Japanese artist's decade-old doodle skyrockets in value
But a Manhattan bar has a set of doodles that could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Tim Blum, an artist manager who has represented Nara since 1994, say he was with Nara in 2009 at the bar. "It's very typical Nara," Blum said of the drawings. One look at Nara's work and spectators can see the similarities between the East Village doodles and his paintings. But unlike Nara's paintings, the drawings at the East Village bar were very low-key, only landing on the radar of art enthusiasts' after his record-breaking sale.