Yayoi Kusama at the Whitney
The Whitney Museum at 75th and Madison is known
for celebrating today’s art, so perhaps a career retrospective, like the one
running there now (through September 30th) in honor of Japanese pop
artist Yayoi Kusama, may seem out of place.
However, Kusama is still very much alive, producing new and original
artworks from within the Japanese psychiatric hospital where she’s been living
voluntarily for the past 35 years. Is
she crazy? Well, who can speculate? But Kusama’s work is unique and original, and
for an art museum, this is the part that matters.
Kusama left
Japan at a young age after finagling her way into art school and making a
living painting with whatever she could find—often using house paint and sand
to paint pictures on seed sacks. When
she made it to America, she fell in with the pop crowd of New York, becoming
acquainted with noted artist Georgia O’Keefe and a disciple of the minimalist
Donald Judd. She fabricated chairs
covered in phalli, collages, paintings, clothes, and furniture. The only thing one can conclude about
Kusama’s art as a whole is that she was—and is—ceaselessly avoiding being
defined as an artist. It’s clear Kusama
doesn’t want anyone to think of her as a fashion or interior designer, but for
that matter one wouldn’t think her to be a sculptor or painter either. It’s hard to pin Yayoi Kusama, and that’s
exactly how she likes it.
There are
few common themes among the pieces at the retrospective, which, so says the
museum, are meant to represent the “highlights of her career.” (A full rather than career retrospective, the
Whitney insists, would take up all six of its floors.) One underlying idea, though, is dots. Kusama seems to love dots, creating many of
her best frescoes with pointillism, and dotting her collages (many of which she
created with the help of her friend, collagist Joseph Cornell) with pink dots
that seem to eradicate the message of the piece. Kusama loves dots, and wears and sells dresses
(many sold by Louis Vuitton, which also sponsors the exhibit) covered with
them. One of the museum’s docents
suggested that Kusama thought of the earth itself as a dot among the galaxies
of the universe. Depressing, certainly,
but true, and a truth that many great artists see as the center of their
worldview.
Kusama’s
works are also all bright and conspicuous.
Even her canvasses painted all in white with gray dots—and yes, there
are many of these—dominate the room.
Color plays a huge role in her work, as evidenced by some small, early
works she made with India ink. Most
noticeable of these is The Coral Reef in
the Sea, in which the background, as in many of Kusama’s best pieces, is
black, and a multicolored, violin-shaped reef emerges from the darkness,
suffused with an incandescent glow, and seeming to vibrate with life as a real
reef does. For a young woman in rural
Japan who had never scuba dived or snorkeled, it’s an amazing view of an underwater
paradise rendered with lifelike strokes.
Not all the
pieces are meant to mimic life, but most do.
They represent things we know about our lives that Kusama has
inadvertently brought to the surface.
Some of her works are crude, some ridiculous, and some just plain
eyesores, but she knew what the point behind each one was. She is an artist who creates with the
knowledge of the meaning of each piece, and even now, at 83, she is still
painting pop masterpieces that will last for years to come.
However,
the most beautiful Kusama artwork on display at the Whitney is a timed-entry
mirrored room on the first floor, which the artist calls “Fireflies on the
Water.” One person at a time enters the
booth for one minute at a time. Walking
down a short plank into the middle of a flooded room, the entrant is besieged
by wonder. Lights hang from the ceiling
in all conceivable colors, at different heights and different brightness. Every wall is a mirror, and multiplies the
lights out into eternity, giving one the feeling of observing an endless city,
or for that matter a universe, from above.
Not only does it bestow an imagined power on the museumgoer, it also
reminds you how small you are, and yet that your smallness is not necessarily
such a bad thing.
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