Yoshitomo Nara

Documenting Yoshitomo Nara's 2025 exhibition at BLUM Los Angeles, My Imperfect Self traces the artist's turn toward bronze sculpture and the poetic potential of imperfection. Including a newly commissioned essay by art historian Yeewan Koon, this book brings together recent works, preparatory drawings and playful photographs of children, dogs and elders—figures that reflect Nara's ongoing curiosity about innocence, experience and emotional depth. It also features 11 mid-size head sculptures exuding a quirky strangeness and dark charm that defines the artist's work. Although cast in bronze, they were first made in clay as palm size pieces. In their transformed state, the malleable nature of the clay's original form remains evident, enticing viewers to retrace Nara's touch across its pillowy surface. These heads, presented for the first time, are integral to Nara's exploration in clay, intertwining ideas and techniques developed since 2011, but also express a poignant return to his roots. Seen together, all the featured works highlight how far Nara has transformed the kawaii aesthetic into an alternate realm of beguiling misfits.
Yoshitomo Nara was born in 1959 in Aomori, Japan, and graduated with a master's degree from Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music and later studied at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. His drawings and paintings are informed by a range of influences, from manga and anime to punk rock. He has also worked in sculpture, ceramic and large-scale installation.

Spanning four decades of work, this book offers readers the opportunity to immerse themselves in the personal and creative world of the Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara, best known for his bold images of children with large heads and wide eyes that challenge viewers with their direct gaze and defiant stance. These captivating yet ominous characters are part of a wider visual vocabulary established by Nara to explore and communicate themes of home, isolation, resilience, belonging, regeneration, hope and freedom. Organized thematically, the book provides a comprehensive overview of the evolution and breadth of Nara's artistic expression. Yeewan Koon explores how Nara's singular aesthetic is drawn from his formative experiences in Japan, as well as his ongoing environmental and societal concerns, which are deeply rooted in nature and the communities of Japan's northern Tohoku region, where he grew up. Barry Schwabsky's essay, illustrated with details of the artworks, focuses in depth on Nara as a painter. Josh Kun discusses the inspiration Nara takes from popular music—folk songs by American singer-songwriters featuring anti-war messages, melancholic blues and, later, glam rock, punk and new wave. The book also features an in-depth chronology illustrated with childhood photographs and pictures of Nara's studio, offering a deep dive into Nara's life and art. The corresponding exhibition is co-organized by Guggenheim Bilbao, Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden, and the Hayward Gallery.
Yoshitomo Nara was born in 1959 in Aomori, Japan, and graduated with a master's degree from Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music and later studied at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. His drawings and paintings are informed by a range of influences, from manga and anime to punk rock. He has also worked in sculpture, ceramic and large-scale installation.

This definitive monograph spans 40 years, from 1984 to the present day, in the career of the iconic artist, shedding light on Nara’s conceptual process through paintings, drawings, sculptures, ceramics and installations that reflect his empathetic vision of the world around him. Published in conjunction with the epochal exhibition at Museo Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain, this eponymous monograph divides Nara’s oeuvre into three chronological periods, beginning with his first artworks created in Japan in the 1980s, in which recurring elements of his personal history appear, such as his family’s house and childlike figures, developed under the influence of artists such as Takeshi Motai. The volume then highlights the artist’s fruitful stay in Germany, where Nara reacted to the isolation imposed by the language barrier while he studied and discovered German Expressionism with A.R. Penck at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and introduced in his production the central characters that would soon be recognized as part of his signature language. Finally, the monograph closes by exploring the work Nara produced after his return to Japan in 2000, presenting an essential selection of his late paintings, drawings, installations and sculptures.
Yoshitomo Nara (born 1959) is one of the best-known Japanese artists of his generation; his characteristic portraits of adorable, enigmatic or threatening childlike figures have become revered icons with potent social implications. Nara creates traditionally crafted art rooted in his childhood and personal history; underground punk, folk and rock music; literature and nature, as well as European and Japanese art history. Nara was named one of TIME's 100 Most Influential People of 2025, nominated by Stella McCartney

From the outset of his career, Japanese painter and sculptor Yoshitomo Nara (born 1959) has fruitfully explored the relationship between art and the space in which it is placed. At the cornerstone of Nara's recent exhibition in Pace's London gallery was the most recent product of his ongoing study: a new multiroom installation that was reworked from an earlier project titled London Mayfair House.
Borrowing its title from the Ancient Greco-Roman term for a public art salon, Pinacoteca (2021) is a specially crafted, tiny, homelike structure that imitates an exhibition space. On the internal walls, the artist hung new paintings on wood and canvas as well as drawings on paper, used envelopes and cardboard boxes. On the external walls, which have been directly painted onto, Nara hung new paintings that are stylistically simpler and more graphic than the works inside the installation.
Yoshitomo Nara: Pinacoteca presents a close look at the structure, as well as the artist’s recent paintings, sculpture and works on cardboard also displayed in the exhibition. An essay by acclaimed music writer Simon Reynolds explores the relationship of music to Nara’s artistic production, and an essay by curator Stephanie Rosenthal dives deep into the role of built environments in the artist's oeuvre.

Published with Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Yoshitomo Nara is among the most beloved Japanese artists of his generation. His widely recognizable portraits of menacing figures reflect the artist’s raw encounters with his inner self. Nara’s oeuvre takes inspiration from a wide range of resources—memories of his childhood, music, literature, studying and living in Germany (1988–2000), exploring his roots in Japan, Sakhalin and Asia, and modern art from Europe and Japan.

Spanning 35 years (1985 to 2020), this book—which accompanies the major career retrospective organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art—presents the full range of Nara’s work. It also examines the artist’s work through the lens of his longtime passion—music—and features “liner notes” written by the artist about various albums in his personal collection of 1960s and 70s folk and rock albums, published in English for the first time.

The book features paintings, drawings, sculpture, ceramic figures, an installation that re-creates his drawing studio, and never-before-exhibited idea sketches that reflect the artist’s empathic eye, shining a light on Nara’s conceptual process. Readers will see the evolution of a dynamic artist who has become more contemplative with age.

Yoshitomo Nara was born in 1959 in Aomori, Japan, and graduated with a master's degree from Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music and later studied at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. In the fall of 2010, the Asia Society in New York presented the first major New York exhibition of his work. He is represented by Pace Gallery and Blum & Poe.