Now | Vol.8 — An Infinite World Named Yayoi Kusama

Now Vol.8

An Infinite World Named Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now

M+, November 12, 2022 – May 13, 2023

Credits

Words

Suzy Park

Materials

M+

A quick three-line summary

Yayoi Kusama’s huge retrospective exhibition is currently being held at M+ in Hong Kong.

Turning Kusama’s life story into a work of art involves capturing a vitality that simultaneously embraces life and death.

For Kusama, the entire human race is one being, and the entire universe is contained within one cell.

From the start of the new year in 2023, artist Yayoi Kusama had people talking around the world about her collaboration with Louis Vuitton. She is still very active, painting every day despite being an unbelievable 94 years of age. Her retrospective exhibition, Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now, is currently being held at M+ in Hong Kong. The name M+ comes from the concept of being a “Museum and More.” Today, it is the largest museum of visual culture in Asia, with an extensive collection that spans everything from modern and contemporary art to architecture, design, and film. It has attracted attention since it opened in November 2021, in the middle of the pandemic, and after 15 years of preparation. The exhibition, which is taking place at M+ and its overwhelming structure area of 65,000 m² (17,000 m² of exhibition space), features over 200 works, ranging from Kusama’s early works to 12 new pieces completed just before the exhibition. This is the largest exhibition of Kusama’s in Asia outside Japan. When you hear the name “Yayoi Kusama,” many people naturally think of her pumpkin sculptures, polka dot patterns, and infinite mirror room. However, Doryun Chong, deputy director and chief curator at M+, firmly says “What we see and what we celebrate internationally, polka dot and pumpkin, is just the little tip of the iceberg” when it comes to the legendary Japanese artist. The exhibition team there had a new question: “Who is Kusama?” Mika Yoshitake, who participated in the retrospective as a co-curator and independent planner, offered this answer: “Kusama is many things.”

Self-Portrait, 2015. Acrylic on canvas. 145.5 x 112cm, Collection of Amoli Foundation Ltd © YAYOI KUSAMA

“I find myself being put into a uniform environment, one which is strangely mechanized and standardized… In the gap between people and the strange jungle of civilized society lies many psychosomatic problems. I am always deeply interested in the background of problems involved in the relationship of people and society. My artistic expressions always grow from the aggregation of these.”

— Yayoi Kusama

The exhibition, which begins with a Kusama self-portrait, is a retrospective of her entire career chronologically as well as by theme, from early drawings made as a teenager during World War II to her most recent immersive works. With respect to her lifelong creations, they were grouped under the themes of “Infinity,” “Accumulation,” “Radical Connectivity,” “Biocosmic,” “Death,” and “Force of Life.” Every moment of Kusama’s life has been intense, from an unhappy childhood, a desperate adolescence during a time of war, and a family that did not recognize her artistry, to her recklessness and desperation—as seen in the fact that she blindly reached out to Georgia O’Keeffe by writing the pioneering American artist a letter and then traveling to the United States shortly thereafter. This intensity of Kusama’s extended to her radical, bold, and controversial work and performance art in New York and Europe, and ultimately to her returning to Japan in 1973 and voluntarily admitting herself to a psychiatric asylum, where she has been living since 1977. Thus, turning Yayoi Kusama’s life story into a work of art involves capturing a vitality that simultaneously embraces life and death.

“For art like mine—art that does battle at the border of life and death, questioning what we are and what it means to live and die—[Japan] was too small, too servile, too feudalistic, and too scornful of women. My art needed a more unlimited freedom, and a wider world.”

— Yayoi Kusama

What kind of inspiration does Kusama’s life and art impart upon us today? Kia Design Magazine seeks to newly interpret the perspective of Kia’s design philosophy, “Opposites United,” while exploring the motifs underlying the world of Yayoi Kusama’s work. Kusama’s projects reflect not only the artist herself but also each individual’s world through a simple yet profound repetition. At the same time, her motifs may look superficial but contain a sense of real depth, exerting the power to make the viewer of her works look within themselves. Kia Design Magazine looks at Kusama’s works, including Infinity Nets, a continuous creative motif in her vast art world of the past 80 years, Infinity Mirror Room, one of her most experimental works, and the Self-Obliteration series, an expanded version of polka-dot-patterned work. Several series represent the fundamental philosophy concerning the identity of life and death inherent in all of Kusama’s works, as well as the worldview that directly connects the individual artist as a human being to the universe.

A Spell of Repetition

“During the dark days of war when I felt I could no longer go on as a young girl, behind my house was a river upon which lay millions of white stones, the basis for a mysterious vision confirming their ‘being’ one by one under the glistening sun. Aside from this direct revelation from nature, I was also possessed by a strange world inside my psyche with images of an immaterial drive.”

— Yayoi Kusama

Pacific Ocean, 1960. Oil on canvas, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo © YAYOI KUSAMA

Early in her career in Japan, Kusama became aware of her mental state one day after a psychiatrist visited one of her exhibitions. The doctor advised her to leave Japan and move her activities to the United States. Kusama, who by then had already sent a handwritten letter to Georgia O’Keeffe, an artist whom she admired from afar without any ties, mobilized her few connections and ultimately arrived in New York City in 1958. Inspired by the patterns of the ocean she saw while crossing the Pacific by plane, she began to paint pictures that appeared entirely white from a distance. This was the starting point of a series that would later be known as Infinity Nets.

