Yayoi Kusama - Into Infinity | #26

00:00:01: We're listening to Peter Gabriel's Love Town because with this track we are already in the middle of our story, In The Infinitive World Of Yayoi Kusama.

00:01:23: And the video for Laftown is filled with exactly those dots and surreal visual worlds that we associate with her today.

00:01:33: To me, this music does what Kusama's art does – it slowly pulls you in!

00:01:39: The repetition…the atmosphere...the slightly floating feeling as if step by step you were slipping into a different state of perception.

00:01:50: That´s where I want to take your today.

00:01:53: A very warm welcome to Art Affairs.

00:01:56: My name is Katharina Andries, I'm an art historian based in Berlin and for the past three years i've been sharing my passion for art with a German speaking audience.

00:02:07: but art knows no borders so I am excited to welcome you to the very first English episode of Art Affairs.

00:02:15: In fact I originally dedicated episode twenty-two to Kusama's retrospective when it opened in Cologne, but this time there is also a sad reason to return her extraordinary world.

00:02:30: On August fourteenth twenty-twenty six Yayoi Kusamo died in Tokyo at the age of ninety seven and now her major European retrospectives has arrived.

00:02:42: its final stop the Staddle-like Museum in Amsterdam.

00:02:46: An exhibition that was conceived and developed while Kusama was still alive has suddenly become something more.

00:02:55: Affair well, with her polka dotted pumpkins endless nets mirrored rooms and strange tentacle like forms kusama became a global phenomenon.

00:03:07: images of her and her work have traveled around the world millions.

00:03:12: she became one of the most famous contemporary artists of our time.

00:03:18: But behind all those spectacular images, The pumpkins ,the dots and Instagram selfies lies a much more complicated story.

00:03:28: So who was Yayoi Kusama?

00:03:31: She was born in nineteen twenty-nine in Matsumoto Japan And grew up In wealthy and deeply conservative family that ran the seed business.

00:03:41: A childhood was marked by strict authority, pressure and a difficult relationship with her mother.

00:03:49: Already as a child Kuzama began experiencing hallucinations.

00:03:54: She saw patterns of dots & flowers spreading across entire rooms covering everything around her And feared losing herself in them.

00:04:05: But instead of simply trying to push these visions away Kuzuma began to draw the illusions.

00:04:11: And not all of these strange phenomena were frightening, some of them were comforting.

00:04:18: Growing up Kusama used to walk through her family's pumpkin fields with her grandfather.

00:04:24: She later remembered that one of the pumpkins actually talked to her.

00:04:29: For Kusamma pumpkins had a warm almost human quality she once said.

00:04:35: Their shape deeply inspired her.

00:04:38: Today, Her massive polka-dotted pumpkins are some of the most iconic images in the entire art world!

00:04:46: In the late nineteen fifties Kusama made a radical decision.

00:04:51: She left Japan and moved to the United States And one person played particularly interesting role in that decision Georgia Ukofi.

00:05:00: Kusamah greatly admired American artist.

00:05:04: While still living in Japan, she wrote to Okofi, sent her examples of her work and asked for advice.

00:05:12: Okofie responded what fascinated Kusama about Okofii was her radical independence but also the way she painted flowers huge almost bodily forms intensely colored hovering somewhere between abstraction.

00:05:31: Okafe's flowers don't simply look decorative.

00:05:35: They can feel overwhelming as if you were being drawn directly into them, and perhaps Kuzama recognized something in that sensation.

00:05:45: During her journey across the Pacific she was overwhelmed by the waistness of the sky.

00:05:57: In these works a repetitive net pattern spreads across the entire canvas.

00:06:08: When you stand close to these often very large paintings, this structure begins to surround you.

00:06:14: there's no obvious center.

00:06:16: The pattern reaches the edges of the canvas and seems as though it could simply continue beyond them.

00:06:22: Here an idea appears that Kusama would return two again-and-again The idea that a single form can be repeated until it takes over everything.

00:06:33: After spending her first year in America and Seattle, Kusama moved to New York in nineteen fifty nine And entered an art world That was changing dramatically.

00:06:45: This was the moment when pop-art and minimalism were beginning to emerge... ...and kuzama Was right there.

00:06:53: But there's something about this period of her career that is often overlooked.

00:06:58: Many of the ideas, which would soon make other artists famous had already appeared in Kuzama´s work Her serial structures, her obsessive repetition, her radical ideas about filling an entire space with one repeated visual element.

00:07:14: A few years later, Repetition would have course become a defining feature for Andy Warhol´s works.

00:07:21: Rose of Merlin, Campbell's soup cans – the same image again and again.

