Yoshimoto Nara’s Girl With a Knife in Her Hand is cute, creepy, and intriguing. 

You might be wondering who this girl is. Or why she’s holding a knife in her hand. Or why her head is so big. Well, the meaning is more abstract than you might think. Like all art, there’s what you see, and there’s what you feel, and then there’s what the artist intended while creating the piece. 

That last part isn’t always important. How art is perceived by the individual is what makes art so special. But, sometimes, when you’re looking at a stoic little girl holding what looks to be a plastic butter knife, you might need a little more context. At the very least, you’d probably be interested to know what Nara was thinking when he created this girl.

Nara takes inspiration from those creepy children’s books we all read like the works of Hans Christian Andersen and Aesop's fables.  A lot of those stories are centered around children, but they almost always have darker themes attached to them. When you take that into consideration, the inspiration is clear. Those stories could also be why Nara’s works are often two dimensional. They’re flat, like the drawings a child would do themselves. It’s almost like he’s manifesting his inner child to bring this girl to life. 

Girl With a Knife in Her Hand is the first work of art that Nara created in what would end up being his signature style. Placing a lone figure in the center of a composition with a static background is something you can find across all of his art. It’s purpose seems to be to make a more profound impression on the viewer. With no identifying background to give you more context, it’s easier to place yourself within the painting, and perhaps to identify with the subject. That strategy might explain why so many people like his work. It’s easy to connect with these sad and cute individuals because maybe we see ourselves in them. Or maybe we see them within us, and they represent our attempts to protect our innocence.

The knife that the girl holds isn’t the type of knife that would endanger someone. Yeah, it could be said that the fact that she’s even holding a knife like that speaks to the fact that she knows what it is and what it can do, but the knife itself doesn’t look all that sharp. Nara has spoken about how providing weapons like knives to these otherwise innocent children isn’t necessarily to insinuate an intent to use them, but rather that the child is only mimicking what they see in the world. And what they see are adults with weapons hurting each other. 

It's almost like Girl With a Knife in Her Hand is a representation of your inner child, naively preparing itself for the harsh reality of the world, taking cues from the actions of the people in power. If so, it's a beautiful and utterly sad metaphor. I know you probably weren’t thinking we were gonna get this deep while looking at a little cartoon girl with a really big head, but here we are - and that's the power of art.