‘Lullaby’: Just the Right Cup of Tea

Most Americans are ambivalent about contemporary art but will not admit it. While we want art to give us a fresh view of the world by stimulating our senses and jump-starting our minds, we can’t stand it when artists fail to fulfill our expectations, especially when so many seem to want nothing more than to defy our desires.

Most adults are also ambivalent about childhood, and again loath to admit it. Although we may not have a clue about what makes kids tick, we cannot say so without feeling as if we’ve lost touch with something essential to our humanity. When it comes to kids, everyone’s an expert (in the same way that when it comes to art, everyone’s a critic).

Yoshitomo Nara’s fantastic installation at the Santa Monica Museum of Art links art and childhood in a powerfully original manner. At once cool and melancholic, his sculptures of cartoon children (and a couple of beagles) inject profound doubt into the commonly held belief that viewers get to know artists through their works.

Titled “Lullaby Supermarket,” Nara’s poignantly subdued exhibition features works from the last six years, including 25 sculptures, 25 drawings, a large painting and a cluster of 84 pieces of scrap paper on which he has made diary-like notes and quick little sketches. His finely crafted fiberglass, resin and wood sculptures, all meticulously finished with pristine coats of lacquer, steal the show. They relegate the drawings to the status of souvenirs, incidental bits of biographical ephemera that neither add to nor detract from the major pieces.

The centerpiece of the exhibition, which was organized by curator Carole Ann Klonarides, is “Cup Kids,” a hauntingly beautiful installation of seven free-standing sculptures. They occupy the main gallery by charging every cubic inch of its large sky-lit space with a palpable sense of bittersweet distance.

Each of Nara’s metaphorical kids disappears into a green-tinted 3-foot cup filled to the brim with the cartoon equivalent of bright blue water. Cut off just below their necks, each figure is basically a disembodied head whose stylized face simultaneously recalls long-lost dolls and ancient death masks. Their hand-painted eyes convey a similarly ambiguous mixture of sentiments, including anger, consternation, world-weariness, sensitivity, stoicism and befuddlement. One, with closed eyes, could be lost in the peacefulness of sound sleep or traumatized by a nightmare.

All speak volumes about vulnerability, helplessness, silent suffering and small comforts. Their missing arms are echoed by the cups’ absent handles, giving Nara’s little misfits the sense that they are at home where they are, more comfortable in their senseless predicaments than anywhere else the cruel world has to offer.

The cups and saucers pack additional punch. Evoking memories of medieval moats, comic strips depicting missionaries getting cooked by cannibals and Meret Oppenheim’s fur-covered teacup, Nara’s ingenious vessels rank among the most multilayered pedestals ever to support a sculpted bust. By putting some distance between heads and viewers, they amplify the psychological charge transmitted from his works to viewers.

Rather than inviting us to speculate about the psychology of their maker, Nara’s calmly superficial pieces leave viewers with more pressing conundrums, desperately trying to figure out why such potentially cute sculptures are so deeply troubling. Initially endearing because of the precocious serenity they exude, they disturb because they give form to the disquieting conviction that children are not only more complicated than is usually assumed, they are also enigmas, unfathomable entities we cannot control or comprehend, despite our desire to do so.

In Nara’s hands, such an unpopular view yields neither futility nor despair. It simply reflects a mature understanding of the limits of adult authority, and wisely acknowledges the distance that is built into even the most intimate relationships.

Other sculptures in the exhibition present variations on this theme, suggesting that Nara’s art does not develop so much as it revolves around a richly loaded idea, refining and clarifying our understanding of what might be called an obsession: These include a pair of pale cups with two or three monochrome heads stacked like pint-size totem poles. A pair of beagles stand guard at the back of the gallery, one that looks like the runt of a litter Snoopy might have sired and the other that is distended as only cartoons can be. A dozen wall-mounted children’s heads usurp the space of a hunter’s taxidermied trophies. Some strike charmingly ferocious poses and others look serene, although it’s impossible to know if they’re asleep or deceased.

In the darkly enchanted world of Nara’s 3-D cartoons (which is a lot like the world we live in), works of art and children are a lot like one another: captivating in the magnetic pull they exert, amazing in their fragile autonomy and endlessly fascinating in their capacity to astonish.

Viewers, however, are treated like adults. As an artist, Nara defies the desire for instantaneous gratification in order to intensify the impact of satisfactions that unfold more slowly. Although the subject of his work is childhood, “Lullaby Supermarket” is as adult as art gets. But bring a kid or two--their sophistication just might surprise you.

* Santa Monica Museum of Art, 2525 Michigan Ave., Bergamot Station, Santa Monica, (310) 586-6488, through May 27. Closed Sundays and Mondays. $3; seniors and students, $2.