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Yoshitomo Nara, born 1959 in Hirosaki, Japan, is a contemporary Japanese Pop artist. He currently lives and works in Tokyo, though his artwork has been exhibited worldwide. Image File history File links Original url: http://www. ...
Image File history File links Original url: http://www. ...
1959 was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Hirosaki (弘前市; -shi) is a city located in Aomori in Tohoku region of Japan. ...
Pop art is an artistic movement that is a rejection of abstract expressionism and aims to return to figurative art while incorporating themes and techniques from mass culture. ...
The modern skyline of Tokyo is highly decentralized. ...
Artwork
Nara first came to the fore of the art world during Japan’s Pop art movement in the 1990s. The subject matter of his sculptures and paintings is deceptively simple: most works depict one seemingly innocuous subject (often pastel-hued children and animals drawn with confident, cartoonish lines) with little or no background. But these children, who appear at first to be cute and even vulnerable, sometimes brandish weapons like knives and saws. Their wide eyes often hold accusatory looks that could be sleepy-eyed irritation at being awoken from a nap—or that could be undiluted expressions of hate. Pop art was an artistic movement that emerged in the late 1950s in England and the United States. ...
// Events and trends The 1990s are generally classified as having moved slightly away from the more conservative 1980s, but otherwise retaining the same mindset. ...
A cartoon is a form of art with diverse origins and even more diverse modern meanings. ...
A weapon is a tool used to kill or incapacitate a person or animal, or destroy a military target. ...
Nara, however, does not see his weapon-wielding subjects as aggressors. "Look at them, they [the weapons] are so small, like toys. Do you think they could fight with those?" he says. "I don’t think so. Rather, I kind of see the children among other, bigger, bad people all around them, who are holding bigger knives..."
Nara’s own explanation of his work, then, casts us as the aggressors guilty of betraying and attacking childhood innocence. When cast in that light, Nara incriminates himself as well, for his art is above all based upon the perversion of otherwise innocent subjects.
Lauded by art critics and hipsters alike, Nara’s bizarrely intriguing works have gained him a cult following around the world. Nara’s artwork seems to act as an unlikely emotional trigger on people around the world; his zealous fans embrace the stylized images as symbols of eccentric rebellion and, inevitably, as badges of cool. A hipster is a person who derives their identity largely through their association with a subculture which has been deemed hip, a word taken from African American Vernacular English (AAVE). ...
A cult following is a group of fans devoted to a specific item, usually a film, television or radio program, though some comic books, musicians, writers or others also gain dedicated followings. ...
In its earliest usage, trigger refers to a mechanical mechanism, the pulling or pushing of which sets a device into action. ...
Influences Japanese comic books, or manga, and anime are both clear influences on Nara’s stylized, large-eyed figures. Nara subverts these typically cute images, however, by infusing his works with horror-like imagery. This juxtaposition of human evil with the innocent child may be a reaction to Japan’s rigid social conventions, while also offering a vaguely sinister interpretation of the Biblical fall from grace. A comic book is a magazine or book containing the art form of comics. ...
Rurouni Kenshin manga, volume 1 (English version) Manga (漫画) is the Japanese word for comics; outside of Japan, it usually refers specifically to Japanese comics. ...
A scene from Cowboy Bebop (1998) Anime (アニメ) is Japanese animation, sometimes referred to in the Western world by the portmanteau Japanimation. ...
The Bible (From Greek βιβλια—biblia, meaning books, which in turn is derived from βυβλος—byblos meaning papyrus, from the ancient Phoenician city of Byblos which exported papyrus) is the sacred scripture of Christianity. ...
The punk rock music of Nara’s youth has also influenced the artist’s work. Recalling a similar—if more unsettling—image of rebellious, violent youth, Nara’s art embraces the punk ethos. That said, Nara has also cited traditions as varied as Renaissance painting, literature, illustration, and graffiti as further inspiration. Punk rock is an anti-establishment music movement beginning around 1976 (although precursors can be found several years earlier), exemplified and popularised by The Ramones, the Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Damned. ...
By Region: Italian Renaissance Northern Renaissance *French Renaissance *German Renaissance *English Renaissance The Renaissance was an influential cultural movement which brought about a period of scientific revolution and artistic transformation, at the dawn of modern European history. ...
Open Directory Project: Literature World Literature Electronic Text Archives Magazines and E-zines Online Writing Writers Resources Libraries, Digital Cataloguing, Metadata Distance Learning Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Classicism in Literature The Universal Library, by Carnegie Mellon University Project Gutenberg Online Library Abacci - Project Gutenberg texts matched with Amazon...
Example Illustration 1. ...
Graffiti on the banks of the Tiber river in Rome, Italy. ...
But perhaps most significantly, Nara’s upbringing in post-World War II Japan profoundly affected his mindset and, subsequently, his artwork as well. He grew up in a time when Japan was experiencing an inundation of Western pop culture; comic books, Walt Disney animation, and Western rock music are just a few examples. Additionally, Nara was raised in the isolated countryside as a latchkey child of working-class parents, so he was often left alone with little to do but explore his young imagination. The fiercely independent subjects that populate so much of his artwork may be a reaction to Nara’s own largely independent childhood. Popular culture, or pop culture, is the vernacular (peoples) culture that prevails in a modern society. ...
Latchkey child is a term used to describe children left at home with little or no parental supervision, referring to the latch key to the door strung around their necks. ...
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