|
Yayoi Kusama (born
1929) has been called
Japan's greatest living
artist. Born in
Matsumoto, she left her native country at the age of 27 for New York
City. During her time in the US, she quickly established her reputation as
a leader in the avant-garde movement.
Her work shares some attributes of
feminism,
minimalism,
surrealism,
Art Brut,
pop, and
abstract expressionism, but she describes herself as an obsessive
artist. Her artwork is infused with autobiographical, psychological, and
sexual content, and includes paintings, soft sculptures, performance art
and installations.
Yayoi Kusama has exhibited work with
Claes Oldenburg,
Andy Warhol, and
Jasper Johns. Kusama represented Japan at the Venice Biennale in 1993,
and in 1998 & 1999 a major retrospective exhibition of her work toured the
U.S. and Japan.
Yayoi Kusama is also a consumer (a person who suffers from
mental illness). Since childhood, she has suffered from hallucinations
and severe obsessive thoughts, often of a suicidal nature. Today she lives
in a mental hospital in Tokyo, where she has continued to produce work
since the mid-seventies. Her studio is a short distance from the hospital.
"If it were not for art, I would have killed myself a long time ago,"
Kusama is often quoted as saying.
Early in Kusama's career, she began covering surfaces (walls, floors,
canvases, and later, household objects and naked assistants) with the
polka dots that would become a trademark of her work. The vast fields of
polka dots, or "infinity nets", as she called them, were taken directly
from her hallucinations.
Here is a statement by Yayoi Kusama about her 1954 painting entitled
Flower (D.S.P.S) : "One day I was looking at the red flower patterns of
the tablecloth on a table, and when I looked up I saw the same pattern
covering the ceiling, the windows and the walls, and finally all over the
room, my body and the universe. I felt as if I had begun to
self-obliterate, to revolve in the infinity of endless time and the
absoluteness of space, and be reduced to nothingness. As I realized it was
actually happening and not just in my imagination, I was frightened. I
knew I had to run away lest I should be deprived of my life by the spell
of the red flowers. I ran desperately up the stairs. The steps below me
began to fall apart and I fell down the stairs straining my ankle."
|
