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Lot Essay
Your Dog (2002), a monumental sculpture in glossy white fibreglass with a cheerful red nose, is one of Yoshitomo Nara’s most beloved works. It towers over the viewer with Alice-in-Wonderland magic, recalling the world as seen through the eyes of a child. Its stylised features—with floppy ears, closed eyes and a serene smile modelled in sleek, minimal lines—exhibit the artist’s characteristic formal economy. Like his famous paintings of big-headed children, Nara’s dogs are instantly engaging yet full of complex, enigmatic feeling. He has explored the motif in drawing, painting and sculpture since the 1990s: famous examples include a black version of Your Dog (2003)—a visitor favourite at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston—and the colossal concrete Aomori-ken Dog (2005), made for the Aomori Museum of Art near Nara’s hometown. Others from the present work’s edition are held in the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Palm Springs Art Museum.
Born in 1959 in Japan’s rural Aomori Prefecture, Nara had a lonely but richly imaginative childhood. Dogs were part of his emotional landscape. ‘I never thought about being sad when I was a child’, he recalled. ‘I was happy with my cats and dogs and imaginations and made drawings’ (Y. Nara quoted in E. Nakamura, ‘Punk Art’, Giant Robot, no. 20, 2001, p. 25). Nara later studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, and spent twelve years living in Germany. The iconic paintings of children with which he made his name looked back on his youthful world of solitude and daydreams. The boundary between children and pets was often blurred: as well as white dogs like Your Dog, he depicted children in animal costumes, and dogs with children’s faces.
‘To a certain extent, pets are like humans, cats less so, dogs all the more’, Nara explained in 2001. ‘Therefore I can use them as symbols, and the dog works the best. It is in need of protection, dependent on its master, but has its own will and can be clever as well. We have no idea what penguins think, but dogs we can understand’ (Y. Nara quoted in ‘“My Superficiality Is Only a Game”: A conversation between Stephan Trescher and Yoshitomo Nara’, in Yoshitomo Nara: Lullaby Supermarket, Nuremberg 2001, p. 105). This duality is captured in the present work: we are dwarfed by the sculpture, but it also appears vulnerable and sweet. There are echoes of Jeff Koons’ celebrated Balloon Dog sculptures (1994-2000), which transform a childhood toy into a sublime, otherworldly presence, and of the komainu or lion-dogs that guard the entrances to Buddhist and Shinto shrines.
By presenting us with a child’s elemental world-view through an adult lens, Nara captures the tensions between innocence and experience, physical isolation and mental freedom, containment and independence that all of us have felt. Nara wrote and illustrated his first children’s book, The Lonesome Puppy, in 1999. The book introduces a puppy so big that nobody can see him, until a little girl befriends him: ‘The little girl and the big puppy each found a friend. And they were friends forever … No matter how alone you are, there is always someone, somewhere, waiting to meet you’ (Y. Nara, The Lonesome Puppy, San Francisco 1999, n.p.). Your Dog invites the same spirit of connection, openness and wonder.
Born in 1959 in Japan’s rural Aomori Prefecture, Nara had a lonely but richly imaginative childhood. Dogs were part of his emotional landscape. ‘I never thought about being sad when I was a child’, he recalled. ‘I was happy with my cats and dogs and imaginations and made drawings’ (Y. Nara quoted in E. Nakamura, ‘Punk Art’, Giant Robot, no. 20, 2001, p. 25). Nara later studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, and spent twelve years living in Germany. The iconic paintings of children with which he made his name looked back on his youthful world of solitude and daydreams. The boundary between children and pets was often blurred: as well as white dogs like Your Dog, he depicted children in animal costumes, and dogs with children’s faces.
‘To a certain extent, pets are like humans, cats less so, dogs all the more’, Nara explained in 2001. ‘Therefore I can use them as symbols, and the dog works the best. It is in need of protection, dependent on its master, but has its own will and can be clever as well. We have no idea what penguins think, but dogs we can understand’ (Y. Nara quoted in ‘“My Superficiality Is Only a Game”: A conversation between Stephan Trescher and Yoshitomo Nara’, in Yoshitomo Nara: Lullaby Supermarket, Nuremberg 2001, p. 105). This duality is captured in the present work: we are dwarfed by the sculpture, but it also appears vulnerable and sweet. There are echoes of Jeff Koons’ celebrated Balloon Dog sculptures (1994-2000), which transform a childhood toy into a sublime, otherworldly presence, and of the komainu or lion-dogs that guard the entrances to Buddhist and Shinto shrines.
By presenting us with a child’s elemental world-view through an adult lens, Nara captures the tensions between innocence and experience, physical isolation and mental freedom, containment and independence that all of us have felt. Nara wrote and illustrated his first children’s book, The Lonesome Puppy, in 1999. The book introduces a puppy so big that nobody can see him, until a little girl befriends him: ‘The little girl and the big puppy each found a friend. And they were friends forever … No matter how alone you are, there is always someone, somewhere, waiting to meet you’ (Y. Nara, The Lonesome Puppy, San Francisco 1999, n.p.). Your Dog invites the same spirit of connection, openness and wonder.