The Fondation Beyeler in Basel dedicates a major retrospective to Yayoi Kusama with over 300 works, from Infinity Net to the famous mirror rooms
He was only 10 years old, in 1939, when he drew the portrait of his young mother with her eyes closed and her face covered in dots that reached her hair, extending across the entire sheet of paper. An obsession with polka dots which then becomes an aesthetic feature and a sign of profound communication for Yayoi Kusama.
To the Japanese artist, one of the most significant on the international scene, born in Matsumoto in 1929 to a family of seed traders (perhaps hence her passion for dots and nature in general), the Fondation Bayeler in Basel dedicates a rich exhibition of over 300 works, of which 130 have never been exhibited before, coming from collections in Japan, Singapore, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Sweden, France, Switzerland and above all part of the artist’s personal repertoire.
The works, which occupy more than 10 rooms of the Foundation, reconstruct not only Kusama’s artistic journey, but also the human one of a young woman who during the 1950s found herself learning the traditional techniques of Japanese painting, but who from the 1960s, upon her arrival in New York, was finally able to give vent to her imagination through a personal and innovative grammar, enriched by increasingly radical performative experiences. And if the passage from Japan to America is marked by the wonderful and dreamlike canvases entitled The Pacific Ocean (1958), among the first works of the Infinity Net series, the arrival in New York coincides with the creation of videos and performances that put the artist and his body in the foreground. These are the years of the war in Vietnam, of the protests, of the communes, of free love and of the experimentation of new languages from those of art to design, to fashion: Yayoi Kusama practices them all, with extreme passion and originality, as evidenced by the many photographs on display and the docu-videos.
In fact, in those years he also began to create objects such as Untitle Chair (1963), a white chair on which pieces of padded fabric accumulate which prevent sitting (hence the artistic phase Accumulation) and clothes, his youthful passion (he also opened a clothes shop), considered a symbol of liberation from the restrictive social norms imposed by the bourgeoisie.
In this process of colonization of every everyday object, artistic production has grown exponentially and continues to do so. Currently from Tokyo, where Kusama lives her 96 years painting every day on smaller, colorful and joyful canvases, in a room of a clinic where she has decided to reside, not far from her foundation and atelier.
Many of these latest works from the Everyday I pray for love series, which began in 2021 until today, are present in the Fondation exhibition where we move, therefore, from the hypnotic universe of the infinity-net paintings, to the videos of the New York period, up to the immersive intensity of the Infinity mirror rooms, designed specifically for this exhibition and one of which is located in the park. «Kusama’s works are not only made to be observed, but also to be experienced, in particular the spatial installations and those with mirrors that immerse the observer in a sort of floating liquid. In this way Kusama transforms personal conflicts into a collective experience, her art into a place of confrontation and consolation, of strength and vulnerability” explains curator Mouna Mekouar.
You can look at, touch, for example the inflatable “snakes” of the Hope polka dots installation, you can play with the mirrors inside the glass rooms and above all you can get lost in the hypnotic universe of Kusama’s infinite dots: in short, you remain enveloped in a fantastic world which, beyond the banalities about the artist’s alleged mental illness, refers to the infinite line of existence between life and death.
