Wonder and Disquiet in the Details

Abstract

Yayoi Kusama Tate Modern London, U.K. February 9-June 5, 2012 Yayoi Kusama's career has spanned nearly seven decades and a variety of media, from painting, collage, photography, and video, to installation, sculpture, and even fashion design. A constant in her work has been its connection with the natural world, vet it does not reflect a romanticized ideal, a botanist's neutral attitude, or a completely surreal vision. Kusama's work marries observation and subjectivity to reflect a natural world that combines all of these characteristics in a fine balance: a Romantic's sense of wonder, a scientist's attention to detail, and a surrealist sensitivity to the unnerving. Born in 1929, Kusama came of age in a Japan marked by World W'cir II. The var may account for the apocalyptic atmosphere of some of her youthful work, but the more lasting influence from Kusama's cady Jile was her family's seed nurseries. Kusama built her technical skills surrounded by plants and flowers, sometimes using seed sacks as canvas. Even then, Kusarna did not restrict herself to photorealism, but abstracted organic forms as if placing them under a microscope. Painted in rich colors against dark backgrounds, the forms glow like jellyfish. Kusama's abstraction is never cold: even her least representational pieces stimulate the viewer's imagination, provoking an inchoate feeling of discovery while maintaining their mystery. And here is where some press reviews have risked unfairly representing Kusatna. Visitors to the exhibition might expect a collection of playful, even shallow pieces that invite the viewer to experience the artist's disturbed vision of the world through her application of pattern, most notably polka dots. One wonders whether the word obsessive would be used so liberally if Kusama were male. It is true that Kusama voluntarily checked herself into a mental institution in 1977, and has lived there ever since. an interview with 1313C Radio's Front Row (February 9, 2012), Kusama said that the repeated patterns she applies to her canvases have been invading her field of vision fOr most of her lift. She also explained that the use of repetition in her art has helped her to cope with mental problems. Vet her work is far from just an application of pattern. What emerges, instead, is a moving attention to detail, giving some of her work an aura of devotional art. her meditative 1950s series of In lin it y Net paintings that evoke python skin, and entrancing multi-panel works such as rellowI Trees (1994) and Weeds (1996). …