Yayoi Kusama is widely known as the "Queen of Polka Dots." Born in 1929, she is considered to be one of the most important living artists to come out of Japan. I was recently lucky enough to enjoy a retrospective exhibition of her work at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. "Yayoi Kusama: A Retrospective" is the first major exhibition to showcase the works of Kusama in Israel, bringing together artworks produced over an eighty year period. More than 200 of her artworks, including sculpture, paintings and installations, are displayed in chronological order, tracing her footsteps from childhood to her career in New York and later in Japan.
Phalli’s Field, 1965.
Women of Shangri-La, 2002.
Kusama grew up in Matsumoto, Japan and trained at the Kyoto City University of Arts in a traditional Japanese painting style called
nihonga. She subsequently trained in the
yōga style - a form of Japanese painting in a Western style, associated with the rapid modernisation of Japan. She was inspired, however, by
American Abstract expressionism and moved to New York in 1958, at the encouragement of the American painter
Georgia O’Keeffe. There she became part of the New York avant-garde scene throughout the 1960s, especially in the pop-art movement. She came to public attention when she organised a series of happenings in which naked participants were painted with brightly coloured polka dots. Since the 1970s, Kusama has continued to create art. As she matured and developed, her artworks grew in size and later became the installations and mirrored infinity rooms for which she became famous.
Love Forever, 1966/94.
The exhibition in Tel Aviv begins with two of Kusama's crayon drawings from when she was five and nine years old and already utilising dots in her artworks. It continues through her massive canvases, sculpted works and mirrored infinity rooms, which can only be entered by a few people at a time.
The first infinity room was part of Kusama's phallus phase, a mirrored room filled with soft white protrusions covered with red polka dots. The next infinity room, above, allows viewers to peer through square windows into a revolving kaleidoscope of mirrors and neon lights, something akin to being inside a pinball machine.
The following gallery introduces viewers to Kusama's black polka-dotted yellow painted pumpkins, above, an object that Kusama has viewed as her alter ego and that formed the core of her work after she returned to Japan in 1973. Besides the grand gold pumpkin in the centre of the gallery is her pumpkin infinity room, below, where yellow painted pumpkins are extended by mirrors into an alternative, polka-dotted pumpkin patch.
The Spirits of the Pumpkins Descended into the Heavens, 2015.
The exhibition finishes with two installations created for this Israeli retrospective, "A Bouquet of Love I Saw in the Universe" and "The Eternally Infinite Light of the Universe Illuminating the Quest for Truth", a mirror-lined infinity room with LED lights that slowly change colour, reflected in dozens of mirrored balls set on the floor of the room.
Strolling between the large black polka-dotted pink inflatable tentacles of "A Bouquet of Love I Saw in the Universe" felt rather like being in a large-scale amusement park designed just for adults! People were taking selfies and filming videos amongst the endless patterns of dots. Unsurprisingly Kusama is the most tagged artist on social media, with Katy Perry, Adele and Nicole Richie all seeking out one of her famous mirrored infinity rooms for a selfie.
A Bouquet of Love I Saw in the Universe, 2021.
Kusama tells the story of how when she was a little girl she had a hallucination that freaked her out. She was in a field of flowers when they all started talking to her. The heads of flowers were like dots that went on as far as she could see, and she felt as if she was disappearing into this field of endless dots. This weird experience influenced most of her later works. By adding marks and dots to her paintings, drawings, objects and clothes, she feels as if she is making them (and herself) melt into, and become part of, the bigger universe.
Narcissus Garden, 1966.
Ranked as one of the best and biggest art exhibitions of 2021, "Yayoi Kusama: A Retrospective" is still drawing big crowds. It is set to run till April 23rd 2022. Book now!
The Eternally Infinite Light of the Universe Illuminating the Quest for Truth, 2021.
