As Art Basel Hong Kong drew collectors to the Convention and Exhibition Centre earlier this month, Seoul Auction staged a preview at a nearby hotel. On view was a nearly two‑metre‑tall Yoshitomo Nara canvas, Nothing about It, which quickly became one of the most talked‑about works among visiting buyers.
The painting crossed the block today (31 Mar) at Seoul Auction’s Gangnam centre, selling for KRW 17.7 billion (around US$11.6 million) including fees – a price that sets a new high for any artwork sold at auction in South Korea.
Another Japanese star, Yayoi Kusama, also posted a strong result in the same sale. A 130 x 160 cm yellow‑and‑black pumpkin painting brought in KRW 12.3 billion (around US$8.1 million), establishing a Korean auction record for the artist.
Lot 38 | Yoshitomo Nara (b. 1959) | Nothing about it, acrylic on canvas (Auction record for an artwork in Korea and for the artist in Korea)
Painted in 2016
194 x 162 cm
Provenance:
- Blum & Poe (Los Angeles)
Estimate: KRW 14,700,000,000 - 22,000,000,000
Hammer Price: KRW 15,000,000,000
Sold: KRW 17,700,000,000 (US$11.6 million)
Since emerging in the 1990s, Yoshitomo Nara has become one of Japan’s most celebrated contemporary artists. In 2019, his Knife Behind Back (2000) sold for HK$195 million at Sotheby’s Hong Kong, setting an auction record for the artist and making him the most expensive Japanese artist at auction.
Nara has often said that his paintings are self‑portraits of his inner life – ongoing dialogues with himself. Born in a snowbound town in northern Japan and raised by busy working‑class parents, he was a classic “latchkey kid”, spending long hours on his own after preschool. Left alone, he immersed himself in television, comics and children’s books, and soon gravitated toward music.
At eight, he built a crystal radio and started tuning in to the U.S. Air Force base in Misawa, catching Western pop as it moved from the optimism of the mid‑1960s to the punk of the 1970s. As a teenager, he found solace in rock cafés and even played in a band.
That punk attitude can be felt in his paintings from the 1990s and early 2000s. The so‑called “Nara girls” look sharp and confrontational – cute but prickly, with narrowed eyes and a flicker of anger or mischief, as in Knife Behind Back. As Nara moved into middle age, however, the edge in these figures softened into something more reflective and calm.
Knife Behind Back (2000) | Sold: HK$195,696,000, Sotheby's Hong Kong, 2019 (Auction record for the artist)
Yoshitomo Nara
A major turning point came with the 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in eastern Japan. Nara’s hometown was in the affected region, and his then home in Tochigi Prefecture lay only about 100 kilometres from the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
Watching the disaster on television, he was overwhelmed by grief and helplessness and, for a time, stopped painting altogether. It led him to question what his work meant and what it could offer. After several months of pause, he returned to the studio wanting, as he has said, to make paintings that might bring happiness to people.
“In the past I would have an image that I wanted to create, and I would just do it. I would just get it finished. Now I take my time and work slowly and build up all these layers to find the best way,” Nara has said.
The works that followed mark a clear shift in his visual language, as exemplified by Nothing About It (2016). The once‑menacing expressions are softened; the figures are often shown from the bust up, pulling viewers into their gaze. His palette broadens, and the surfaces take on a gentle, translucent depth built from thin washes of paint over time – sometimes with months spent on what appears to be a simple monochrome background.
Close-up of the present lot
Oddly Cozy (2013) | Sold: HK$111,970,000, Sotheby's Hong Kong, 2022
Marc Chagall | Bouquet de Fleurs (1937) | Sold for around KRW 11 billion
A comparable work, Oddly Cozy (2013), which shares the same dimensions and a similar style to Nothing About It, sold for more than HK$111 million (US$14.3 million) at Sotheby’s Hong Kong in 2022.
With its KRW 17.7 billion (around US$11.6 million) result, Nothing About It now sets a new auction benchmark in South Korea, surpassing the previous record for any artwork sold in the country. According to local reports, that mark was held by Marc Chagall’s Bouquet de Fleurs, which sold for about KRW 11 billion at Seoul Auction last year.
