82-year-old artist during his long artistic career has tried different genres - from painting to performances and installations

Museum Tate Modern, London, February 9 - June 4, 2012

Yayoi Kusama
Obsession. Paris, 2008

Installation Source: economist.com


Yayoi Kusama
Room oblivion

Installation Source: theartnewspaper.com

Yayoi Kusama (Yayoi Kusama) a child uses the arts to combat disorder of its own psyche, in particular, with the condition of awesome when she lost the illusion of the self: in such moments, the boundary between her "I" and the world suddenly blurred.

Name Kusama, who is now 82 years old, roared in the 1960s years in New York, but her work was almost entirely forgotten in the 1970s, when she came back home in Japan, and moved to a psychiatric hospital, where he still lives. Today, her star rises again. In 2008 one of the works Kusama went at auction for 5.8 million dollars, becoming at that time, the second value of the product of fine art created by women.

Last year, Yayoi Kusama retrospective traveled Museum of Queen Sofia in Madrid and Paris, the Pompidou Center. Now the show reached London today Kusama exhibition of works opens at the Museum of Modern Art Tate Modern, and in July she will travel to New York, where half a century ago began a career Kusama, and will be presented to visitors to the Museum Whitney (Whitney Museum).

his first contribution to the history of postwar art Kusama made in the late 1950s, when I started to create large abstract monochrome works, which on closer inspection turned out to be composed of multiple merging of small dots. These works were a response Kusama abstract expressionists, especially the method of "dripping", invented by Jackson Pollock (Jackson Pollock). It is through these works Kusama also among the forerunners of an important art movement - minimalism.

canvases of the 1950s Kusama called "networks to infinity." According to the artist herself, they defended it from reaching the inside of the vacuum, which she is most afraid of and afraid. In 1961 she created a picture-"Network" 10 meters long - work that well conveys the degree of fear, and the degree of ambition of the artist. Their "network" Kusama continues to "spin" so far, with the only difference being that they had made from a monochrome color. This infinite series Kusama works anticipated the same endless loop of Damien Hirst (Damien Hirst) on the same theme of colored roundels.

Kusama is also one of the pioneers of art installation. In the 1963 Gertrude Stein Gallery was exhibited her work "Cluster: an exhibition of thousands of boats" - boats, filled with phallic figurines have been placed in the hall, pasted over 999 black-and-white photographs of the same boat. This work, connecting Surrealism and Pop Art, was a milestone and a sign that the art went beyond the canvas and frame, coming in three-dimensional world. Three years later, in 1966, Andy Warhol repeated this technique in his "wallpaper with a cow." About Kusama Warhol said: "We were like two warring clans, the leader, as the enemies pursuing the same goals».

Another important project of the artist became "a room of endless mirrors." This cycle also lasted for years. One of the latest series of works is a mirror room, decorated with hundreds of small light bulbs, countless times reflected in the ceiling and walls, the floor area covered by water. Mirror Room - an example of how Kusama transform their own fears, drawing from them the inspiration to create a filled, causing the admiration of the images: the viewer who is in the mirror room, it seems that it is in the center of the magical universe.

In the late 1960s, Kusama has become more and in the author's performances, which, however, it is equally and glorified, and profaned. Action, entitled "Holidays body art" or "happenings oblivion," consisted of dancing naked hippies (and often their bodies were adorned with a proprietary pattern of the artist - peas), who burned flags or depicted sexual acts.

Yayoi Kusama has never been afraid of attention: this says, for example, her exotic looks - bright wigs, costumes with extravagant designs that blend with the design of her work. Every artist starts his day with a review of press publications devoted to her person. And it is not out of vanity - for it is a means to combat the fear of losing their own identity; it seems that the image created by the media, it helps to establish itself in the belief that it is still there.

Many women artists over the years waiting for recognition. However, plus the late arrival of the favor of the public and critics is that it can provoke an unexpected burst of creative activity. Louise Bourgeois has created some of his best work on the ninth decade of life. Now, with the Yayoi Kuusamo, it seems, is the same: the news of the impending Tate retrospective in a dramatic effect on her, says Glenn Scott Wright (Glenn Scott Wright), director of the gallery Victoria Miro, representing the work of artists in Europe. Under the influence of this happy news in the last two years, Kusama has created over 140 works.

The artist writes, with its canvas on the table, which can be approached from either side. Her new works by encouraging an incredible diversity of composition, colors and poetic names - perhaps this is the most intimate picture of Kusama in her career. Many authors, aging, give only a lifeless repetition of his earlier works. Yayoi Kusama, on the contrary, even in 80 years as an artist was able to open up from an unexpected quarter. "Death is not far off, but I'm still not sure if I'm a great artist or not - recognized Kusama - and that's why I was so immersed in painting».

April 9 Tate Modern will open a retrospective of another lover of multi-colored peas - Damien Hirst. For Hirst points - an optimistic theme. In recognition of the artist himself, he began to create a "pinpoint" operation in an attempt to move away from the painting, filled with existential anxiety. The differences in the perception of the topic in two well-known authors is obvious if you read an interesting interview, which took the Hurst Kusama in 1998 for the catalog of the exhibition "Yayoi Kusama: Now," held at Robert Miller Gallery in New York. The responses to two questions Kusama Hirst - the key to understanding all the artist's creativity.

Damien Hirst : In your work so much joy and in the texts, on the contrary, a lot of grief ...

Yayoi Kusama : I do not agree with the fact that, as you suggested in your question, my work expresses the joy. I still have not committed suicide just because using art as a protection against the illness. As far as my lyrics, I write them in tears, when my heart fills with sorrow. This is a tragic aesthetics.

Damien Hirst : Being an artist means to be lonely?

Yayoi Kusama : I'm lonely and as an artist and as a person. It's almost unbearable, especially when I listened to the sound of leaves in a strong wind. When I get into a tall building, I have a desire to commit suicide by throwing himself down. Only because of my passion for art, I still did not do so ».

Prepared by Mary Estrova, AI

Source: economist.com , artinvestment.ru