly, on any material that comes to hand, and often these ideas become paintings. The drawings in this exhibition were made during Nara’s summer stay in Toya, a village in southern Hokkaido. Nara finds the remote, rural setting similar to his childhood experience of Aomori, with its old-style, wooden houses dotted across an expansive landscape. He is drawn to the small, close-knit communities that still exist in this region, far from the large cities, and feels at home in this place with no social hierarchies, where everyone knows each other. Using Sakura’s Solid Marker solidified paint sticks, launched in Japan in 1978 and widely used in construction and manufacturing, Nara worked on these drawings with the meter-high sheets of paper laid on the floor of a rustic, wooden building, which matches the ascetic simplicity of these monochrome works. Nara has used the Sakura industrial markers since 2022, and they allow him to work in a different way, with distinctive results. In contrast to the light touch of graphite pencil and the translucent effects of acrylic paint, with these solid markers he can achieve a richly opaque coverage and broader lines that remain loose and expressive. The oversize format of Nara’s new drawings was influenced by his recent experience working on large-scale sculpture. He also feels the need, as he gets older, to draw with bolder, wider sweeps, rather than lighter, more delicate touches. Notably, he finds inspiration in Henri Matisse’s late cut-outs. For Nara, his own approach to line is equivalent to Matisse’s simplification of process, which he considers to be an honest artistic development. Nara’s imagery is direct, accessible, and impactful, with unequivocal rhetoric, and it reflects the sensibilities and sentiments that arise for him in this area of northern Japan. The sea, mountains, and steam-emitting volcanoes echo Nara’s deep-rootedness in the local terrain and his concern for the environment. A girl wears a wolf-like balaclava, recalling an animal now extinct in Japan. A child’s face has cat’s eyes and fangs that echo indigenous folklore. Other earlier motifs recur—the house with a pitched roof, a fir tree, and puddles—revealing Nara’s continuity of thought throughout his stylistic development. The close interrelation between image and text is a thread that runs through Nara’s work. “Power in a Union” takes its title from Billy Bragg’s song “There Is Power in a Union” (1986), which calls for solidarity among workers. This reference reflects Nara’s social conscience and political awareness, rooted in the counterculture and folk and blues music of the 1950s and ’60s, the sounds of the civil rights and peace movements that he listened to from a young age. Since the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011, Nara’s political stance has become increasingly overt in his work. Inscriptions, such as “DEFIANT GUYS” signal his conviction, determination, and active support for global initiatives close to his heart, including the anti-nuclear lobby. Music has been an enduring passion of Nara’s since childhood, providing a framework for his compelling images. His figures frequently wear the helmet-like hairstyle that recalls the look of Johnny Ramone, one of Nara’s musical heroes. For Nara, on a sensory level, music has the powerful effect of giving birth to sudden inspiration and expressive energy. He enjoys the lyrics, but his images emerge from his individual emotions and unique visualizations, generated by the melodies he listens to. Music also provides a link to communality and the intangible sense of belonging.

Photo left: Yoshitomo Nara, Pupa Woman, 2024, Acrylic on wood, 45 1/4 x 35 3/8 x 1 1/2 inches, Photo: Hayato Wakabayashi, © Yoshitomo Nara, Courtesy the artist and Blum Gallery. Photo right: Yoshitomo Nara, We Are Outlaws Yes!, 2024, Acrylic on wood, 30 1/8 x 26 7/8 x 2 1/2 inches, Photo: Hayato Wakabayashi, © Yoshitomo Nara, Courtesy the artist and Blum Gallery

Info: Blum Gallery, Harajuku Jingu-no-mori 5F, 1-14-34 Jingumae, Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan, Duration: 7/11/2024-11/1/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 12:00-18:00, https://blum-gallery.com/