Lot 40 | Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929) | Pumpkin (MBOK), acrylic on canvas
Painted in 2015
130 x 160 cm
Provenance:
- OTA Fine Arts (Tokyo)
- Victoria Miro Gallery (London)
Estimate: KRW 9,500,000,000 - 15,000,000,000
Hammer Price: KRW 10,450,000,000
Sold: KRW 12,331,000,000 (US$8.1 million)
After returning to Japan from New York in 1973, Yayoi Kusama stepped away from the downtown art scene into a much quieter life, seeking inner calm.
During this period, she returned to one of the most comforting images from her childhood: the pumpkin. Growing up with family trauma and recurring hallucinations in a household that ran a seed farm in central Japan, Kusama has often described pumpkins as a spiritual support, saying, “It is for the pumpkins that I keep on going.”
She first painted pumpkins as a teenager, showing them in exhibitions when she was around 17 or 18. After moving back to Japan, she pushed the motif further, weaving it together with polka dots and Infinity Nets.
Yayoi Kusama
Pumpkin (1993) | Sold: HK$39,540,000, Christie's Hong Kong, 2026
The present work, Pumpkin (MBOK), brings these three signatures together. At its centre sits a plump yellow pumpkin, its surface covered with dots of different sizes. Behind it stretches a dense ground of net‑like patterning – a continuation of the “Infinity Nets” series she began in New York.
Those endlessly repeating, tightly woven nets extend her early avant‑garde experiments and tap into the core of her practice: “self‑obliteration” – using repetition and pattern to impose order on chaos, to the point where the line between the artist, the object, and the surrounding space starts to disappear.
Just days ago, another yellow‑and‑black Pumpkin sold for HK$39.48 million at Christie’s Hong Kong. That canvas measured 91 x 116.8 cm; at 130 x 160 cm, the Seoul Auction example is roughly twice the size.
Other Highlight Lots:
Lot 39 | Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929) | Infinity Nets, acrylic on board
Painted in 1970
77.5 x 81.5 cm
Provenance:
- Private Collection (Bunnik)
- Christie's London, 8 Mar 2017, Lot 174 (Sold: £509,000)
- Private Collection
Estimate on request
Hammer Price: KRW 2,000,000,000
Sold: KRW 2,360,000,000 (US$1.5 million)
Lot 43 | Alex Katz (b. 1927) | Cymbidium Yellow on Red, oil on linen
Painted in 2020
183.5 x 122.3 cm
Provenance:
- Gladstone Gallery (New York)
Estimate: KRW 830,000,000 - 1,100,000,000
Hammer Price: KRW 830,000,000
Sold: KRW 979,400,000 (US$642,000)
Lot 46 | David Hockney (b. 1937) | 30th May 2021, From the Studio, three iPad paintings printed on paper mounted on Dibond
Painted in 2021
Edition: 11/25 (plus one artist's proof)
65.3 x 282.5 cm
Estimate: KRW 780,000,000 - 1,200,000,000
Hammer Price: KRW 780,000,000
Sold: KRW 920,400,000 (US$603,000)
Lot 52 | Leon Kossoff (1926-2019) | Stormy Summer Day, Dalston Lane, oil on board
Painted in 1975
105.1 x 122.6 cm
Provenance (Consolidated by The Value):
- LA Louver (Los Angeles)
- Private Collection, acquired from the above in 1979
- LA Louver (Los Angeles)
- Phillips London, 7 Mar 2019, Lot 21 (Sold: £435,000)
Estimate: KRW 700,000,000 - 1,000,000,000
Hammer Price: KRW 700,000,000
Sold: KRW 826,000,000 (US$541,000)
Lot 55 | Lee Ufan (1936) | From Point, oil and mineral pigment on canvas
Painted in 1978
72.5 x 60.5 cm
Estimate: KRW 450,000,000 - 800,000,000
Hammer Price: KRW 570,000,000
Sold: KRW 672,600,000 (US$441,000)
Lot 54 | Kim TschangYeul (1929-2021) | Water Drops, oil on hemp cloth
Painted in 1976
72.1 x 60 cm
Estimate: KRW 390,000,000 - 500,000,000
Hammer Price: KRW 390,000,000
Sold: KRW 460,200,000 (US$300,000)
Auction Details:
Auction House: Seoul Auction
Sale: Contemporary Art Sale
Date: 31 March 2026
Number of Lots: 92
Sold: 70
Unsold: 22
Sale Rate: 76%
Sale Total: KRW 43,367,596,000 (US$28.4 million)