Yayoi Kusama's 1960 red Infinity Net, No. 3P.B., comes from the very start. She would go on making these works for more than 60 years.
The idea traces back to a red tablecloth in her mother's house, its pattern imagined expanding outward until it enveloped her. It continued on her flight from Japan to the United States, looking out at an infinite expanse of waves. Her early nets came mostly in white and red, and many of the reds lean toward orange. This one is pure red.
It was also the painting that first gave Kusama hope of breaking into a male-dominated, overwhelmingly white New York art world. Shown at the Whitney in 1961–62, it hung alongside many of the greatest American artists of her generation. Up close, its impasto rises into peaks — the same pull toward the infinite that would later fill her Infinity Rooms.
No. 3P.B. will be offered in The Now & Contemporary Evening Auction, presented by CELINE, at Sotheby's New York on 16 November.