00:07:28: Kusama´s work is different!

00:07:30: And it would be too simple to claim that one artist merely copied another.

00:07:35: But when you look at New York art scene in the early nineteen sixties The parallels are fascinating... ...and they're true of sculpture.

00:07:45: Kusama began covering furniture, shoes and everyday objects with hundreds of soft stuffed phallic forms.

00:07:52: She called these works accumulations.

00:07:55: They seem to grow across objects like strange organism multiplying spreading taking possession of everything.

00:08:04: And around the same time Claes Oldenburg became famous for his own soft sculptures.

00:08:11: Again, a direct line of influence is difficult to prove.

00:08:16: But both artists were moving through the same New York art world at that time and their similarities in material form or conception are striking.

00:08:26: Kusama herself felt deeply frustrated by what she saw happening around her.

00:08:32: while other artist achieve enormous recognition with ideas that seem close She struggled to receive the same attention.

00:08:46: by her parents' deeply troubled marriage.

00:09:11: Kusama later said that her mother had forced her to spy on her father and that she, as a child, witnessed his extramarital affairs.

00:09:23: Those experiences left deep traces And once again Kusamma turned fear into repetition.

00:09:31: During the nineteen sixties She began staging radical performances & happenings in New York.

00:09:38: It was the era of flower power, anti-war protests and sexual liberation.

00:09:44: Kusama painted naked bodies with dots and staged provocative public actions.

00:09:50: Increasingly the human body itself became an artistic medium.

00:09:55: She understood something very early that would later become essential to contemporary art.

00:10:02: The artist herself could become part of a artwork And now More than a half century later we can follow this extraordinary journey in Amsterdam.

00:10:13: From the Temper XI, The Still Like Museum presents the final stop of this major retrospective bringing together work from more then seven decades of her career.

00:10:26: Early drawings, infinity nets, sculptures and installations... ...the old lady is said to have actively shaped this concept at age of ninety-six.

00:10:37: But the most spectacular part is not a single object.

00:10:41: It's an entire room and feeling of losing your orientation inside it.

00:10:47: Imagine this, you step through a narrow entrance.

00:10:51: The light dims Sounds fade.

00:10:54: In front of you A space opens up Shot-through with dotted tentacle like forms Like a surreal organic garden.

00:11:04: They hang from the ceiling They grow from the floor, they wind through the room.

00:11:09: Everywhere dots densely packed rhythmic almost pulsating.

00:11:16: your gaze finds no solid ground.

00:11:18: you walk forward slowly.

00:11:21: The longer you look the more the dots begin to flicker.

00:11:25: and then in the center the infinity mirror-room You step inside And suddenly everything multiplies into infinity.

00:11:35: that entails reflect in every direction.

00:11:38: Above you, below-you, beside-you.

00:11:41: You see yourself countless times.

00:11:44: Boundaries disappear Space becomes an illusion.

00:11:48: For a moment your are no longer just the viewer Your part of artwork.

00:11:53: This exact experience is what makes exhibition so unique and explains its massive success on social media.

00:12:02: But behind this visual attraction lies a radical invitation to lose oneself in the infinite.

00:12:09: After years of enormous artistic activity in New York, Kuzama returned to Japan in the early seventies.

00:12:16: In nineteen seventy-seven she voluntarily admitted herself to a psychiatric hospital in Tokyo where she lived for the rest her life.

00:12:25: But the hospital did not mean the end of her artistic work.

00:12:30: Quite the opposite, it became a protected space for her.

00:12:34: Her studio was nearby and according to her team she continued going there to work every single day right up till the end.

00:12:44: For Kusama art wasn't simply a profession.

00:12:47: It was necessity A means of survival.

00:12:51: Her way of working seems obsessive and meditative at the same time.

00:12:57: In one room, we encounter some final paintings.

00:13:02: She wanted these pictures to be understood as prayers for peace.

00:13:07: Reflecting on this she noted This cosmic piece can only exist when we let go of our individual egos, a concept she called self-obliteration.

00:13:29: It is the realization that we are ONLY A SMALL PART OF SOMETHING MUCH GREATER!

00:13:36: Her art revolves around this feeling – around dissolution, around infinity, around disappearing into The Big Picture.

00:13:45: On August fourteen, twenty-twenty six Yayoi Kusama died in Tokyo at the age of ninety seven.

00:13:52: Now she has become one with infinity that she spent a lifetime seeking.

00:13:58: This is strangely beautiful idea That perhaps nothing really ends But simply becomes part something larger.

00:14:07: Yayoi kusama is gone Her dots remain And somewhere an infinity One more shining.

00:14:14: Yayoi Kusama, rest in peace.