Yoshitomo Nara at Hayward Gallery: punk rock art for your inner child

The scowling children in his sketches — you can see the German neo-expressionism picked up from his art student days in Düsseldorf — become increasingly large in his paintings, always alone, popping out from their flat backgrounds, heads growing bigger, eyes wider, the expressions increasingly complicated. Sleepless Night (1997) has a kid in a onesie with animal ears, sitting on a stool against a dark background, straight out of Where The Wild Things Are, both boy and trickster sprite. What is he up to? Next to him is Dead Flower (2020), where a little girl is malevolently turning to grin at us, having beheaded a flower with a serrated knife. Just a flower, but her mouth and knife drip with blood and “f*** you” is scrawled on her jacket. The fact a lightbulb hangs above suggests fantasy evil in a bedroom rather than the real deed, punk posturing over criminality.