FEATURES ARCHIVE

Yoshitomo Nara’s works, though provocative and psychologically complex, are not especially one that is too influenced by abstract high art principles, or any notion of art as a reflection of interiority. The pragmatic source of his artistic inspiration is inadvertently portrayed in the rough and unpolished surface quality of Nara’s works. Nara’s undemanding compositions are humble and approachable; precocious yet sweet, and elicit compassion for the single child. Often, the single child is painted or drawn yet in this instance Nara has created a very unique sculpture that is the small white dog familiar to the protagonist of Nara’s book The Lonesome Dog with its dreamy eyes and dark green collar. The small white dog represents one of many of the animals Nara as a child sought for companionship and the adventures the two concocted and Nara’s craving for multiple companions.

This soft sculpture is a further rendition of Nara’s earlier work There Were Many Dogs whereby multiple pups wait to nurse on their mother’s milk, exemplifying the nurture and attention Nara sought as a child. Using purposefully amateur execution to resemble the craft work of young children, the canvas body of the toy is uneven in form as if recently squeezed and stroked. This animated creature has not four, but ten soft legs reflective of a child’s fictive imagination and striking resembles the cat-bus of Hayao Miyazaki’s Totoro. As the children in Totoro ‘lived’ in a world where cats became buses and could fly, Nara’s dog expresses a lonely child’s longing for attention, often to the point of being lost in fantasy. By presenting his concept in the form of a stuffed toy, Nara brings our attention back to our literal childhood, awakening the emotional and tactile sensation of hugging our beloved toy, our friend.