The Unsettling Confrontations of Artist Yoshitomo Nara

By Susan Delson

Posed against a blank background, the girl stares up at us like a small child. Her enormous head, small body and wide-open eyes signal “adorable.” Her vulnerability triggers our protective instincts.

But then there’s that knife she’s holding.

“The Girl With the Knife in Her Hand” was a breakthrough work for Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara. Painted in 1991, it’s the first in a long line of female figures in his work that combine irresistible cuteness—kawaii in Japanese—with the dark emotions of adulthood: seething anger, sorrow, pain.

Hovering between innocence and violence, “The Girl With the Knife in Her Hand” was born, Mr. Nara has said, “from confronting my own self.” Other endearing but unsettling figures populate Mr. Nara’s drawings, paintings and sculptures as well, including crowds of sleepwalkers, flop-eared dogs on stilts and childlike heads submerged in puddles...READ MORE

Yoshitomo Nara, ‘Miss Forest,’ 2020. Photo: Yoshitomo Nara, Photo Museum Associates/LACMA

Cover Image: Yoshitomo Nara, 'Miss Spring,' 2012. Photo: Yoshitomo Nara 2012, photo by Keizo Kioku, courtesy of the artist.