- 442
Yayoi Kusama
Estimate
200,000 - 300,000 USD
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Description
- Yayoi Kusama
- Untitled (Mannequin)
- wig and acrylic on mannequin
- 58 1/2 by 25 1/2 by 16 in. 148.6 by 64.8 by 40.6 cm.
- Executed in 1966.
Provenance
Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner in February 1999
Acquired from the above by the present owner in February 1999
Exhibited
Los Angeles County Museum of Art; New York, Museum of Modern Art; Minneapolis, The Walker Art Center; Tokyo, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama, 1958-1968, March 1998 – July 1999
Catalogue Note
A stunning product of Yayoi Kusama’s eccentric spirit, Untitled (Mannequin) from 1966 stands as a metonymic representation of the artist’s constructed persona and self-proclaimed insanity that define her prolific career. This work embodies the form of a young woman painted in brilliant red engulfed in shimmery golden webs—a stylistic trope she famously coined in her most celebrated series, the Infinity Nets. Here, Kusama toys with the notion of the human body as host to her compulsive repetition of form, with the all-encompassing net overwhelming the young girl, a stand-in for the artist herself. For Kusama, art is a form of survival, where incessant and uncontrollable repetitive behavior serves as a psychological bulwark against her brooding personal fears. In the present work, Kusama thus extrapolates the inner workings of her own psyche into a three-dimensional work of art that seems to bristle with the dynamism of the repetitive skeins, cells and networks of our own complex interiors.
Untitled (Mannequin) represents the three dimensional continuation of Kusama’s early Infinity Net paintings combined with the sculptural conceit of the Accumulations series, both of which solidified Kusama’s iconic visual motif by the early 1960s. Referring to her lifelong obsession with these nets, Kusama explains: “I would cover a canvas with nets then continue painting them on the table, on the floor and finally on my own body. As I repeated this process over and over again, the nets began to expand to infinity. I forgot about myself as they enveloped me, clinging to my arms and legs and clothes and filling the entire room” (Laura Hoptman, Akira Tatehata, and Udo Kultermann, Eds., Yayoi Kusama, London 2000, p. 103). A figurative placeholder for the artist herself, the present work joins a larger host of mannequins created over the artist's prolific career— forging an imaginary army of Kusama’s brilliant insanity as the citizens of her creative genius.
Untitled (Mannequin) represents the three dimensional continuation of Kusama’s early Infinity Net paintings combined with the sculptural conceit of the Accumulations series, both of which solidified Kusama’s iconic visual motif by the early 1960s. Referring to her lifelong obsession with these nets, Kusama explains: “I would cover a canvas with nets then continue painting them on the table, on the floor and finally on my own body. As I repeated this process over and over again, the nets began to expand to infinity. I forgot about myself as they enveloped me, clinging to my arms and legs and clothes and filling the entire room” (Laura Hoptman, Akira Tatehata, and Udo Kultermann, Eds., Yayoi Kusama, London 2000, p. 103). A figurative placeholder for the artist herself, the present work joins a larger host of mannequins created over the artist's prolific career— forging an imaginary army of Kusama’s brilliant insanity as the citizens of her creative genius.