Yayoi Kusama

Private Collection, Tokyo (acquired in 2007)

This work is in very good condition overall. The surface is bright, fresh and clean. There is evidence of light wear and handling along the edges, which are taped on all 4 sides. Under Ultraviolet light inspection there is no evidence of restoration. Framed under Plexiglas. Please note that this work is accompanied by a registration card issued by the Yayoi Kusama Studio. Please note the auction begins at 9:00 am on November 12th.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Yayoi Kusama’s decision to move to New York City in 1957 represents a bold shift in the artist’s career—not just in her physical exodus from Japan to the US—as it is the moment when she traded in the traditional, accepted style of Japanese painting for a completely unique visual language and Western-inspired pictorial style. Seamlessly falling in with New York’s burgeoning avant-garde and exhibiting alongside Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns and Claes Oldenburg, Kusama’s wholly unique aesthetic catapulted her to fame as the female antidote to Abstract Expressionism.

The present work, Infinity-Nets (TTOWHON), belongs to Kusama’s series of Infinity Net paintings, which the artist began in 1958 and has continued to produce through to the present day as a defining characteristic of her oeuvre. The so-called ‘nets’ represent a manifestation of the artist’s childhood hallucinations. Diagnosed with an obsessional neurosis, Kusama began to use her art to 'self-obliterate' these visions through the process of painting. Compulsively painting, often for days at a time, Kusama pours herself physically and emotionally into each canvas, stating: “My nets grew beyond myself and beyond the canvases I was covering with them. They began to cover the walls, the ceiling, and finally the whole universe. I was always standing at the center of the obsession, over the passionate accretion and repetition inside of me" (Laura Hoptman, Yayoi Kusama, London, 2000, p. 103). Such an intense process is crucial to the understanding of each work: each one becomes a physical imprint of the artist herself, with each loop of each net inextricably linked to the artist’s being.

The sensuous layering of thickly textured white acrylic against a seemingly endless ground of black in Infinity Nets (TTOWHON) presents a dizzying and hypnotic composition that is without beginning, middle or end. It is a profoundly personal meditation that distinguishes Kusama from her male Minimalist or ZERO Group counterparts whose work was the product of a deductive, mechanical process. For Kusama, repetition, passion, obsession and eternity are all fundamentally linked. By blanketing her world in dots and nets, often even clothing herself and her collaborators in the same patterns, Kusama is wrapped up into the endlessness of being. Kusama’s artworks are more than decorative objects; they are manifestations of her unwavering vision, connecting the artist, and the viewer alike, in a web of infinite existence.