Naras Everywhere: Why Manhattan's Galleries Are Awash in Nara

By Daniel Okafor

New York's galleries are asking as much as $6 million for a single Yoshitomo Nara canvas this month, and the supply of Naras has not exactly dried up. As Art Week NYC opens, collectors shopping for the Japanese artist in Manhattan face an unusual problem: too many options, and too little of it truly interchangeable.

Anyone hunting a Yoshitomo Nara in New York this month has an embarrassment of riches. David Zwirner has filled two Chelsea galleries with Nara's paintings, drawings and sculptures. The shows include large new canvases priced as high as $6 million, according to the gallery's presentations. On opening night in Chelsea last week, hours-long lines stretched down 19th and 20th streets, and the art world's Instagram feed duly clogged.

One source familiar with the Zwirner exhibition said the largest paintings are being held exclusively for museums, so bring your checkbook and prepare to be disappointed.

Where to buy a Nara this season

The comparison shopping extends beyond Chelsea. At Loïc Gouzer's Fair Warning gallery, Nara's monumental 2011 canvas In the Milky Lake / Thinking One is on offer — the painting of a little girl standing waist-deep in pale water, made in the year of the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami that devastated the region where Nara grew up. The work is estimated at $10 million to $15 million for a November 19 auction.

Sotheby's is offering Nara's Candy Blue Night (2001) at The Now and Contemporary Sale next week, estimated at $5 million to $7 million. Christie's is offering Miss Forest / Dark Night (2016), a bronze sculpture estimated at $1 million to $1.5 million, at its 21st Century Evening Sale.

Nara's auction record stands at $24.95 million, set in 2019 at Sotheby's Hong Kong. His largest paintings have continued to sell in the $5 million to $15 million range even in a challenging market, though nothing has come close to the record since.

What the week says about the market

Art Week NYC, a citywide festival of gallery openings and talks, gives collectors another reason to make the rounds beyond the evening sales. But the bigger question for dealers is whether buyers will commit now or wait for the November auctions to reveal what things are actually worth.

That wait-and-see posture has become more attractive as buyers weigh whether to bid at auction or buy privately through a gallery. Dealers, having spent months assembling shows, find the situation awkward.

"The market's healthy, but it continues to be measured with a certain amount of awareness, if not suspicion, about the aggressiveness of private pricing," Alex Glauber, president of the Association of Professional Art Advisors, told ARTnews.

When a comparable example comes up at auction, Glauber said, more than a few collectors prefer to wait for the hammer result before committing to a private purchase. Unless the opportunity is fleeting, buyers are taking their time.

For all the activity, Glauber thinks the May and November auction seasons have become less important to primary-market galleries than they were during the market's hotter years.

Elsewhere in Chelsea: Curtiss, Baselitz, Johnson

The Nara glut is not the only show in town. At Gagosian, Julie Curtiss's exhibition "UNREAL" opened Tuesday, presenting a surreal vision of New York life. In Makeover (2026), two women in fur coats and sunglasses wear post-op face masks. Prices range roughly from $100,000 to $300,000, according to two sources familiar with the show.

Curtiss's auction record of $466,000 was set at Phillips in 2021, at the peak of the pandemic-era boom for wet paint. Her market has cooled considerably since then: her top result in the past two years was $115,000, achieved at Sotheby's in May for a painting similar in size to her record work.

Two doors down, Gagosian will open "Meine Schule" on Thursday, an exhibition of Georg Baselitz's final paintings and sculptures. The show's most affecting work may be Strawinsky (2026), a large white-patinated bronze figure seated with its head hanging forward, priced at around $3 million. It grew out of Baselitz's designs for a marionette production of Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale.

Baselitz, who was working from a wheelchair in his final months, signed off on the sculpture and died the following night, according to Stefan Ratibor, a director with the gallery, who visited the artist at his studio outside Munich.

In SoHo, Hauser & Wirth has opened Rashid Johnson's "Birthday Boys" — five large mosaics made from ceramic tile, mirrors and oyster shells, priced from $750,000 to $1.2 million. A four-and-a-half-minute film about fathers and sons is priced at $200,000.

At Skarstedt, Eric Fischl's "In Pursuit of Pleasure" has 13 paintings of dog walkers, sunbathers and yoga enthusiasts. Two large works, Goat Yoga and Polished, Professional, are priced at $800,000 each, and several others are already marked reserved.

What it means

The exhibitions offer collectors possibilities well beyond the eight-figure trophies dominating the auction headlines. But whether they buy now or wait for the next hammer to fall, one thing is clear: there is no shortage of Naras.