Ms Kusama in the 60s, Horse Play, happening. Back then she also sent an open letter to Nixon offering him sex for ending Vietnam War. Photo courtesy of Yayoi Kusama
Her work, to put briefly, looks at the being in the world, the self and the infinity. Her art is inspired (if this can be the word used here) by her mental illness, as she describes: "/---/ when I looked up I saw the same pattern covering the ceiling, the windows and the walls, and finally all over the room, my body and the universe. I felt as if I had begun to self-obliterate, to revolve in the infinity of endless time and the absoluteness of space, and be reduced to nothingness. /---/" It seems to me that her art does not portray pleasant infinity while the audience would normally sense 'getting lost' in an enjoyable way or at least they're led to a new sensation. However, the ordinary audience can draw back to their reality at their will or not be trapped in the polka-dotted reality created by Kusama.
The polka dots are the signature of her work. She says they symbolise the sun as well as the moon, which is calm. Reading about polka dots on Wikipedia made me think that, indeed, the pattern is mainly used on toys and children's ware. Looking at the pattern for a little too long makes one restless, well at least as a grown up, I can't remember how I felt about at my earlier years. It's the mind who takes us from the infinity to out everyday, to problems, whatever to hold us in the expanded now, what we sense and generally call the presence. While losing the mind (doesn't have to go crazy) and giving it to the moment will lead us back to infinity. Couple of my friends have said children seem scary, and to me they do too sometimes. It can be that they arise from nothingness and that reminds us or because their mind works differently, it's more free, at times in a freaky freaky way. Being without all the memories and experiences holding their minds still (and maybe know-how) are makes them more loose to catch the moment and be closer to the infinity. According to Henri Bergson there are several levels of attention to life (attention a la vie, elutähelepanu). The extreme of daydreaming is where attention to life overall disappears, meaning death. Bergson's philosophy is extremely interesting in relation to this although he looks at the memory and mind but also the vertical movement from these.
Bergson says insanity may enrich a person's life, while Kusama states she would have killed herself long ago if there wasn't for arts.
Infinity rooms, photo by Peter Murphy
I saw her Narcissus Garden in Edinburgh without knowing anything about her then. Photo of this somewhere else sometime else by John Coulthart.
Her website is also really beautiful http://www.yayoi-kusama.jp/e/books/index.html
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