Yoshitomo Nara - Bunny in blue

Yoshitomo Nara

Bunny in blue
1997

Acrylic on canvas. 60 x 50 cm. Signed, dated and inscribed 'nara '97 -in the blue room' on canvas overlap and with direction arrow and directional information. - Minimal traces of age.

In 'Bunny in Blue', Yoshitomo Nara presents one of his signature depictions of children: a child in a bunny costume, seated with legs stretched out, holds a carrot in its left hand. At its feet lie a baby bottle and a small bowl - props that, on the one hand, allude to childlike care, yet simultaneously create a subtle tension between innocence and existential isolation.
The figure is surrounded by a homogeneous, intensely blue expanse of colour reminiscent of the sky, yet one that allows for no spatial localisation. This deliberate absence of a defined pictorial space strips the scene of any narrative clarity and intensifies the presence of the central figure, who seems to float almost weightlessly within the picture plane.
Created in 1997, this work marks a pivotal phase in Nara’s oeuvre: After studying painting in Japan - including at the Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music - Nara moved to Dusseldorf in the late 1980s, where he studied under A. R. Penck at the Dusseldorf Art Academy. His several-year stay in Germany marked a turning point in his artistic development. Here, he increasingly distanced himself from narrative contexts and found the reduced, two-dimensional visual language that continues to characterise his work to this day.
The iconic child and animal figures do not function merely as representations of childhood, but as psychological projections: “These children or animals are ultimately also self-portraits, and the absence of explanatory backgrounds may stem from the fact that here, far from my familiar surroundings in Japan, I was freed from everything that had been weighing on my mind. These images are directed less at others and more at myself. They came into being because I was asking questions of my own self and no longer concerned myself with how I wanted to be perceived by others.” (Yoshitomo Nara, Chiisana hoshi tsushin (The Little Star Dweller), Tokyo 2004, p.60.)

Catalogue Raisonné

Yoshitomo Nara, The complete works, paintings, sculptures, editions, photographs, vol.1, San Francisco 2011, cat.rais.no. P-1997-009

Provenance

Directly from the artist; private collection, Baden-Wuerttemberg

Exhibitions

Nuremberg 2001 (Institut für moderne Kunst), Yoshitomo Nara, Lullaby Supermarket, exhib.cat., p.41 and p.292 with col.illus.