Tiny loops are painted in white over a black background, uniformly covering the canvas in a net-like pattern. A thin wash of white makes the paintings appear like blank canvases from a distance. However, when you get closer, they reveal thick, organic accumulations of paint, giving it the subtle impression of painted images. When you move your eyes to empty places between the individual loops that form the “net,” the black background begins to stand out like dots. The relationship between the net and the dots that confusingly catch the eye of the viewer symbolizes the infinite universe that Kusama conceived of and the human position that existed within it. This work immediately resonated with the New York art scene.

“I work as much as fifty to sixty hours at a stretch. I gradually feel myself under the spell of the accumulation and repetition in my ‘nets’ which expand beyond myself, and over the limited space of canvas covering the floor, desks and everywhere; all of the universe which is actually visible.”

— Yayoi Kusama

Untitled (Chair), 1963, Sewn stuffed fabric, wood, and paint. Collection of the artist. © YAYOI KUSAMA. Photo courtesy: YAYOI KUSAMA FOUNDATION

The concepts of repetition and replication magically lifted up Kusama. Just look at the polka dots, the motif that most famously symbolizes her. This methodology of repetition went beyond painting and continued in her sculptures. A typical example is the Accumulation series of soft sculptures with their repeated and obsessively raised fabric bumps on everyday furniture such as a sofa and armchair. Unfortunately, while she continued to fiercely present challenging works of art, Kusama was suffering from both extreme anxiety and fatigue.

The Self Expanding to Infinity

Despite her mental pain, Kusama could not go on with her life if it did not include art. In 1965, she developed one of her most experimental works, the Infinity Mirror Room series. These days, the mirror room that infinitely reflects everything within it is never an unfamiliar space. 60 years ago, however, Kusama’s choice of being reflected while imagining the philosophy behind the “infinite mirror room” was nothing short of bold. Mirrors that illuminate each other infinitely maximized Kusama’s philosophy of art. As can be seen in Kusama’s dramatic portraits in her installation projects, performance art and the division of self-image in Kusama’s work were further strengthened after Infinity Mirror Room.

“When people see their own reflection multiplied to infinity they then sense that there is no limit to man’s ability to project himself into endless space.”

— Yayoi Kusama

From 1966 to 1974, shortly after returning to Japan, Yayoi Kusama created the Self-Obliteration series, which oscillates between amplification and obliteration of the self. Kusama produced Self-Obliteration in the days when she was living in New York and actively participating in the counterculture of the time. Kusama led dozens of performances during which she painted dots onto performers’ naked bodies. The polka-dot–covered mannequins represent an extension of this practice. The intense yet somewhat ominous title of “self-obliteration” is cheerfully contrasted with diverse scenes in front of the viewer. Throughout her art world, Kusama explored the concept of “erasing,” which was rooted in the belief that negation and affirmation are one. As the polka dots fill the human existence presented by the mannequin, they naturally become part of a larger whole.

“When we obliterate nature and our bodies with polka dots we become part of the unity of our environments.”

— Yayoi Kusama

Self-Obliteration, 1966-1974, Paint on mannequins, table, chairs, wigs, handbag, mugs, plates, pitcher, ashtray, plastic plants, plastic flowers, and plastic fruit. M+, Hong Kong. © YAYOI KUSAMA. Photo: M+, Hong Kong

Both an Individual and the Universe

As an extension of polka-dot philosophy, Imagery of Human Beings (1987) expresses Kusama’s view of our interconnected existence. Round white dots of various sizes cover a purple field. Most of the dots have tiny tails that are sometimes linked to other white dots. In this way, each dot might resemble a tadpole, which in turn may remind viewers of sperm. However, if you step back to view it, the composition could be an image of a galaxy. Depending on the distance and the way you view it, the density and spacing of the dots in the work feel like they are working in any number of ways, and if you look at it while moving your eyes from left to right, the dots seem to disperse and move. The work symbolizes the spirit of regeneration through changes in energy and constant movement.

“My desire is to measure and to make order of the infinite, unbounded universe from my own position within it, with polka dots. In exploring this, the single dot is my own life, and I am a single particle amongst billions.”

— Yayoi Kusama

If you think of a single dot as representing one life, this work could be understood as a larger image of cosmic oneness in which we are all connected. In the eyes of Buddhism, which says that we have lived countless lives since the beginning of time, we are all connected to everyone else over an infinite number of lives. This concept of reincarnation occupies a large axis in Kusama’s worldview and clearly reveals her artistic philosophy of how she looks at humans, who are the dust of the universe and their own beings at the same time. Just as all living things are composed of cells, the entire human race is one being, and the entire universe is contained within one cell.

“Polka dots can’t stay alone, like the communicative life of people. Two and three and more polka dots become movement. Our earth is only one polka dot among the million stars in the cosmos. Polka dots are a way to infinity.”

— Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama has always hoped that her works would reach as many people as possible throughout her life. Furthermore, she has hoped that people would develop an eye for the world through her works. Indeed, Kusama once said that if there were even one person who would be moved by her work a century later, she should continue to work for that one person. Today, she continues to remain one with her art in her hospital room and studio as if keeping that promise to herself. Yayoi Kusama says that every time she makes an artwork, she loses herself in the thought of What does living actually mean? She asks fundamental questions about life and art as if it were her first time doing this each time she creates art. And for Yayoi Kusama, there is always only a beginning in her world of art, and that is because the infinitely unfolding beginning itself is the endpoint of meaning.