Punk girls invade the Guggenheim: «Politicians don’t like my girls, they don’t want childish faces to make their ideas transparent. Machoists don’t like them either.”

-How did you feel when you found out that they had paid that much money for one of your girls?

-I didn’t get a cent of that. The system for selling works through galleries is like this: I sell the gallery owner a painting for 10,000 and that person sells it at whatever price, in this case at that auction. And I didn’t feel anything, it’s a price that the person who really wants to have the work cannot reach, you have to be very rich…

The girls are the reason that has given Nara the most fame and money, his paintings and sculptures of children in a rebellious, rebellious, annoying attitude who knows why. Wearing Dr. Martens, smoking cigarettes, playing the electric guitar and with protest slogans… They are becoming so iconic that we will soon see them on t-shirts on the street, like Warhol’s Campbell’s soup or the Kanagawa wave, in fact , can be purchased on the artist’s website (www.nsyard.com). Starting today it is possible to get to know his work up close, as the Guggenheim, with the sponsorship of the BBVA Foundation, inaugurates a large exhibition on his four decades of creation that will be open until November 3.

On that website there are dozens of photos, from when his mother was bathing him in a bucket when he was almost newborn, to some recent snapshots that show him playing a DJ, already with gray hair. And in the middle of these 65 years of life, photos with his primary school classmates, with his university colleagues, playing the guitar with his bands, in multiple moments in his different workshops and in all the stages of its creation. .. There are also photos taken by him on his travels, images of children from Kabul in 2002, just during the American invasion after the attacks on the Twin Towers; children covered in dust in a refugee camp in Jordan and affected by the Fukushima disaster. And also, a snapshot where you can see him, at 3 years old, a lonely child in the middle of a field armed with a small shotgun and holding an enigmatic little package Her brow furrowed, as if she were one of his girls. The artist is surprised to learn that the first question of the interview has to do with that photo they put in front of him. “It’s me!” he says as if he had forgotten that he ever posted it on his website.

-What was in the bag and how do you feel when you see this photo again?

– There were chocolates, sweets, I think. Now that field is full, full of houses, I want to return, but I already know that I can’t return to this scene. I like the countryside and now it is full of houses. I was born and raised ten years after the end of World War II, when Japan began its advance and the landscape was totally different. From that moment on, the entire country began to become equal. But I would like to return to this town, where I lived.

In his country he lives today in the countryside, in a mansion that serves as a home and workshop and where he set up a space to exhibit his works in the middle of nature, N’s Yard is called this kind of museum. He was the youngest of three brothers who were many years older than him, so much so that he almost grew up alone, in the absence of siblings to play with, working parents and children who lived near him. A loneliness that he felt again when he settled in Germany for 9 years to work on his art without knowing the language.

-Do you understand the current ‘hikikomori’, those young people who withdraw from society and lock themselves in their room for months?

-Hahaha, it has nothing to do with it. My loneliness consisted of the fact that there were no other child friends around me. Japan seems small but it is big, from north to south, and the cultures are different, but my town was very small and those are things that happen in big cities. When I missed class my classmates came to look for me.

– You say that the artist “confronts the true essence of people and things (…) to create works that function as mirrors that return to the viewer the reflection of his own heart.” What do you think we see in your girls?

– Everyone has a different reaction, but one visitor told me after seeing my paintings: ‘Frankly, you have vividly depicted my childhood. Politicians, however, say that they don’t want to see such childish faces, they don’t want children to be transparent about their ideas, they don’t like them. And I don’t think that sexist people would like my works…

– Can we then detect some type of feminist claim in choosing these girls?

– I don’t know if this is a feminist demand or not, but I can say that when I was little I always liked flowers, pretty and beautiful things, and I didn’t like war games or male fights, although here I carry that shotgun, but You see that I don’t show a happy face… So that thing about liking beauty and small things, from the age of 10 onwards I didn’t like myself and I started practicing judo and more masculine things like that. I think there was this feeling inside me that I didn’t like the way I was, that I liked those things, and I wanted to become someone else.

– Fortunately, sensitivity returned later.

– Yes, when I began to be interested in art, and that was when I began to think again that I have to protect and help the weak, those who have difficulty, people without a voice…

Yoshitomo Nara grew up listening to the songs of the Beatles and Bob Dylan’s anti-war themes for the Vietnam War, and he never abandoned the music, rock and roll and derivatives that he was able to better absorb when he went to Europe the first time, with only 20 years old, and he discovered The Ramones and the art of the impressionists and expressionists, as well as medieval and Renaissance architecture and paintings with their religious scenes and he rethought everything he had experienced until then. He said: “When I left Japan I realized that seeing things from Mount Fuji is totally different from seeing them from Everest.” He would return later, in 1987, to settle in Germany, where he lived for 9 years without knowing the language, which isolated him from being able to realize his art. Furthermore, his passion for music took shape in his participation in rock bands and in the creation of covers for some of his favorite groups. His workshops are filled with stacks of CDs, hundreds of home-recorded cassettes. Could we be talking about punk girls rather than angry girls? “Yes,” he answers.

The shock wave of the atomic bomb still persists in Japan, and he is a declared feminist, the symbol of peace is always present in his workshop, and in one of his works a girl appears leaving a shelter with the date 10 August 1945), when Nagasaki was hit by the second nuclear explosion, ‘Fat Man’. He also felt very depressed with the Fukushima disaster: «I stopped thinking, at first I lost the desire to create works. I realized that in art you can express yourself only when you have sentimental and emotional freedom. I saw the musicians who visited the affected areas and they did know how to convey the disaster and their feelings, but with art it takes a little longer to be able to do it.”

-How did you overcome it?

– I’m going to tell you my own experience, what I did after that disaster. I thought that it was not about showing my works to those people, it was not what they needed. So I went several times to visit those people to capture what they needed, I began to interview people and I realized that those people lost a lot of photos, memories, they were left with nothing after the tsunami, they lost everything. And I thought that maybe I could contribute something by taking photos, or helping to recover theirs, because I have experience of having learned photography and then I organized an exhibition in a refugee center in a school gym.

In the United States he coincided in 1998 with his compatriot Takeshi Murakami, another of the most renowned artists internationally who heads the artistic movement called ‘Superflat’, inspired by Japanese tradition and consumerism reminiscent of pop art and in which he is included. to Nara, although this artist has little consumerism, who has taken refuge in the countryside fleeing the cities that he does not like.

– Recognize that you are a little anti-system, with those statements about millionaires who can pay for your works…

– Maybe, hahaha. I always have my doubts about whether they are really art fans or…. Everyone can buy books or some printed work, I think these are the real art fans, and frankly I prefer them.

Lately, some of her little ones seem to have evolved, they even show watery eyes overflowing, like those in ‘Midnight Tears’ (2023), where the girl no longer has a frown, and appears sad. The painting is more ethereal, less drawing, more emotional. The death of her father in 2013 led him towards unexplored, deeper and more spiritual paths.

– By the way, what music do your girls listen to?

– One to dance. Can I keep the photo of the shotgun?