Tdrumming is part of the business, but does it have to be the kettledrum? At the presentation of the exhibition “All My Little Words” in the Albertina, Albertina Director Klaus Albrecht Schröder places the Japanese draftsman and painter Yoshitomo Nara in a modern line of tradition with the greatest draftsmen, which begins with Dürer and Michelangelo and leads via Rubens to Roy Lichtenstein . With the latter one would at least be in pop art, that genre – prominently represented in Japan with the styles manga and anime – to which Nara refers. According to Schröder, Japan made the transition from “low art” to “high art” in the 1990s. It is therefore not surprising that Yoshitomo Nara now wants to be shown where the great masters hang.
The sixty-three-year-old – in blue work trousers, a black “Love” T-shirt and mustard-yellow Adidas – shyly says thank you. He does not like to speak in front of an audience and he is “not as serious an artist as you think”. He scribbles something, and when it suits his feelings later, he finishes the sheet. Alluding to the fact that he himself determined the random hanging of the six hundred works, he says: “I wanted to override the order of the Albertina.”
A star of the art market
Yoshitomo Nara, born in Hirosaki in the north of the main island of Honshu, grew up as a latchkey with a cat that had happened to him. After graduating in art in Nagoya, he is drawn to far away places. The fact that Germany of all places plays a major role in his artist biography is thanks to the fact that it is free of charge. Nara actually wants to go to England, but cannot afford to study there, ends up at the art academy in Düsseldorf in 1988 and becomes a master student with AR Penck. At the end of the 1990s he taught in California, returning to his homeland in 2000, where he was part of the “Superflat” movement and quickly became a sought-after artist. In Europe things had grown rather quiet around him; the Viennese gallery Meyer Kainer last exhibited him fifteen years ago.
The show, curated by Elsy Lahner, follows the chronology. The first drawings date from 1984 and look like scrawled children’s leaves. The “angry girls” that Nara is known for appeared in the early 1990s, ten years later he found the comic-like form for them that fueled their rise to art market stars: oversized heads, round faces, narrow mouths, tiny nostrils , huge googly eyes that are often set far outwards, mushroom head hairstyles. The characters are often in a bad mood, swearing, holding a knife or hammer in their fist, wearing boxing gloves and saying naughty things (“Fuck U”). They are “kawaii” (cute, sweet), rebellious and latently aggressive at the same time. In children’s books, they only fit to a limited extent. And still make you happy.
Yoshitomo Nara draws on everything he can get his hands on. Notepads, bags, serviettes, envelopes, flyers, cardboard boxes, catalogues. It’s a diary-like, ongoing process. He himself does not necessarily identify his characters as girls, parts of his own childish self are probably inscribed in them. They almost always perform alone. As a manifestation of resistance to what is happening in the society around them. They are only too happy to disrupt their operations because they want their worldview to be recognized even when they are dreaming. Nara’s pictures are part of a digital protest culture, they are carried along at demonstrations, and he repeatedly releases them for free download. Clients should come into contact with his art and merchandising is never far away.
Speak, memory, speak: You can see what your dream house looks like in the fourth and last room. “My Drawing Room” (2008) is a hermit’s wooden house painted white, a shack. Lots of scattered sketches on the floor, crayons, figurines, odds and ends at the workplace, a small television. Of course there is music in the background, because without it Yoshitomo Nara’s work is unimaginable. As a teenager, he heard American country and rock music from a nearby air base without understanding a word. At eighteen he discovered punk. Echoes lurk in many of his pictures, they work with quotes like “I want to be dead forever. Put me in the grave” (2006), which quotes a song by the Golden Lemons. But Nara keeps returning to his 1960s heroes. A playlist of twenty-one songs from “Nobody’s Fool” to “Lullaby” is available.
The tale of the artist’s great loneliness in childhood as the trigger for his graphic journey through life is something Nara doesn’t want to carry on. His childhood in the rural north, in a large fruit-growing area, was not unusual. However, the earthquake, the tsunami and the resulting nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima in 2011 were traumatic, they are a turning point in the work, forcing a creative break, and when he can draw again, the results are bleak. The large-format paintings “Emergency” and “RIP” from 2013 show a grimly tearful girl on a stretcher and a dead girl on a stretcher. Suddenly the comic-like becomes very serious. During this time, clay sculptures were also created, which were later cast in bronze, one of which can be seen.
The child schema proves to be a launch vehicle for all sorts of emotions and political messages, perhaps that’s why its potential for identification is so great. But despite all the boldness, a suggestive fragility lurks in the best moments – see the almost hypnotizing “Miss Margaret” from 2016.
Yoshitomo Nara – All My Little Words.
In the Albertina modern, Vienna; until November 1st. The catalog costs 36.90 euros.
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