NARITA BOY STORY EXPLAINED FULL

However, Nara's figures are more archetypal and play around much more with the Japanese tradition of the kawaii: the idea that we might feel empathy with feeble and helpless creatures. Nara's cartoon-based approached has sometimes been compared to the work of Keith Haring.These works have even helped overturn the perception of Japan as an inflexible society governed by ancient social conventions.

NARITA BOY STORY EXPLAINED FULL

His work takes the traditional Japanese theater character of Otafuku, a figure who represents joy and who is always depicted with full cheeks and cheerful eyes, and turns her into a mischievous, brooding 'punk' child.

Many of Nara's works are inspired by Punk music and the ethos of rebellion and defiance.

It is based on Japan's post World War II obsession with anime and manga comic books but Nara's more outward looking worldview has done much to promote the reputation of the so-called Japanese 'Pop art' in mainstream Western culture.

Superflat art is now considered a staple of postmodern art.

In the later, more introspective, phase of his career, Nara has turned his attentions to sculpture and installation art, but it is through his enduring 'Romana' portraits that he remains most readily associated.

Given his nationality, and the illustrative quality of his art, Nara has often been associated with the traditions of Japanese manga and anime but Nara's work draws on a much wider range of influences ranging through Western Punk Rock and fairy tales to Eastern religion and philosophy. His children are typically shown in a mood of resistance and rebellion or, sometimes, in a more tranquil or contemplative state. Nara's deceptively simple art uses cartoon-like imagery to express conflicting childhood emotions and anxieties within a single figure. He is associated specifically with the rise of Superflat art a term coined by Nara's compatriot Takashi Murakami to describe a movement that blends a two-dimensional (flat) graphic design with the more contemplative interests of fine art. Nara is a central figure within contemporary Japanese art.

Narita boy story explained