Yoshitomo Nara - The Beginning Place [ここから]

2023, Seigensha Art Publishing, Japan

From Aomori, Japan, Yoshitomo Nara is an artist and photographer. Nara has had nearly 40 solo exhibitions since 1984. His artwork has been housed at the MoMA and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (LACMA). His most well-known and repeated subject is a young girl with piercing eyes.

The Beginning Place was published during Nara’s major solo exhibition at the Aomori Museum of Art, guiding readers to better understand his career and love for art throughout these years. It showcases works and exhibition views organized around five themes—“house/home,” “space-time in layers,” “travel,” “no war,” and “Rock Café ‘33 1/3’ and a small community”—elucidate the essential “core” leading back to the very origins of Yoshitomo Nara’s sensibilities. The book also features a detailed chronology as well as essays by Aomori Museum of Art curator Shigemi Takahashi, philosophy scholar Masato Goda, and music critic Josh Kun.