TRACES:Yayoi Kusama

Today is the occasion to bear in mind Yayoi Kusama (22/3/1929- ), a precursor of Pop Art, Minimalist and Feminist Art Movements, Yayoi  Kusama is now acknowledged as one of the most important living artists to come out of Japan, and an important voice of the Avant-Garde. This column is a tribute to artists, living or dead, who have left their mark in Contemporary Art. Through documents or interviews, starting with: moments and memories, we reveal out from the past-unknown sides of big personalities, who left their indelible traces in time and history…

By Dimitris Lempesis

Yayoi Kusama was born in Matsumoto, Japan, she grew up in a turbulent time in Japan. This was a time where the Great Depression had reached Japan, Kusama and her family lost a lot of their property, and had a hard time finding a way to survive the economic crises. She studied a Nihonga painting in Kyoto in 1948. Frustrated with this distinctly Japanese style, she became interested in the European and American Avant-Garde, staging several solo exhibitions of her paintings in Matsumoto and Tokyo during the ‘50s. Kusama’s relationship with to family was a contributing factor to her anger against any kind of political and social oppression. Kusama’s relationship to her mother who strongly disapproved her daughter’s interest in art, was difficult for Kusama to handle. Kusama’s mother was the disciplinarian in the family and tried to force her daughter to become “a proper woman”, which didn’t included Kusama’s dream of becoming an artist. In 1957 she moved to the United States, settling down in New York City where she produced a series of paintings influenced by the Abstract Expressionist Movement. Switching to sculpture and installation as her primary mediums, Kusama became a fixture of the New York Avant-Garde, having her works exhibited alongside the likes of Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg and George Segal during the early ‘60s, where she became associated with the Pop Art Movement. Kusama’s provocative Performances and her almost manic obsession with polka dots have made her famous all over the world. Embracing the rise of the hippie counterculture of the late ‘60s, Kusama came to public attention when she organized a series of Happenings in which naked participants were painted with brightly colored polka dots. In 1973, Kusama moved back to her native Japan, where she found the art scene far more conservative than that in New York. She became an art dealer, but her business folded after several years, and after experiencing psychiatric problems, in 1977 she voluntarily admitted herself to a mental hospital in Tokyo, where she has spent the rest of her life. From here, she has continued to produce artworks in a variety of mediums, as well as launching a literary career by publishing several novels, a poetry collection and an autobiography. When she left New York she was practically forgotten as an artist until the late ‘80s and ‘90s, when a number of retrospectives revived international interest. Following the success of the Japanese pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1993, a dazzling mirrored room filled with small pumpkin sculptures in which she resided in color-coordinated magician’s attire, Kusama went on to produce a huge, yellow pumpkin sculpture covered with an optical pattern of black spots. The pumpkin came to represent for her a kind of alter-ego or self-portrait. Kusama’s later installation “I’m Here, but Nothing” (2000–2008) is a simply furnished room consisting of table and chairs, place settings and bottles, armchairs and rugs, however its walls are tattooed with hundreds of fluorescent polka dots glowing in the UV light. The result is an endless infinite space where the self and everything in the room is obliterated. In her ninth decade, Kusama has continued to work as an artist. She has harked back to earlier work by returning to drawing and painting; her work remaining innovative and multi-disciplinary. Also featured were an exploration of infinite space in her “Infinity Mirror Rooms”, which typically involve a cube shaped room being clad with mirrors, water on the floor and flickering lights; which suggests a pattern of life and death.