ART CITIES: N.York-Yayoi Kusama

One of the most influential artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Yayoi Kusama occupies a unique position within recent art history. Since her early assimilation of pop art and minimalism in the 1960s, she has created a highly personal oeuvre that resonates with a global audience. Distinctly recognizable, her works frequently deploy repetitive elementsto evoke both microscopic and macroscopic universes.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo David Zwirner Gallery Archive

Yayoi Kusama’s life is a poignant testament to the healing power of art as well as a study in human resilience. Plagued by mental illness as a child, and thoroughly abused by a callous mother, the young artist persevered by using her hallucinations and personal obsessions as fodder for prolific artistic output in various disciplines. This has informed a lifelong commitment to creativity at all costs despite the artist’s birth into a traditional, female-effacing Japanese culture and her career’s coming of age in the male-dominated New York art scene. Today, Kusama reigns as one of the most unique and famous contemporary female artists, operating from her self-imposed home in a mental hospital. Yayoi Kusama’s highly influential career encompasses paintings, performances, room-size presentations, outdoor sculptural installations, literary works, films, fashion, design, and interventions within existing architectural structures. The exhibition “I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers”, features new paintings, new sculptures elaborating on Kusama’s signature motifs of pumpkins and flowers, and a new “Infinity Mirror Room” and expands in three spaces of David Zwirner Gallery in New York. The exhibition is named after three monumental flower sculptures, each titled “I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers”, which occupy 519 West 19th Street. Since the 1950s, Kusama has repeatedly engaged flowers and plants as motifs in her work, inspired by her fascination with the natural world. Experienced in the round, the immense blooms invite the audience to partake in a wholly immersive experience that suggests the atmosphere of a lush garden. At the opposite end of the exhibition, at 533 West 19th Street, three massive undulating pumpkin sculptures transfigure the organic forms reimagined by Kusama over several long decades. These wall-like structures situate viewers in a space that envelops them in her characteristic polka dots. Thirty-six paintings, most of which are part of her recent series “EVERY DAY I PRAY FOR LOVE” (2021–present), are on view alongside a new “Infinity Mirror Room” at 525 West 19th Street. In these boldly colored compositions, the use of minute details and repetition of both shapes as well as brushwork reflects the history of obsession within Kusama’s oeuvre. Vibrant, animated, and densely worked, the paintings are singular explorations of line and form, blending the boundaries between abstraction and figuration. These works continue to derive from her desire to produce art that is together autobiographical and seemingly created outside of the confines of the self.  “Dreaming of Earth’s Sphericity, I Would Offer My Love” (2023) is a large “Infinity Mirror Room” that features round-colored windows. These openings let in a dance of natural and artificial light alongside the interplay of bodies that activate the immersive space. More important than the impact her diverse work has on the art market is its influence on other artists and movements, which spans generations. Her work inspired Pop artists like Andy Warhol, Feminist artists like Carolee Schneemann, Performance artists like Yoko Ono, and contemporary artists like Damien Hirst. Her far-reaching influence can be attributed to the fact that Kusama has always been a step ahead of her time, with her art being at the forefront of major artistic movements. And yet because her art making is so personal, and both a symptom and cure for her mental illness, it doesn’t fit neatly into any of these defined movements.

Photo: Yayoi Kusama, I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers (detail), © Yayoi Kusama, Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner Gallery

Info: David Zwirner Gallery, 519 West 19th Street, 525 West 19th Street, & 533 and West 19th Street, New York, NY, USA, Duration: 11/5-21/7/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.davidzwirner.com/