Nobodies Fool

Yoshitomo Nara: Nobody’s Fool is the catalogue of a retrospective organized with Asia Society Museum in New York, gathering two decades of Nara’s paintings, sculptures and drawings.

Abrams published the 272-page hardcover in 2010, with Melissa Chiu and Miwako Tezuka as authors. Retailer copy for the book places Nara’s work beside youth subcultures around the world. Alienation and rebellion are the recurring themes, with rock and punk music as both an influence and a subject. The same copy says it reproduces works that had not been exhibited before.

Nara was born in 1959 in Aomori prefecture, Japan. He completed a master’s degree at Aichi University of the Arts in 1987, moved to Germany in 1988 to study at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, and returned to Japan in 2000. His official site describes portraits with eyes that gaze back at the viewer, drawings made daily, three-dimensional works in wood, FRP, ceramic and bronze, and installations of little houses. He lives and works in Nasushiobara.