Kusama Yayoi

signed and titled in English and dated 1995 on the reverse

Robert Miller Gallery, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above

This work is generally in good condition. There are minor specks of paint loss around the edges and across the canvas, which are visible upon very close inspection, with the biggest measuring approx. 2 cm. in the middle left central area. There are minor creases on the central bottom edge and framing marks along the edges. Having examined the work under ultraviolet light, there appears to be no evidence of restoration.
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Galaxy Galore
Kusama Yayoi 

 

It has been more than five decades since Kusama Yayoi left Japan in pursuit of her grand dream of becoming an artist in America—a land thitherto unbeknownst to the artist. At the time, no one could have ever imagined the immense influence the young, unassuming Japanese artist would come to have on Western and Asian contemporary art. From her sweeping Infinity Net paintings, to her mirrored installations, to her notorious street performances, it is self-evident that the artist is a true master of her own art, creating an oeuvre that has withstood the test of time, as well as breaking past the national and geographic barriers, and ultimately defying art itself. Among her works of fascinating eclecticism are her Infinity Nets, the earliest and most iconic series that firmly rooted Kusama’s position in the Western art world. The Infinity Nets would assume a fundamental and pivotal status in contemporary artistic discourse, and become a distinctive visual code entwined with the artist herself. Painted in 1995, the enormous, one-paneled work Infinity Stars (Lot 1068) is the largest work of the series ever to grace the market, and can be considered an exceptional reiteration and refinement of her Infinity Nets motif, and while it features the same monochromatic colour palette Kusama first employed in the fifties, her unique take of stars is aesthetically different from predecessors, showcasing a renewal in the artist’s psyche.

 

The present work is as striking as it is gargantuan. Featuring endless repetitions of minuscule but meticulously drawn stars, the lot on offer at once dwarfs its audience in both size and alluring beauty. Measuring over five metres long, the single-panel work especially exemplifies Kusama’s precision and stamina, and is particularly reminiscent of the phenomenal lengths of her works in the early fifties that were shown in both New York and Europe at large. The conscious adherence to monochrome is indicative of the artist’s preference for her signature colour, one that was first seen in the Infinity Nets from the late fifties. The surface of the present Infinity Stars is also smoother than the Infinity Nets works, which were created with impasto and were created with Expressionist zeal. The current work can be seen as emblematic of the artist’s stylistic shift from the thickly coated paintings during her period in New York, to the aesthetically refined works painted during her subsequent return to Japan, a change that was most evident in the eighties. Painted after this time, Infinity Stars is a kaleidoscope of intricate stars that can be considered a rare encapsulation of the artist’s probe into the origin of her celebrated practice.

 

Since she first set foot in New York City in 1958, Kusama was determined to rise to the frontiers of the international art scene. She knew that in order to achieve this, one had to resist the urge to imitate popular trends; rather, she sought to forge her own path among the many avant-garde groups in the local art scene. Looking back on the period, the artist stated, “Around that time, it was flooded with action paintings. Everyone jumped at this style and this type of painting easily sold at a high price. However, I believed it is [was] important for me to create unique art that comes only from within myself, in order to establish my life as an artist. Therefore, I introduced my painting: ‘Infinity Nets’, in which the inclination is the complete opposite to these action painters.”¹ These works were featured in Kusama’s first solo exhibition, entitled “Yayoi Kusama”, and held at the Brata Gallery in October 1959, just one year after her arrival in New York.  

The monumental works that were exhibited in the show sensationalised the art world, garnering the attentions of then critic Donald Judd, Picasso scholar Dore Ashton, as well as the artist Frank Stella, who became the collector of one of the earliest paintings. The immense size of Infinity Stars is resonant of the towering presence of the early works. In his article “Reviews and Previews: New Names This Month- Yayoi Kusama” from Artnews, Donald Judd commented, “Yayoi Kusama is an original painter. The expression transcends the question of whether it is Oriental or American. Although it is something of both, certainly of such Americans as Rothko, Still and Newman, it is not at all a synthesis and is thoroughly independent.”² The canvases filled with minimalistic arches atop black backgrounds quietly and elegantly breathed new life into the male-dominated New York art scene the time, acting as a crucial rebuttal against the ideal of Abstract Expressionism, and paved the way for the rise of Minimalism itself as well as the repetitive nature of Pop Art.

That Infinity Stars is both a rumination upon as well as departure from the original Infinity Nets is significant. While it finds its roots in such a significant and monumental series, it showcases Kusama’s ability to morph and regenerate even her most established symbols and styles, and is indicative of the artist’s ceaseless innovation. It would be worthy to note that Kusama never belonged to any formal movement; rather, she has been on a single-woman journey towards global recognition since the beginning of her artistic career. Infinity Stars displays this rejection of conformity. While it captures the essence of the original Infinity Nets works from afar—a cluster of stars that grow ad infinitum—upon close inspection the work reveals a painstaking attention to detail, where each single star is crafted explicitly with the meditative precision of a calligrapher, or perhaps even wood-carver of times gone by.  Each star has been executed to perfection, and at once recalls a certain element of “pop”, which is accentuated by the graphic black outlines.

The minimalist monochrome that Kusama chooses for her works has often earned her oversimplified comparisons to Western artists. However, according to the scholar Alexandra Munroe, “Characteristics of Kusama’s Infinity Nets paintings which relate to the Zero and Nul artists’ work are monochrome and non-compositional design, as advanced and articulated by Yves Klein, a mentor of the Zero group. […] Kusama’s paintings differ from Zero and Nul, however, in many of the same ways it differed from American Minimalism. […] Kusama’s repetition was never mechanistic or deductive, but the product of obsessional, compulsive performance.”³

 

Indeed, having suffered from serious hallucinations since her childhood, the organic pattern created with a simple movement of the wrist is essentially a meditative channel for the artist to transcend the plague of ongoing hallucinations to the real world. It is also a crucial foundation upon which the artist extends her later practice beyond the canvas. “My nets grew beyond myself and beyond the canvasses I was covering with them. They began to cover the walls, the ceiling, and finally the whole universe. I was standing at the center of the obsession over the passionate accretion and repetition inside of me.”⁴

 

Throughout the sixties and after the artist’s subsequent return to Japan in 1973, the Infinity works would frequently appear in different media and forms. However, while many later works took on bold colour tones and increasingly “Pop” elements, the lot on offer remains a testament to Kusama’s brilliance, and her celebration of infinity itself. And just as the artist has boldly stated, her paintings are indeed capable to “wrap up the whole universe, not to mention the earth.”⁵ Through the present Infinity Stars, a work which is galactic in both size and content, Kusama has indeed bottled the universe in its entirety. 

1 “The Struggle and Travel of My Soul”, Geijutsu Seikatsu, 1975

2 Donald Judd, “Reviews and Previews: New Names This Month- Yayoi Kusama.” Artnews 58, No. 6

3 Alexandra Munroe, “Radical,Will: Yayoi Kusama and the International Avant Garde- Kusama’s Painting and Sculpture in the 1960s”, Yayoi Kusama: Between Heaven and Earth, Fuji Television Gallery Co., Ltd, 1991

4 Udo Kultermann, “Yayoi Kusama and the Concept of Obsession in Contemporary Art”, Yayoi Kusama: Obsession

5 Yayoi Kusama Recent Oil Paintings, Ota Fine Art, 1998