Her life
Yayoi Kusama grew up in 1920s traditional Japan. From a young age, the small girl was fascinated in drawing and painting. Yayoi Kusama sewed military gear and parachutes in a factory, therefore helping her family through the effects of World War II.
Characterised by an extremely authoritarian father, the young girl suffers from visual hallucinations and is driven into an obsession. Though few women are exalted to the rank of artists in a conservative Japan, she studies art and starts to show her work despite parental disapproval. Her favorite pattern is the polka dot; she drives her work from the notion of accumulation.
Encouraged by American artist Georgia O'Keeffe, Yayoi Kusama landed in the US in 1957. Her new circle, especially Donald Judd, helped her to show and create early 1960s installations. Made from her linens or discarded socks, she constructed landscapes populated with endless phallic and soft forms. Her creations are dreamlike as intended.
Yayoi Kusama, who had grown well-known in the United States, planned events and performances in iconic locations in New York, such the Museum of Modern Art, the Stock Exchange, or the Statue of Liberty, starting from 1966. Because of the participants' nudity, these activities were sometimes causes of scandal. Yayoi Kusama so was routinely accompanied by her attorney. Nudity became political: the artist fought for spiritual emancipation, women's right to regulate their bodies, sexual freedom, etc.
Yayoi Kusama rarely presents herself in her performances, but instead employs the bodies of others. She especially depends on butoh, avant-garde Japanese choreographic work produced following the Second World War and which gently investigates the particularities of the body. Having always been fascinated by fashion and design, she also designs polka-dotted clothes, with inspiration from traditional Japanese wear.
The artist's career slowed down in the 1970s following a time of great media recognition. She has lived since 1977 (at her request) in a psychiatric hospital when returning to Japan, only leaving to operate from her studio.
The 1980s brought the artist back into the forefront as a significant avant-garde player. She received invitation to represent Japan at the 1993 Venice Biennale. Since then, her work has been the focus of major retrospectives all throughout the globe, drawing large numbers of people especially drawn by her "infinite" settings invaded by polka dots, light diodes, balloons and psychedelic patterns. A museum honoring her in Tokyo has been open since 2017.
Her main creations
My Flower Bed 1962
This book shows the 1960s accumulation principle selected by Yayoi Kusama. Often delicate, the artist accumulates forms to help her to control her anxiousness and promotes her work as therapy. She said it's a means of reestablishing connection with the environment: "Single and unable to sleep, I wrap up in my Flower Bed for the evening as flowers are kind and loving. I am then like an insect returning to its bloom for the night; the petals close on me like the mother's uterus protects the unborn child."
Aggregation: One thousand boats show, 1963
Her 1963 exhibit Aggregation: One Thousand Boats at the Stein Gallery delighted pop pope Andy Warhol. It was composed of a monochrome boat totally covered in phallic figures that seem to have invaded the object. Nonetheless, the phallic form—which stands for masculinity but also fertility—covering a holy dimension in Japanese society (the phallus is also for Yayoi Kusama an evocation of the god Jizō).
1966 Peep Show or limitless Love Show
Yayoi Kusama returns here one of the tools related with sexuality and pornography. This hexagonal space's mirrored surfaces always reflect the light gadget, so echoing the Beatles' song Help on a loop. The observer can only pass through it with his face, positioned like the voyeur or customer. Today, her work prefigures the Infinity Mirror Rooms—rooms totally covered with mirrors replicating patterns to infinity, which make her world famous.
seen in Beaux Arts www.vwart.com
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