In the pantheon of social media iconography, one big–headed girl stands out: the work of Yoshitomo Nara. Perhaps you don’t recognize his name, but Nara’s work of indifferent cherubic girls, simply drawn dogs, and emphatic text has stamped itself on our teenage and young–adult hearts. He’s everywhere—our profile pictures, our clothes, as designs on nails, on our bodies. Nara’s works are images that move us on a daily basis and exhibit the everyday translation of an internet obsession to a symbol for our personalities and lives. What’s most unique and enduring about Generation Z’s love for Nara is not just in visits to galleries and exhibitions: It’s how he influences our style.
My first encounter with Nara was through my repeated exposure to The Museum of Modern Art Design Store’s skateboard triptych, sold in their stores in mid–2023. The wall art piece made up of three skateboard decks to create one image was loved by interior design niche creators and influencer selfies alike. Miss Margaret (a feature painting reproduced on the triptych) has since become one of Nara’s most recognizable works in recent times. It’s his classic: a stylized portrait of a redheaded little girl with short bangs and a green background. She has a plain expression on her face, and the muted colors of the painting provide a backdrop for her more colorful, sparkling eyes. The quiet subtlety of Miss Margaret is eye–catching whatever the setting. From the beginning, Nara was never an artist bound by the gallery and resonated with viewers off the walls.
Nara’s gauche simplicity—his stroke texture and “superflat” character—is emblematic of many contemporary art movements in Japan, as many generations are fueled by influences of anime and pop culture. He’s currently 65 years old and is now commonly regarded as one of the most famous living Japanese artists since emerging during the 1990s. However, Nara set himself apart from neo–pop artists like Takashi Murakami (think: smiling flowers, Louis Vuitton) by finding his visual motifs from life rather than product or advertisement. In the words of Angelica Villa for ARTNews, Nara captures “a universal sense of angst” through his exploration of childhood, innocence, and rebellion. His work often addresses themes of existentialism, the climate crisis, and his experiences growing up as an outsider of Japanese society. These emotions of disconnect, fear, or insecurity take the form of children and pets who often look up in the paintings with an angry or annoyed face at the larger world around them. When they aren’t staring back at the viewer, the children are making music, smoking, and brandishing knives. “I kind of see the children among other bigger, bad people all around them who are holding bigger knives,” Nara says. Against the threats of adulthood, the vulnerability of childhood and nostalgia are our weapons.
Since Nara’s mainstream advent, his work pervades the young consciousness and expands what the visual arts mean to our generation. In an algorithm concocted with elements of anime and manga, South Korean Hallyu, kawaii culture, and anything and everything in between, images of Nara’s work are unavoidable. Miss Margaret and others are not only found on the skateboard triptych in official merchandise—Nara’s work is the subject of countless Instagram posts and Pinterest disseminations, but just as much as the person who posts it is, too. On my social media feed, his 2021–22 exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is more reminiscent of a concert than a normal museum exhibition. It was customary to pose moodily in front of the work, wear your Sunday best, and recreate other signage of your day at the museum. In the same vein of other modern social media phenomena, one’s presence at the exhibition (and all of Nara’s exhibitions since then) was then visually shared in cyclical representations. These images (a post, a story, etc.) signal who is truly in the know, whose visit to the art gallery is truly representative of their spirit, despite a similar nature to them all.
In modernity, the fine arts no longer belong behind gated walls in glass cases. The entirety of the process is significant to our postmodern perspective on art, and the recreation of Nara’s work is like each of our own individual continuation of that process. The process of choosing an outfit has become our own unique form of curation. When a shirt of Nara’s work carries inklings of his original message of reconnection to childhood imagination and innocent fears, it transforms into a part of our personal visage. A set of nails with Nara micropaintings evoke a sense of creativity and accessory beyond just luxury and self–care. A profile picture, Spotify playlist cover, or other pictographic badges of a user’s online visual identity become an opportunity to signal a cultural knowing and personal style to your online community.
Nara’s ideology shies away from the consumerist nature of the art world and the numbers game despite the high auction values of his pieces and popularity with the younger generation. However, this thought and the story behind the work is exactly what resounds with Nara lovers. In a constant livelihood of production and material consumption, there’s clarity and consolation in imagining oneself as part of an artwork or a community of other art lovers. Looking into the eyes of Miss Margaret, it’s hard for me not to see my own reflection, with my newly cut baby bangs and cherry cola red hair. But I’ve seen myself in Nara’s work from the first time I encountered it, and I know so many others who would say the same thing.
The representation of the representation is almost like the internet’s mother language, and Nara’s iconographic, character–based paintings fit in perfectly. First, it’s a skateboard triptych. Then, it’s T–shirts and notebooks. Soon, it’s a trend to own the collection and attach its semblance to one’s own youthful, moldable identity. In the Western internet canon, he’s a figure with an esoteric, Gen–Z flair, yet his work speaks to the global world. Nara’s work speaks globally, to the fears and anxieties of everyone, everywhere; he’s “egalitarian,” and maybe that’s what we need more of.
