Provoking an expansive discourse around themes of mischief and innocence in childhood, Yoshitomo Nara’s prolific oeuvre harnesses a profound visual language that is both highly personal and universally relatable. In Study for Miss Spring, Nara places his viewer in an encounter with a figure that embodies the very essence of childhood by conflating two important archetypes – the rebellious youth and the lonely child – in order to privilege both innocence and mischief. One may sense remnants of the artist’s longstanding desire to reconnect with a lost childhood transformed into the depiction of this iconic girl figure with a large head, upturned eyes and abbreviated body in an ethereal pastel-hued palette. By enshrining the eternal mystery embodied in the innocent yet wicked looking girl, Nara proposes the endless imaginative possibilities afforded to us by daring to conjure the prejudice-free state of childhood in the adult-present.