Yoshitomo Nara review: cutesy terrors swear, smoke, play guitar and burn down houses

Hayward Gallery, London
The Japanese artist’s instantly recognisable delinquent infants fill a huge show that also includes more sombre – and still angry – work made since the Fukushima disaster

There’s a video online of 100 kids playing football against three adult pros. The kids get absolutely annihilated. But they’d do a whole lot better if they were more like the menacing, knife-wielding little terrors who populate Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara’s world. Try dribbling past a toddler when he’s just jabbed a shiv in your calf, Lionel Messi.

For 40 years now Nara has been dealing in cutesy kitsch with a vicious edge. His paintings and drawings of adorably bug-eyed little nippers are singularly Nara: love it or hate it, he’s carved out his own instantly recognisable aesthetic path.