Contemporary artworks subvert ‘kawaii’

Contemporary artists are subverting Japan’s world-famous aesthetic of “kawaii,” or cuteness. Their works use the aesthetic’s signature colorful and childlike facets — usually associated with manga — to “grapple with personal, national, or global trauma,” the BBC wrote. A 2000 painting by one of Japan’s most famous artists, Yoshitomo Nara, exemplified this by depicting a doe-eyed girl with an uncharacteristically menacing frown. Sotheby’s auctioned the piece for almost $25 million in Hong Kong in 2019. Nara, drawing on the isolation he felt growing up in a post-World War II rural Japanese town, is known for creating “contrary figures” who “deviate from conventional ideals of cuteness with their aggression, irreverence and wit,” an art historian said.