What a soundtrack is to a movie, a Spotify list is to the new non-chronological retrospective of Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara now on view at Guggenheim Bilbao: it reveals the mood underpinning the visual landscape. Amongst the 25 tracks Nara selected are tunes from T.Rex, Big Star, Donovan and—in a nod to the national setting—two references to Spain’s countercultural La Movida, in the form of Radio Futura’s Enamorado de la moda juvenil and Tequila’s Salta!!!

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“I don’t listen to music in order to draw something,” the artist said in a conversation with curator Mika Yoshitake in 2020, timed with his exhibition at LACMA. “When I’m listening, I see an image and I try to capture it.” He built himself a radio as a child and tuned into broadcasts by the American military stationed in Japan during the Vietnam War. He began going to record shops in middle school. He’s cited Bob Dylan and Neil Young as permanent auditory staples. The New York Times described him as an “insatiable witness to Western pop’s evolution from the flower-child bliss of the mid-60s to the ecstatic thrash of late ’70s punk.” But although........

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