Yayoi Kusama (1929–2026) has passed away. She was 97. When every artist in the world thought that they were ostracised by society for being crazy and, ironically, lived in the midst of that society, earning success and enjoying all that society could give them, Kusama chose to live in a mental facility. She walked to her studio every day, made art, and returned to her room in the asylum.
Kusama, whose works were displayed in India for the first time as part of last year’s India Art Fair, was an inverted image of Vincent van Gogh, who has been the reigning star in the kingdom of artistic lunacy. In the post-Freudian understanding of art, a woman’s genius is often directly connected to her sexual frustration and hysteria, while a man’s genius is seen as an expression of his divine capabilities. But we do not have any history of a woman genius dying of sexually transmitted diseases, as did Gauguin, Basquiat, and Haring.
Kusama was neither sexually frustrated nor hysterical, but she was a misfit in the male-dominated American art scene—or, for that matter, in any art scene—and found solace in polka dots, a cultural symbol from her Japanese upbringing. She used them profusely to inhabit the skins of her works. Polka dots were to Kusama what sunflowers were to Van Gogh. Despite her self-isolating madness, which was philosophical, resistive, and affective, Kusama gained acceptance in the art world as a feminist artist with an exotic bent of mind.
The biggest challenge before any artist is to develop a recognisable set of symbols that is exclusive to them. Kusama achieved this much earlier, as her polka dots became unmissable. She travelled through the various phases of technological evolution witnessed by the 20th century and upgraded her works each time without fail. By the new millennium, Kusama’s works had become immersive, interactive, and spectacular, replicating the mood of the times. It was a world of intelligent clones, and through the clever use of mirrors, she created a magical and illusionary world of transcendence.
With yellow pumpkins covered in black dots, and vice versa, Kusama created a symbology of her own. “Pumpkin” is also slang for an idiot or a foolish person. In the politico-culinary history of Japan, the pumpkin is seen as a Portuguese import that eventually became an integral part of Japanese culinary culture. Perhaps Kusama used the image of the pumpkin to suggest both stupidity and the colonial import of things, along with their future implications.
Like Ai Weiwei, Takashi Murakami, and their father figure, Andy Warhol, Kusama also had a studio with assistants who executed her work under her strict instructions. Like the Ghibli studio of the late Hayao Miyazaki, the Kusama studio also saw her working like any other assistant, without asking for a special cubicle or an executive chair.
Kusama will remain in our hearts for her works and for the madness she brought into and expressed through her art.
JohnyML
No comments:
Post a Comment