Designer of the Month: Yoshitomo Nara

Hey friends! Let's give a very warm welcome for a September and a brand-new Designer of the Month, artist Yoshitomo Nara! You may not necessarily know his name, but Nara's signature style, which combines images of children, animals and text, is immediately recognizable. While his images are remarkably accessible and have lent themselves to nearly every type of product, from notebooks to t-shirts to ashtrays, Nara has also been recognized as one of the main artists to have contributed to the reevaluation of figurative painting as part of contemporary art practice.[1] This combination of markedly different types of fame has served to make Nara one of the leading figures of the Japanese Neo Pop movement, which began in the 1990s, and whose influence has since extended worldwide.[2]

Yoshitomo Nara. Photograph by Kenshu Shintsubo. Courtesy of the Asia Society.

I had seen images of Nara's artwork before the Asia Society's 2010 exhibition Yoshitomo Nara: Nobody's Fool, but it was this show that truly brought his work to my attention. This month, we'll take a look through Nara's artwork and career, from his early work in 1980s to the establishment of his artistic importance in Japan and Asia between 1995 and 2006, and through to the first major New York exhibition of his work with Nobody's Fool in 2010 and beyond.[3] I hope you'll join me.


[1]  Midori Matsui, "Art for Myself and Others: Yoshitomo Nara's Popular Imagination," in Yoshitomo Nara: Nobody's Fool, ed. Melissa Chiu and Miwako Tezuka (New York: Asia Society Museum in association with Abrams, 2010), 13.


[2] Asia Society online,  "Overview," Yoshitomo Nara: Nobody's Fool, http://sites.asiasociety.org/yoshitomonara/, (accessed September 8, 2011).


[3] Midori Matsui, "Art for Myself and Others: Yoshitomo Nara's Popular Imagination," in Yoshitomo Nara: Nobody's Fool, ed. Melissa Chiu and Miwako Tezuka (New York: Asia Society Museum in association with Abrams, 2010), 13.