Peace Flag

"Peace Flag" was made in 2001, the year after Nara returned to Japan from twelve years in Germany and shortly before his touring retrospective "I Don't Mind, If You Forget Me." The lithograph likely depicts one of his stock figures — a young girl with the oversized head and slit-like eyes of his mature vocabulary — holding or standing beside a flag bearing a peace symbol or written slogan. Throughout Nara's print output, flags and banners function as a way of inserting overt political language into otherwise neutral fields, while preserving the deadpan affect of the children who carry them. The composition is built on a single isolated figure against an undifferentiated paper ground, with no horizon, shadow, or supporting elements — a layout that descends from manga panel framing and from his interest in the empty backgrounds of twentieth-century Japanese stencil prints. Editions of this period were generally pulled at small ateliers and signed by hand on the lower margin.