2023-06-26 16:08:58
Some say that the value of Yayoi Kusama is equivalent to a multicolored and psychedelic theme park that does not produce the slightest dent in the sensitivity of the viewer. Others hold the opposite, that under that appearance ‘happy flower’ that weaves networks of points to infinity hides a tortured existence and a haunting gaze, an epitome of our contemporary life bright on social media but hazy in the fierce reality. The 94-year-old Japanese artist, who has lived for more than 45 years in a voluntary confinement in a psychiatric hospital, was only known to those who remembered her intense passage but later erased by New York in the 1960s. In little more than a decade she has become a a global phenomenon both in terms of commercial as -above all and supported by social networks- in favor of the public.
Kusama is today a brand in itself. Hence, his iconic figure with a red wig was used as a gigantic failure doll last March in the Louis Vuitton building in Paris, while robots with his appearance were built in London, Tokyo and New York.
overall popularity
Large exhibition spaces know that Kusama will ensure an overwhelming success among visitors not particularly interested in art. Five million people have visited its exhibitions in recent years. His calling power is impressive. In the museums that hosted his works in New York, Washington or London, you could queue for several hours to access his particular world of infinite perspectives with a restricted time, in some cases little more than half a minute.
It will not be the case of Museo Guggenheim of Bilbao, which from this Tuesday until October 8 will host the exhibition ‘Yayoi Kusama, from 1945 to today’a retrospective that follows all his work through paintings, drawings, sculptures, installations and archival material that document his ‘happenings’ and performances, not through a chronological journey but through his thematic obsessions: accumulation, the radicalism of the 60s, the idea of the biocosmic, death and colorful positivism and vital of his last years.
Organized by the brand new M+ museum in Hong Kong, which precisely opened its doors in November 2021 with this exhibition curated by Doryum Chong y Mika Yoshitake, Bilbao will be the only stopover on its itinerary for which it has been incorporated Lucia Agirre in the curatorship “This is undoubtedly the definitive sample because it includes 11 very recent pieces, made during the pandemic, that the artist had not shared with the publicChong explains. At the same time that Agirre establishes his deep intention: “We want to delve into his work, among other things to do justice for not having been sufficiently recognized and to vindicate its historical importance”.
Lunar characters are disturbing
Kusama’s story, by way of van gogh doll, Narratively, she has everything to leave a deep mark on whoever meets her, and in fact, she runs the risk of making her life seem even more fascinating than her work. The artist was born into a wealthy family in rural Japan dedicated to the cultivation of flowers whose arrangement is one of the great traditions of the country, the ikebana. Armed with paper and pencils, the little girl, solitary by nature, would go to the fields and there one day, as if it were a chapter of ‘Alice in Wonderland’He felt how the flowers crowded together and spoke to him.
they did too the pumpkinswhich today converted into sculptures reach the half a million euros on the market. there was more hallucinations: again in the boulders of the river that passed near his house he thought he saw the sun, the moon and the stars turned into points, an obsessive escape from the universe. In fact, the moles -in Japanese, ‘mesotama’, drops of water- are one of the most distinctive figures in his work. Innocent in appearance but disturbing at the same time. “Our Earth is just a mole among the millions of stars in the cosmos. Moles are a path to infinity”.
He was 28 years old in 1957 when he came to the New York Art Scene, on a trip that also meant leaving behind the repressive Japanese society towards women. As he recalls in his memories, he survived by rescuing fish heads thrown in the garbage that he boiled to make soup. In that same book he also accuses Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg for having appropriated their ideas and thus having achieved their invisibility for so many years. Being racialized and female it was not a good calling card at the time, not even in New York, the cradle of modernity.
paint the bodies
But she did not give up on her efforts to use the media and turn her creations into a show in a way not far removed from Warhol’s. Like him, she wanted something more than 15 minutes of fame. So she walked through one of the toughest neighborhoods in New York dressed as a geishapersonally sold 1,500 reflective balls for $2 each at the Venice Biennale and repeatedly painted at parties in the Big Apple about the naked bodies of all those who dared their characteristic moles. Those were the times of anti vietnam demonstrations in which he also participated. However, that advertising and commercial zeal that was the launching pad of the author of ‘Campbell’s Soup Cans’ took its toll on her and he plunged her into oblivion.
In the 70s he decided to return to his country. His partner, the plastic artist, died Joseph Cornell, the closest thing to a couple that he has had in his life, perhaps because, as he came to say, neither of them liked sex. Her childhood hallucinations also returned and in 1977, already in Tokyo, she herself entered the psychiatric hospital in which he would spend the rest of his life and which, although in an open regime, allowed him to express himself artistically. That, he assures in the few interviews to which he has given himself, has saved his life.
Hoy at 94 years old still working although the pandemic has forced him to focus on small-format works since he was unable to travel to his workshop two blocks from the medical center where he worked on larger pieces. It can be said that he has not stopped creating for seven decades. “Unlike other artists, she has always talked about her mental health issues and made them a strength,” Chong says.
In her creative seclusion, Kusama live very austerely and it even becomes his own clothes. The paradox is that the business generated by his work, promoted by a team that works in New York, Tokyo and London, is incalculable. Today she is one of the most valued women artists after having achieved one of her works the 10 and a half million dollars. The artist is also a mystery that contains a indefatigable joy of living, not devoid of a sense of humor, as evidenced by the ‘Room with mirrors of infinity’, an immersive installation only exhibited at the Yayoi Kusama Museum in Tokyo, which here in Bilbao transports the visitor to a hallucinatory world where they can feel the vertigo of the universe and at the same time the force of life that the author advocates.
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