sundance

See BYE BYE KITTY!!! before it closes!!!

The attention-grabbing exhibition “BYE BYE KITTY!!!” at Japan Society is designed to buck our modern day association with Japanese art with otaku (punk/goth/sailor moon/anime-style) and kawaii culture (cute/babydoll/victorian/Murakami-bright/happy face/ice cream cone-style). Curator David Elliot, founding Director of the Mori Art Museum, compiled sixteen emerging and mid-career Japanese artists whose work engages historical traditions in painting while “challenging visions of Japan’s troubled present and uncertain future.” Makoto Aida’s collages, for example, may feature short-skirted cartoon school girls, but they’ve been lampooned and are shown enacting the ancient samurai practice of ritual suicide. Yoshitomo Nara works in a similar vein with his untitled Hello Kitty memorial, complete with matching grey stone cartoon sentinels, guarding the not-so-cute tomb.

3 weeks left to see Yoshitomo Nara’s “Nobody’s Fool”

Yoshitomo Nara moved to Germany in the late 80s in an attempt to isolate himself and focus his work. With the language barrier and his obvious outsider status, he became more alone than he bargained for. But it wasn’t all for naught. It was his extreme solitude that made him realize that “each painting needs only to speak to one thing,” and it was during this period that Nara’s style changed drastically from loose and Expressionistic to the stylized, “cartoon” portraits he’s become famous for.

In the past twenty years of his work, there are three themes that occur again and again: isolation, rebellion and music, or at least that’s how the Asia Society Museum sees it. There’s still time to “Nobody’s Fool” before it closes on January 2, and if you check in on Foursquare at the museum you can get 2 for 1 admission.