THE SOUL OF INFINITE DOTS OF LIGHT NOW
YAYOI KUSAMA
The soul of Yayoi Kusama (草間 彌生 or 弥生 ) has been bound to and expanded by infinite expressions of light for over 7 decades.
Kusama, one of the most important Japanese artists of our time, has created a mammoth body of works over the course of her more than 70-year career, which uses light and polka dots to give us a never-ending unique experience of time and space.
While her signature subject has been the polka dot, using this graphic form to a point of obsession in each and every one of her thousands of creations, Kusama has extrapolated further in a body of work that utilizes light as an important medium.
Kusama’s latest exhibition, Endless Obsession, has traveled around the world and is now presented at the Tamayo Contemporary Art Museum, in Mexico City through January, 2015. It presents a comprehensive tour through more than 100 works created between 1950 and 2013, including paintings, works on paper, sculptures, videos, slideshows, and facilities.
The A Dream I Dreamed master work is one of Kusama’s most spectacular installations. It consists of a set of Infinity Rooms, a mind-tripping extravaganza of twinkling lights, mirrors, and reflecting water, with her iconic polka dots creating the illusion of endlesses.
Each room offers a different take on boundless space. There is a room, entitled Souls of Millions of Light Years Away, in which the walls, floor, and the ceiling are mirrors. Blinking multi-colored LED lights are suspended throughout, with the mirrors reflecting them infinitely, giving the viewer the impression of being in the middle of a starlight-filled galaxy.
The visual impact is spectacular.
Born in 1929, Kusama has worked as a writer and artist in a wide variety of media, including painting, collage, sculpture, performance art, and environmental installations. She is known for her polka dots, expressed in dramatic psychedelic colors, repetition and pattern.
Kusama was an early avant garde innovator in the pop art and feminist art movements. She influenced contemporaries such as Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg.
Kusama initially became interested in polka dots when she organized a series of happenings in NY in the 1960s in which naked participants were painted with brightly colored polka dots.
She began covering surfaces (walls, floors, canvases, and later, household objects and naked assistants) with the polka dots. She called these vast fields of polka dots, "infinity nets," based directly on her hallucinations. Kusama has created series of Mirror/Infinity rooms since 1963.
“A polka-dot has the form of the sun, which is a symbol of the energy of the whole world and our living life, and also the form of the moon, which is calm. Round, soft, colorful, senseless and unknowing. Polka-dots become movement... Polka dots are a way to infinity,” Kusama explains.
The artist began to experience psychiatric problems, and in 1977, she voluntarily admitted herself to a hospital, where she has spent the rest of her life. She has continued to produce artworks and literary works at the hospital ever since.
Major retrospectives of her work have been held at the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum, and Tate Modern. In 2008, Christie’s sold a work by Kusama for $5.1 million, then a record for a living female artist.
Read more about Beautiful Lights, as it relates to Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink,Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact including 10 Extraordinary Lighting Designs to Delight you Now, Beautiful New Sky Lights are Happening Right Now, Beautiful Lights to Eat & Drink Now, Beautiful Lights Make Mind-Blowing Art Now, 10 Beautiful Lights Festivals Around the World Now and Bodies Move with Beautiful Light Now.
Enter your own images and ideas about Beautiful Lights in this week’s creative Photo Competition. Open for entries now until 11:59 p.m. PT on 12.21.2014. If you are reading this after that date, check out the current BN Creative Competition, and enter!
PHOTO CREDITS:
- Photo: Courtesy of Yayoi Kusama. Infinity Mirrored Room - Filled with the Brilliance of Life.
- Photo: by Jason Schmidt. Yayoi Kusama, Fireflies on the Water exhibit.
- Photo: Courtesy of Yayoi Kusama. I’m Here But Nothing.
- Photo: Courtesy of Instituto Cultural de Leon. Obsession Infinite.
- Photo: Courtesy of Yayoi Kusama. Infinity Mirrored Room – The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away.
- Photo: Courtesy of Yayoi Kusama. Infinity Mirrored Room.
- Photo: Courtesy of Yayoi Kusama. Yayoi Kusama at the Tamayo.
- Photo: Courtesy of Yayoi Kusama. Yayoi Kusama at the Whitney.
- Photo: Courtesy of Yayoi Kusama. Infinity Mirror Room.
- Photo: Courtesy of Yayoi Kusama. Infinite Obsession.
- Photo: Courtesy of Tate. Still from Video on Yayoi Kusama.
