Yayoi Kusama was one of the featured artists in the
Walking in My Mind exhibition at the Hayward recently (can't believe I missed seeing that one! but you can see videos about it
here and, for more of the works,
here ). She's known for her polka dots, but it's her recent "prisoner's door" that fascinates me. It looks to be made of stuffed fabric, painted or sprayed.
Since childhood Kusama has been seeing visions of nets, flowers, polka dots that engulf her world. Born in Japan in 1929, she lived in the New York art limelight from 1953 to 1973, being tremendously productive and organising happenings and other events. The papparazzi called her The Polkadot Princess in the 1960s, and she was as well known as Andy Warhol. Since 1975 she's been living, by choice, in a mental hospital; her studio is nearby.
This is her Mirror Room (1965). But she's used other motifs, often flowers -
Wikipedia sums up: "Her paintings, collages, soft sculptures, performance art and environmental installations all share an obsession with repetition, pattern, and accumulation. Her work shows some attributes of feminism, minimalism, surrealism, Art Brut, pop art, and abstract expressionism, and is infused with autobiographical, psychological, and sexual content. She describes herself as an "obsessive artist". Kusama is also a published novelist and poet, and has created notable work in film and fashion design. She has long struggled with mental illness. On 12th Nov 2008 Christies New York sold a work by her for $5,100,000, a record for a living female artist." Can't find a photo of that one - here's an exuberant flower instead -
Can she really have made
50,000 artworks? Quite possibly - she's been obsessive and productive over a 70-year career ... "Art keeps me alive," she says.
Yayoi Kusama was one of the featured artists in the Walking in My Mind exhibition at the Hayward recently (can't believe I missed seeing that one! but you can see videos about it here and, for more of the works, here ). She's known for her polka dots, but it's her recent "prisoner's door" that fascinates me. It looks to be made of stuffed fabric, painted or sprayed.
Since childhood Kusama has been seeing visions of nets, flowers, polka dots that engulf her world. Born in Japan in 1929, she lived in the New York art limelight from 1953 to 1973, being tremendously productive and organising happenings and other events. The papparazzi called her The Polkadot Princess in the 1960s, and she was as well known as Andy Warhol. Since 1975 she's been living, by choice, in a mental hospital; her studio is nearby.
This is her Mirror Room (1965). But she's used other motifs, often flowers -
Wikipedia sums up: "Her paintings, collages, soft sculptures, performance art and environmental installations all share an obsession with repetition, pattern, and accumulation. Her work shows some attributes of feminism, minimalism, surrealism, Art Brut, pop art, and abstract expressionism, and is infused with autobiographical, psychological, and sexual content. She describes herself as an "obsessive artist". Kusama is also a published novelist and poet, and has created notable work in film and fashion design. She has long struggled with mental illness. On 12th Nov 2008 Christies New York sold a work by her for $5,100,000, a record for a living female artist." Can't find a photo of that one - here's an exuberant flower instead -
Can she really have made 50,000 artworks? Quite possibly - she's been obsessive and productive over a 70-year career ... "Art keeps me alive," she says.
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