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Lot Essay
‘Even if I knew there would be no one out there to look at my work, I would still make the exact same thing’ (Yoshitomo Nara)
Equal parts whimsical and uncanny, Frog (1998) is an outstanding example of Yoshitomo Nara’s celebrated and hugely distinctive big-headed girls, the cornerstone of an almost four-decades-long artistic practice. It is a close cousin of major paintings such as Be Happy (1995), as well as many works that featured this year at Nara’s blockbuster retrospective at London’s Hayward Gallery. Frog is a delicately-wrought acrylic painting of a young girl with an oversized head and simple, almost cartoon-like features. Her wide-set green eyes and flat nose bear a mild resemblance to the titular amphibian, while her facial expression suggests malcontent, almost as if she is turning to accuse the viewer. Does this child know something that we do not? An aura of menace hovers in uneasy juxtaposition with her youthful vulnerability. The character exists in an ambiguous field of soft pink. As Yeewan Koon writes, ‘The background generates a feeling of suspension, creating a nonspatial world like a self-contained laboratory where nothing else exists’ (Y. Koon, ‘Those Big-Headed Girls’, in Yoshitomo Nara, London 2020, p. 67).
Frog dates from Nara’s Cologne period. He had moved to Germany in 1988 to study at the prestigious Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under the neo-expressionist painter A. R. Penck, who encouraged Nara to adopt a pared-back style. This advice inspired a process of simplification which led Nara to his signature big-headed characters. These works debuted at the Kunstakademie’s annual student show in 1992 and quickly became a success in Nara’s native Japan. In 1998, his international profile grew with his first US solo exhibition at the Institute of Visual Arts Milwaukee and a role as visiting professor at the University of Los Angeles, where he lived with fellow Japanese artist Takashi Murakami. At the same time his brushwork became more delicate and he began working in a soft, diaphanous palette, leaving behind the cartoonish thick black lines that had characterised his earlier figures.
For all the picture-book clarity of Nara’s aesthetic, it exists in close dialogue with the history of art. Frog is executed in tranquil pastel hues that evoke the tempera favoured by early Italian Renaissance artists. Nara has spoken about his interest in these old masters: ‘I especially love the translucent colours of Giotto and Piero della Francesca. The surface texture of fresco painting contains a space that I can enter easily’ (Y. Nara, quoted in M. Matsui, ‘An Interview with Yoshitomo Nara’, Index, February/March 2001). It also draws on Japanese culture. The blush-hued empty space around Frog’s main figure is redolent of that found in Edo era ukiyo-e woodblock prints.
The cuteness of Nara’s protagonists engages with Japan’s contemporary kawaii phenomenon, though the artist imbues his figures with an emotional complexity largely absent in childlike mascots such as Hello Kitty. Nara’s interweaving of innocence and experience can have a potent effect on his viewers. His paintings, writes Stephen Trescher, ‘evoke the immediacy of children's feelings that his grownup audience had long forgotten but that were nevertheless preserved in the recesses of their minds. These feelings in turn gave them the strength to accept their own solitude and to understand life as an inextricable mixture of loss and hope' (S. Trescher, ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog’, in Yoshitomo Nara: Lullaby Supermarket, Munich 2001, p. 15). Frog is both a finely-tuned iconic image and a spur to profound contemplation.
Equal parts whimsical and uncanny, Frog (1998) is an outstanding example of Yoshitomo Nara’s celebrated and hugely distinctive big-headed girls, the cornerstone of an almost four-decades-long artistic practice. It is a close cousin of major paintings such as Be Happy (1995), as well as many works that featured this year at Nara’s blockbuster retrospective at London’s Hayward Gallery. Frog is a delicately-wrought acrylic painting of a young girl with an oversized head and simple, almost cartoon-like features. Her wide-set green eyes and flat nose bear a mild resemblance to the titular amphibian, while her facial expression suggests malcontent, almost as if she is turning to accuse the viewer. Does this child know something that we do not? An aura of menace hovers in uneasy juxtaposition with her youthful vulnerability. The character exists in an ambiguous field of soft pink. As Yeewan Koon writes, ‘The background generates a feeling of suspension, creating a nonspatial world like a self-contained laboratory where nothing else exists’ (Y. Koon, ‘Those Big-Headed Girls’, in Yoshitomo Nara, London 2020, p. 67).
Frog dates from Nara’s Cologne period. He had moved to Germany in 1988 to study at the prestigious Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under the neo-expressionist painter A. R. Penck, who encouraged Nara to adopt a pared-back style. This advice inspired a process of simplification which led Nara to his signature big-headed characters. These works debuted at the Kunstakademie’s annual student show in 1992 and quickly became a success in Nara’s native Japan. In 1998, his international profile grew with his first US solo exhibition at the Institute of Visual Arts Milwaukee and a role as visiting professor at the University of Los Angeles, where he lived with fellow Japanese artist Takashi Murakami. At the same time his brushwork became more delicate and he began working in a soft, diaphanous palette, leaving behind the cartoonish thick black lines that had characterised his earlier figures.
For all the picture-book clarity of Nara’s aesthetic, it exists in close dialogue with the history of art. Frog is executed in tranquil pastel hues that evoke the tempera favoured by early Italian Renaissance artists. Nara has spoken about his interest in these old masters: ‘I especially love the translucent colours of Giotto and Piero della Francesca. The surface texture of fresco painting contains a space that I can enter easily’ (Y. Nara, quoted in M. Matsui, ‘An Interview with Yoshitomo Nara’, Index, February/March 2001). It also draws on Japanese culture. The blush-hued empty space around Frog’s main figure is redolent of that found in Edo era ukiyo-e woodblock prints.
The cuteness of Nara’s protagonists engages with Japan’s contemporary kawaii phenomenon, though the artist imbues his figures with an emotional complexity largely absent in childlike mascots such as Hello Kitty. Nara’s interweaving of innocence and experience can have a potent effect on his viewers. His paintings, writes Stephen Trescher, ‘evoke the immediacy of children's feelings that his grownup audience had long forgotten but that were nevertheless preserved in the recesses of their minds. These feelings in turn gave them the strength to accept their own solitude and to understand life as an inextricable mixture of loss and hope' (S. Trescher, ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog’, in Yoshitomo Nara: Lullaby Supermarket, Munich 2001, p. 15). Frog is both a finely-tuned iconic image and a spur to profound contemplation.