Kusama’s Medium: Retrospective at Centre Pompidou

From October 2011 to January 2012, a spectacular exhibition set apart a privileged section of the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Occupying the largest gallery on the second floor, the Yayoi Kusama retrospective challenged visitors to see the world through the eyes of this radical and exceptionally influential artist. Diagnosed with a hallucinatory mental illness, Kusama has led her artistic career relentlessly for over five decades. Her work escapes categorization, carving its own trajectory within the history of contemporary art.

The Centre Pompidou is one of several top venues for the retrospective, including the Museum Reina Sofia in Madrid, Tate Modern in London, and the Whitney Museum in New York. Each location privileges certain aspects of Kusama’s work. At Centre Pompidou, the press release points to the museum’s focus on the artist’s sculptural pieces and on her experiences, translated into performance. As I walked through the exhibition, I felt the effect of accumulation, central to Kusama’s art, transferring to the gallery the seemingly endless repetition of patterns, transforming the aseptic nature of the space. Filled with Kusama’s installations, the white cube was annihilated through accumulation; the flatness of the display areas dissolved in a network of dots, leaving the impression of infinite expansion. In this sense, Kusama’s work is obstinately anti-modernist.

The retrospective follows Kusama’s artistic development chronologically, from her Surrealist beginnings, to her period of living in New York (1958-1973,) and lastly, to her return to Japan (1973 – present). The New York period is represented by a selection of infinity nets, of accumulations, and by her major happenings and performances of the 1960s. The rooms devoted to the Tokyo period present sculptures evoking organic forms and paintings suggestive of infinite visual fields. A special section features Kusama’s latest paintings, shown for the first time. Painted horizontally in her studio, recent works such as Eyes of Mine (2010) reference not only the tradition of calligraphy, as noted in the catalog, but also the working mode of Jackson Pollock. Eyes of Mine is partly figurative, re-affirming Kusama’s Surrealist ties and calling to mind Juan Miro’s eye motif. These recent paintings reinvent the theme of fragmentation which occupies a central role in Kusama’s work and signifies a pulverization of life into particles of reality, of which the dot is the most fundamental element.

The exhibition was centered on the persona of the artist, mapping the artwork through her biography. This choice inevitably restricted the visitor’s experience. Related to her mental condition, the obsessional aspect of Kusama’s work hides, under its attention-grabbing label, the artist’s profound exploration of overarching themes of humanity – death and the infinite, fear and sexuality, and, last but not least, freedom from our own imprisoning thoughts. Artwork concerned with these universal themes has to go to the roots, to find the irreducible element, and to start from there. For Kusama, this element is the dot.

Guided by Rosalind Krauss’ seminal theorization of the post-medium condition of art, I understand Kusama’s signature dots as her medium. An endless application of dots, this new medium refers to Ben Day dots and computer pixels, essential for newsprint and digital images, respectively. In Infinity Mirror Room (1965), as metaphors of self-representation, the mirrors activate her medium through a process of mise-en-abîme, endlessly replicating the image of the artist surrounded by dotted phallic objects.

Kusama’s world will come to New York over the summer. Marking her first solo show at the Whitney, the show will be on display from July 12 through September 30.