Birth and Present: A Studio Portrait of Yoshitomo Nara
Mie Moromito and Yoshitomo Nara
Gingko Press
96 pp.
ISBN: 1-58423-153-x
Available from Powell's Books.
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On April 18, 2001, Yoshitomo Nara wrote the following in a
journal:
Overcome pain and sadness, becoming strong -- but it's suffering
to have weak emotions drink up the strength.
But I won't forget my spirit when I began.
I don't just want to give form to it. Even if everything gets fucked up,
I want to keep that feeling close by me."
This journal entry, in condensed form, is memoed to Nara's studio wall:
"Never forget your beginner's spirit". Mie Morimoto chose the memo as her
final photograph of his studio. You see the words glued to a plain white
wall, by a plain white canvas, and above what appears to be a cute,
Snoopy-like dog fan that I now want. The dog fan may indeed be an object
Nara himself has designed, or an item inspired by his paintings,
sculptures, dolls and ceramics. It's hard to underestimate the commercial
potential of Nara's work, and Morimoto's studio portrait makes it harder to
underestimate his abilities.
If you approach Birth and Present as a fellow artist who sees Nara
as a kindred spirit, the book might flatten your own aspirations. More likely, though, it will get you out of bed and into the studio again.
Morimoto has a wonderful eye for capturing Nara at work. She shows the joy
and sweat behind the process, and also the beauty you'll find in any
active studio. Whether it's a row of plain canvases set aside for
future work, or paper scraps from finished acrylic paintings, the objects in
the studio radiate a positive energy. They don't burn with the dreams that
Nara's own work inspire, but they are beautiful. Morimoto's photographs
present you with many images, exterior to his work -- such as a Cramps tour
poster, or multiple stacks of CDs -- that sell the artist to a young
indie audience. This guy seems to have been inspired by all the same sounds that inspire us.
Punk rock blasts whenever Nara paints or sculpts, and he confesses his
preference for quick drawing. He has the discipline to prime a canvas,
but an anxiety level that sometimes cannot bear it.
Nara's work is mostly of sad dogs and girls with dreamy, wandering eyes. One
three-dimensional painting is of Ramona, a Ramones fan; another is a sculpture
of dogs in a circle, with tears that that literally fall from their eyes to
the floor. His work attracts many audiences for many reasons.
Among the audiences, you definitely have the Hello Kitty crowd; whether his
objects are sad or somewhat hopeful, they are always cute. If you know his
work solely from the bookends based on his sculpture of a dog halfway
inside a doghouse, you won't realize that his body of work is very personal and
emotional.
So let's quickly get personal. I daydream, I keep to myself, and I look to
music, books, films and art for almost all the emotions in my life. I don't
care much for human contact, and I certainly don't care for unemotional art.
Those who turn to art the way others turn to best friends will be satiated
by Nara's work. If he does not suffer from some sort of schizotypal
disorder, he at least creates art for those who do. When he tightly covers a
giant plate with cloth, then draws upon it, he creates a 3-D effect of his
figures that bring them to life like a Disney film. The effect allows his
creations to bring with them the same boundless emotional landscape as
actual living children or pets. I'd be baffled if you merely find them cute;
I feel them as much as anything by Jasper Johns or Chuck Close, and I like
them more, because they don't make me miserable. Nara's imagination's current
estrangement from adult figures is one reason that his art gratifies;
his characters constantly dream, and do not judge. They don't look at you
with a critical eye. Nara's work is the sort of art that psychotherapists
could use as therapy for patients, because it comforts, even when the faces
and expressions are mournful.
Birth and Present is an important look at Nara -- it shows the
seriousness of the artist at work, and his depth. This is not a portrait
of a guy who dreams up cute things in order to score with chicks, but of a guy
who dreams up his dreaming subjects because he needs to feel them too. Just
as Nara needs to remain constantly on the move, listening to punk rock, to get
through the day, those who witness his art (including, perhaps, the
artist himself) often need that perception to get through their own
days.
Mie Morimoto's photos flawlessly capture Nara and his studio of dreams, and
the accompanying texts (from Kyoko Wada, and Noriko Mayamura) also do their
part. Mayamura's "Works in Progress", in particular, is a masterful summary
of everything Morimoto was able to capture; happily, it's presented in a
manner whereby you don't need to keep flipping pages back and forth. "Works
in Progress" follows Morimoto's text-less commentary, and places excerpts of
diary entries beside her photos (now minimized, so that everything can fit
on the same page). Mayamura shows that Morimoto's photos shed light on many
of the more intimate, revealing comments Nara has made in his diaries.
Nara's initial thoughts upon the purchase of his studio stick out:
There are different spirits living here,
looking at me with keen interest.
They know this area intimately and for now I am a stranger.
But I am an ambassador of friendship
And we'll probably wind up shaking hands.
Nara might not be anything like me, but I am going to pretend that he is, because
his work shows you can be an anxious, dreamy, socially incompetent sort, yet
still make it through the day and year with enough discipline to complete
projects -- often huge, immensely complicated projects -- and to construct
a beautiful world for yourself. This book, and Nara's art, is damn near
priceless in its ability to convey that hopeful thought.
-- Theodore Defosse
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About the Publisher:
Gingko Press is a publisher of books on architecture, photography, graphic
design, pop and underground culture, mass media, and the work of Marshall
McLuhan.
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