In 1973, after causing shock waves throughout the art world, Yayoi Kusama checked himself into a mental health facility. The 95-year-old artist, who still lives in the same Tokyo center, volunteered to commit herself after her mental health struggles became too great. She found a hospital in a hospital with sympathetic doctors, who were interested in using art as a therapy for painful thinking. Instead of making works for public audiences, Kusama feels solace in bringing her psychological pain into private labor: “In my work, I provide a system for my life.”
From this humble daily practice, the seclusion artist produces huge and dazzling works. In recent years, she has seen re-evaluation of re-evaluation and has been distinguished from the crowd to become a mysterious cultural idol. Her public art attracts cities around the world (see her bulb sculpture), and her infinite rooms attract social media users.
“Yayoi Kusama” is a sensational summer performance at the National Gallery of Art (NGV) in Melbourne, known as Australia's largest performance in the works of Japanese artists in the Southern Hemisphere. This non-contender is one of the most popular and most popular living artists in the world, and art is keen to offer interest in our 21st century wonders, experiences and social credibility.
The exhibition of the same name features no less than 180 works, with special emphasis on Kusama's infinite space, mainly because they prove the main attraction that attracts the Instagram-Eager crowd. (Note that these rooms have strict time limits, so use the camera quickly.) But the most insightful, even part of “Yayoi kusama,” which already exists outside of these spaces, and it is found that viewing the artist’s early work that is not shaped and told.
“We have a crowd,” NGV's senior curator of Asian art, told Observer. “But our main purpose is to really tying her into an extraordinary social and artistic story.”
The program is divided into two parts. The first was the salad era when growing up in rural Japan under the shadow of World War II, and then began a serious career in the United States, which shocked the art world. The second shows the works of hyperbolic patterns and otherworldly physical spaces, making Kusama a modern cultural phenomenon.
It was discovered that planning and displaying her unconquered artwork was an urgent desire for the crossther. With the help of Kusama's intermediary and through connections with regional Japanese galleries, NGV has found several precious works from the beginning of her career. “We do reveal a lot of archival materials here, and even some surviving artifacts,” Crothers said.
Since receiving a written reply from Georgia O'Keeffe, the aspiring artist has been daring to be fearless in his art since he received a written reply from Georgia O'Keeffe. The patterns and symbols are repeated over and over as “infinite”, becoming her dominant style. Early works, such as her penis effect on furniture and household objects accumulationemphasizing this obsessive interest in repetition, an aesthetic traversal of Kusama will bring for the rest of her career.
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Copying images and objects, whether it’s a penis or a pumpkin, provides Kusama with a restorative comfort, especially as her mental health begins to worsen in the United States. Sometimes simplified and unchanged, repeating themes after topic (with other pop artists starting to do so in the 1960s), Kusama is a bold provocateur. This is even more so, because she is an Asian woman doing this.
This fact may not be more true than when she first appeared at the 1966 Venice Biennale. The young Kusama is an uninvited guest, dispersing over 1,000 shiny metal balls across the front lawn of the show. show, Narcissus Garden (Recreated in the NGV foyer), visitors were invited to “buy narcissism” for several dollars each until officials angrily stopped her.
Today, a silver ball in the installation is sold for only a few thousand dollars, which is almost an inappropriate reminder of the high value her artwork now brings. (Kusama was recently the ninth highest box office artist in global art auctions and retained nearly $176 million in market value.) Compared to previous practices, it is an irony of many Kusama phenomena today compared to protests on commercialization of art.
A highly acclaimed unlimited room, especially new and exclusive rooms My heart is filled with sparkling light (2024), with the power of disgusting and hypnotic, reflecting Kusama's commitment to producing “intangible art.” They are also the astral bodies and aesthetic spaces that artists have been pursuing since 1964. The spotted floats and reflections are endlessly refracted, and visitors – except those who are mediated entirely through the iPhone – can expect a psychological self-fusion that clearly allows young Kusama to free herself from what she calls “Depersersonalization.” ”.
Today, wonder and immersion are the inducement of many people to tempt galleries, but the personal story behind the work is an imminent ghost that people should not ignore. Away from these experience spaces, Kusama's life and survival today is a heroic story. Her early life was born about a century ago and her early life was severely traumatized, not only because of World War II, but also because of the perverted mother’s need to let the daughter watch her father’s adultery. Fear of penis and sexual behavior exacerbated Kusama's work in the early 1960s, and in practice was repeated concealment of images and made it an ordinary catharsis movement.
Fertility, sex, and cycle are constants in Kusama's art, from early flower paintings (living on seed farms) to embryonic cell-like shapes in recent paintings. Far from Infinite Carnival, newer works (the artist still paints most days) quietly show authenticity and immediacy on “Yayoi Kusama” with little immediateness elsewhere. “They are very expressive, very colorful, almost paying tribute to nature,” Crothers said. “That's the theme she continues to be: a form of nature worship.”
The most radical and influential content on the show can be found in low-key, deep resonance and archival works. take Every day I pray for love Series (2023), a fancy sunflower-style series with red dots coordinated with green stripes. It's a fusion of Kusama's work, but it looks more harmonious and modest. It is obvious that comfort and calm are clearly filled with indoctrination in the frame.
There is also video installation Manhattan suicide addict song (2010), Kusama, wearing a wig, reads a part of her autobiography novel of the same name, about the frustration she suffered while living in America, her poetic remarks are prophetic (if disturbing, too), reminding us of her deep personal (and traumatized) her seventy-year-old artistic pursuits. Images of her infinite room collapsed and unfolded on the screen while she remained firm and sang the desire to “demolite the door.”
After the chaos of the masses, many may want to find grounding and material connections to access Kusama's astral body, Instagramable space. In addition to selfies and reflecting self-promotion, artworks outside the crazy Infinity Hall of “Yayoi Kusama” can also find a more penetrating experience. These paintings, paintings and scrolls reveal a long-standing artist who is still seeking relief and quietly seeking to be with him.
“Yayoi Kusama” At the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne as of April 21, 2025.
