Directed, written and produced by Heather Lenz, this well-researched documentary provides an excellent overview of the life and importance of this innovative artist.Īn artistic underdog, Kusama has triumphed over a traumatic childhood, sexism, and racism, all while she uses art to quell the hallucinatory symptoms of mental illness. In January, Magnolia Pictures released Kusama: Infinity on DVD. What is it about Kusama's work that has captured our imagination and social media accounts? Is it that her bright colors festooned with playfully repeating dot motifs are a cheerful visual feast during what are frequently referred to as "these uncertain times"? Or is it the mystique of her Infinity Mirror Rooms, which are both ready-made for ethereal meditation on the outer cosmos, while also begging for selfies in the social media age? During her talk at the High, she called the response "a true testament to one of the most extraordinary artists living today." The tidal wave of popularity surrounding Kusama's retrospective stunned even Infinity Mirrors curator Mika Yoshitake. On Instagram alone, #infinitymirrors has over 113,000 image posts. Approximately 9,000 tickets reserved for the final week of the exhibit sold out in around two hours. The High expected 140,000 visitors to their showing. The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden reported that during the show's 2017 world debut, nearly 160,000 people visited Infinity Mirrors over a nearly three-month period, helping to double their average attendance with a record 475,000 visitors. Six of her mesmerizing installations, the Infinity Mirror Rooms, are included in the exhibit. Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors, an overwhelmingly popular retrospective spanning the 65 years of the artist’s career, made its last North American stop at the High Museum in Atlanta, GA, where it closed this weekend. Her record has since been surpassed, but Kusama is still the hottest ticket in town. When Christie’s auctioned her monochromatic Infinity Net painting, White No. "I followed the thread of art and somehow discovered a path that would allow me to live.In November 2014, Japanese avant-garde artist Yayoi Kusama became the most expensive living female artist at auction. "I fight pain, anxiety, and fear every day, and the only method I have found that relieved my illness is to keep creating art," she told an interviewer in 2012. She says that art has become her way to express her mental problems. Kusama has been open about her mental health and has resided since the 1970s in a mental health facility which she leaves daily to walk to her nearby studio to work. Kusama has continued to create art in various museums around the world, from the 1950s through the 2020s. She experienced a period in the 70s during which her work was largely forgotten, but a revival of interest in the 1980's brought her art back into public view. Embracing the rise of the hippie counterculture of the late 1960s, she came to public attention when she organized a series of happenings in which naked participants were painted with brightly coloured polka dots. She moved to New York City in 1958 and was a part of the New York avant-garde scene throughout the 1960s, especially in the pop-art movement. She was inspired by American Abstract impressionism. Kusama was raised in Matsumoto, and trained at the Kyoto City University of Arts for a year in a traditional Japanese painting style called nihonga. Her work influenced that of her contemporaries, including Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg. She has been acknowledged as one of the most important living artists to come out of Japan, the world's top-selling female artist, and the world's most successful living artist. Her work is based in conceptual art and shows some attributes of feminism, minimalism, surrealism, Art Brut, pop art, and abstract expressionism, and is infused with autobiographical, psychological, and sexual content. Yayoi Kusama ( 草間 彌生, Kusama Yayoi, born 22 March 1929) is a Japanese contemporary artist who works primarily in sculpture and installation, and is also active in painting, performance, video art, fashion, poetry, fiction, and other arts.
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