Your Dog isn’t Yoshitomo Nara’s only cute and cuddly sculpture, but it is one of his most iconic. 

Iconic enough that it spawned a small industry of spin-off items, including plushies, mini replicas, and a children's book that Nara penned himself. And what’s not to love? Nara’s dog sculptures are a joy, and their evocative, buoyant design creates a distinctly recognizable aesthetic that makes it easy to differentiate them from other contemporary fine art. They also exist on a scale that makes them pretty hard to miss; one of the largest, located in his home country of Japan, reaches almost 30 feet.

Nara was first launched into the public eye during Japan’s pop art movement, over twenty years ago. Since then, he’s become an international art icon; the trademark exuberance of his work (canine and otherwise) has earned him a markedly expansive fan base, spanning age, class, and nationality. While Nara often paints wide-eyed, childlike characters, his work is curiously multi-faceted and he frequently crafts visual juxtapositions by pairing children with weapons or scenarios of violence. (Examples include his painting of a child holding a knife or his depiction of a little girl watching a small house burn down.) But the dogs he creates are curiously void of such juxtapositions. They tend to be doing pretty standard, doglike things— sitting, napping, occasionally wearing a crown or balancing on stilts, but never anything particularly violent or hostile. Instead, they appear contented, eyes closed, head tilted, and mouths smiling (at least as much as any dog can). 

The simplicity of Nara’s dogs may derive from a kind of reflexive nostalgia. As a child growing up in post-war Japan, Nara struggled to navigate a lonely childhood. In an interview with Gareth Harris in 2014, Nara spoke directly to the joy he derived from animals and the impact it had on his later work: “Seeing the children or animals as my other self, it signified me leaving the familiar confines of Japan and liberating myself from my surroundings.” 

It’s fitting, then, that Nara’s dogs show up all over the world, everywhere from Bangkok to Boston. Currently, this specific sculpture resides at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. It’s 1.9m, or roughly 6 feet, so not quite as big as some of Nara’s other work, but still a lot larger than your own pet Fido. 

If you get a chance to visit, the museum gift shop sells socks inspired by the sculpture— so dog lovers and Nara lovers alike can walk away with a tiny token of his work.