The children in Yoshitomo Nara’s paintings have a malicious air, and they are quite alone. The puppies are good and patient. Whose childhood is this? Your Childhood, 2001, a large installation, consists of a mirror with the words YOUR CHILDHOOD affixed to it in letters made from sulky-looking rag dolls; on a facing wall the soft, friendly resigned snout of a white dog pokes out from under a blanket in its dog bed. The entire oeuvre—installations, paintings, and drawings—of this artist born in 1959 seems to deal with childhood, that happy period regulated more by instinct than morals,