Yoshitomo Nara is a Japanese pop artist who delves into painting, woodcuts, and three-dimensional art. Most of his works feature small female children with deceptively cute features that belie their mature facial expressions or accessories (which include knives and cigarettes). The cute-creepy hybrid of his characters is part of a "kimo kawaii" (literally, "disgusting cute") subset of Japanese culture, different from the more typical "kawaii" ("cute") popularized by icons like Hello Kitty.

Too Young to Die, 2001

Nara grew up a fairly independent child since his working class parents were often away from home, and his art seem to convey his feelings about that situation. The works are fantastical, imaginative, cartoony, and seem to resist the realities of growing up and facing the world.

I Don't Want to Grow Up, 2001

I'm not usually satisfied by artworks that are simple, plain, and flat, because I myself aspire to move beyond that type of work. Having said that, the aesthetic is more or less ingrained in me. Nara's characters have an intriguing presence and I enjoy that their lack of detail brings my gaze to their eyes. And I'm not above admitting that some of them are very cute.

Cosmic Girl (Eyes Open, Eyes Shut), 2008

But the popular opinion of these girls' appeal is really their punk, independent spirit. The children seem confident, wise, experienced, defiant, indignant, emotionally fortified and strong-willed. To me, corrupted is another adjective that comes to mind. With their pop art stylization, the girls can be seen as icons of lost innocence, or perhaps as protectors of innocence who have already lost the battle themselves. Speaking of his works where the children hold weapons, Nara says “I kind of see the children among other, bigger, bad people all around them, who are holding bigger knives..." And with the children often looking up at the viewer, we seem to be implicated as part of the problem.

Some of Nara's works are designed like pages taken from a child's journal, and these cutesy scribbles combined with his more maturely composed portrait subjects seem to document a shift from innocence to maturity. The indirect implication of this shift makes the images all the more unsettling, like a horror-themed puzzle missing the piece that details the face of its monster; we don't know what happened to make these children look at us the way they do.

Haze Day, 2002