Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro Gallery, London, and Ota Fine arts, Tokyo; © Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama, "Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli's Field (Floor Show)" (1965-98). Sewn stuffed fabric, board, mirror room without ceiling, 8 x 15 x 15 ft.

February 2009 Field Guide

Roni Horn

"Where in the World?"

Paper Cuts: 200 Years of Black Paper Dolls

Gedi Sibony

Charles Darwin

Dan Graham

"The Dirty Hands"

Year of Fashion

Isabelle Cornaro

Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Sophie Ristelhueber

Santiago Sierra

Glenn Brown

The Face of Our Time

Yayoi Kusama Phillips de Pury Makes Its (Small) Mark The Second Sex (at Auction, Anyway) Stone Hill Center ShContemporary on Solid Footing, Despite Setbacks Chinese Modern and Asian Contemporary Show Strength at Sotheby’s Hong Kong Yayoi Kusama Fantastic Voyage

Send a letter to the Editor

Save to Del.icio.us Digg this

For the past 40 years, under the obsessively original eye of Yayoi Kusama, rowboats and purses have been upholstered in fabric tentacles; frolicking human bodies (and one memorable steed) in 1968’s Obliterate the Horse by Polka-Dots have been painted with headache-inducing dots; and rooms have been inundated with mirrored balls and equally reflective walls. In one such piece, Narcissus Garden, from 1966, the Japanese artist’s figure — clad in a bright red onesie — lay Christlike among the countless mirror images. It was a wry acknowledgment of the dark solipsism of her pursuit: self-obliteration. Garden is included in a new survey, opening this month in Sydney, of the artist’s prodigious oeuvre. Coinciding with her 80th birthday, "Mirrored Years" features works past and present — including a new series of paintings — that showcase the artist’s singular motif: compulsive repetition taken to hallucinatory, gorgeous, and often ominous extremes.

mca.com.au

"Yayoi Kusama" originally appeared in the February 2009 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' February 2009 Table of Contents.