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“Fun” is the “therapeutic reward of art” that Yayoi Kusama has finally reaped, according to one critic. In this sense, the trajectory of Kusama’s oeuvre echoes that of Niki de Saint Phalle. Childhood suffering and/or illness as well as art as therapy remain essential elements of both artists’ deft mythmaking, while their passage from aggression to “joie de vivre” is characterized by a shift from monochrome accumulations to decorative polychrome. Exemplary of such multicolored hyperboles is her recent installation at the Mori Museum Hi, Konnichiwa (Hello)!: a jolly aggregation of dot and phallus-covered dolls of pre-adolescent girls—over-life size, rather cartoon-y and clearly Asian… |
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Old Tricks and New Obsessions: Yayoi Kusama at Robert Miller Gallery – Kalliopi Minioudaki
“Fun” is the “therapeutic reward of art” that Yayoi Kusama has finally reaped, according to one critic. In this sense, the trajectory of Kusama’s oeuvre echoes that of Niki de Saint Phalle. Childhood suffering and/or illness as well as art as therapy remain essential elements of both artists’ deft mythmaking, while their passage from aggression to “joie de vivre” is characterized by a shift from monochrome accumulations to decorative polychrome. Exemplary of such multicolored hyperboles is her recent installation at the Mori Museum Hi, Konnichiwa (Hello)!: a jolly aggregation of dot and phallus-covered dolls of pre-adolescent girls—over-life size, rather cartoon-y and clearly Asian—showered by minute drawings of “fashionable young girls.” While still reminiscent of her colorful store window mannequins of nude Western beauties and children (begun in the 60s), the 77-year-old Kusama’s superdolls celebrate life and girlhood, which she claims she never enjoyed, through signature patterning and grotesqueries that recall the celebration of womanhood in Niki’s Nanas. Despite their differences, the decorative exuberance of both artists’ visions derives from comparable agendas for world transformation with a keen eye for gender issues.
Yet “fun” is not the epicenter of Robert Miller’s showcase of the latest Kusamas, which, through their variety, demonstrate the renewal of the artist’s vision, while nonetheless justifying her programmatic recycling and reinventing of forms towards infinity and obliteration. With the exception of some signature, yet rather unimpressive paintings of infinite networks—cloudy constellations of almost circling commas executed with metallic acrylics over bright monochrome backgrounds—neither phalluses nor polka-dots dominate Kusama’s iconography at Robert Miller. Instead, the various rooms contrast the prevailing moods of Kusama’s production, ranging from the euphoria of decorative and narcissistic playfulness to the darkness of mental and physical disorder.
The latter tone is set by a soft piece tellingly titled Black Nerve. Made of black linen, stuffed with cotton and stained with silver spray, Black Nerve’s dangling tentacles hang from the ceiling as if a nightmarish homage to the bodily associations of Eva Hesse’s Untitled, 1970. A selection of 34 large, black and white silkscreen prints on canvas surround Black Nerve, putting it in a hallucinatory context. Printed in editions of five from Kusama’s drawings by Ryoichi Ishida, they constitute the surprise of the show since this is the artist’s first foray into silkscreening. More like hallucination diaries or dream notations, as implied by titles such as Women in a Dream, the series introduces a nearly identical female profile as Kusama’s new obsessive motif and relate to recent paintings executed with black markers on painted grounds such as in Girls, Love For Ever. Replete with profiles of women, clumsy outlines of lips or eyes as well as imaginary dotty microorganisms dissolving into overwhelmingly abstract patterns, Kusama’s new accumulations capitalize on compulsive space-filling as well as outsider art’s linearity while promising the beginnings of rejuvenating obsessions. References to her own work (ranging from the faces she collaged on bed sheets in the 60s, to her newest sculptures and drawings of little girls, to the patterns of the serpentine forms of several paintings and sculptures) mingle with uncanny echoes such as Picasso’s dot-to-dot drawings, Louise Bourgeois’ drawings of striated, bulbous forms and Niki de Saint Phalle’s Heads. The pathological horror vacui and the linearity of this diagrammatic yet figurative patterning also relates to the autobiographic “écriture” style of de Saint Phalle and Dorothy Iannone, with Kusama substituting their narrative accent for her own decorative obsessiveness.
“Fun” is reserved, however, for the gallery’s windows. With its colorful, incandescent bulbs as perfect three-dimensional polka dots hanging from a wire parabola between two large mirrors, Shooting Star adorns the window like an enormous festoon of Christmas lights, ad infinitum, bringing a premature holiday spirit to the gallery district, while making a statement about the self-sufficiency of decoration as a creative act. Two small mirror boxes revisit Kusama’s unforgettable infinity rooms. Spirit of Early Spring’s round holes excite the voyeuristic curiosity of the viewer, who, looking through them, faces his/her reflection multiplying on the surfaces of mirror balls inside. Showcasing narcissism and voyeurism as the constitutive desire of art viewers (and collectors) could be a humorous act of revenge since New York’s current apotheosis of the artist is founded partly on the shame felt for past critical neglect of her important contribution to New York’s art of the 60s, largely on account of her narcissism. But Kusama’s narcissism of the 60s, as Amelia Jones has convincingly demonstrated, was radically feminist, redefining the subjectivity of the woman artist by conflating both the artist’s body/object and mind/subject, whether in photo collages or in mirror environments that fused her nude body with her art. In the absence of the artist’s body however, Kusama’s signature mirrors are bereft of her historic significance as an avant-garde woman artist of the 60s, they are left to be read as Japanese culture’s empty signs (according to Roland Barthes) or as Western narcissistic reflectors. If you are lucky, however, to peek through Spirit of Early Spring while another viewer stands on the opposite side, you will be surprised by the face of another confronting you as your foreign reflection: a momentary illusion of self-mirroring that captures difference in a way that adds a new dimension to Kusama’s delicious narcissisms.
Kalliopi Minioudaki is a New York-based art historian and critic receiving her Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University. Her work focuses on women artists of the American and European avant-gardes of the 60s and gender theory.
