Perhaps best known for creating immersive and infinite spaces called Mirror Rooms, another facet of her career revolves around the Obliteration Room, in which viewers obliterate otherwise ordinary interior spaces with colorful dot stickers. And if Kusama’s work leaves you with an insatiable craving for polka dots, consider her spotty handbag collaboration with Louis Vuitton. Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama is a living legend thanks to her whimsical, awe-inspiring installation art. And I obliterated myself by putting the same polka dot stickers on myself.”įor more on Kusama’s relationship to clothing, fashion, and the human body, head over to her show at the Whitney before it closes this Sunday and make sure to spend some time with the primary sources and found materials in the show. I obliterate a horse by putting polka dot stickers on it. This is magic.” And to Index she reasoned, “If there’s a cat, I obliterate it by putting polka dot stickers on it. As she explained to BOMB in 1999, referring to herself in the third-person, “Painting bodies with the patterns of Kusama’s hallucinations obliterated their individual selves and returned them to the infinite universe. She staged happenings around New York City, and in performances she called Self-Obliterations, she painted spots onto naked bodies. Kusama’s exploration of the human body went beyond an anxiety associated with male genitalia and sex. As recounted to New York magazine by Kusama:Ĭollection of the artist. Her designs were see-through, silver, gold, or complete with phallic protrusions, another Kusama signature. ![]() ![]() Dresses were adorned with spots or, inversely, were full of holes (might this have been Rei Kawakubo’s early inspiration?), including those that were smack-dab on the wearer’s posterior. ![]() This compulsion, along with a work-yourself-to-the-bone drive, propelled Kusama to leave New York City in 1973 after a 16-year stint and check herself into a psychiatric hospital in Japan, where she has lived and made art ever since (although not before greatly influencing the work of her contemporaries, including Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol and Donald Judd).Īs a young, struggling Japanese artist in New York in the 1960s, she established the avant-garde fashion label Kusama Fashion Company Ltd., sold for a time at the “Kusama Corner” in Bloomingdale’s. Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo Victoria Miro Gallery, London and Gagosian Gallery, New York.Īt 83 years old, Kusama is arguably the be-spotted queen of dots, known for obsessively painting them on everything throughout her prolific career- canvases, chairs, cats, clothing and bodies. Watercolor, ink, pastel and photocollage on paper, 15 7/8 by 19 13/16 inches.
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