In Conversation with Yayoi Kusama
For an artist who has spent her lifetime lobbying for peace, Yayoi Kusama uses the word 'fight' a lot. The 75-year old artist and living legend talks about fighting to create, fighting to be original, and fighting for her artistic vision. All this talk of fighting sits oddly in the mouth of an artist who was intimately connected with the anti-war movement of the 60s, a movement that still seems to live within her as she asks me about the recent US Presidential election, momentarily mixing up the names of George W. Bush and Lyndon B. Johnson, the earlier "war president" against whom she staged wild, avant-garde happenings involving polka dots and nudity on the streets of New York.
"When the Vietnam War became the worst, like Iraq, I made many happenings all over New York, at churches, the UN," she remembers proudly, "I burned 40 or 50 flags of the United States."
The fact that her art has now won wide acceptance is one more reason why the constant emphasis on fighting seems misplaced. Despite having conquered the art world, Kusama is very much still on her crusade, as she greets me at her Tokyo studio wearing a flame-colored DayGlo wig and a dress decorated with a pattern lifted from one of her more vivid pattern paintings; these outward trappings cause her to stand out physically from the dull, gray fabric of reality.
She seems especially keen to defend and expand her legacy by emphasizing her role in art history. For example, on the subject of soft sculptures and Claes Oldenburg she is emphatic: "I was before him. His wife came to see me at a group show at the Green Gallery in the early 60s. About 5 months later he had a one-man show at this gallery where he presented his first soft sculpture. She said to me 'I'm sorry, Kusama, we used your idea.' But I don't care because I moved on to different ideas."
She is unsparing in her discussion of rivals, insisting that I don't mention by name another New York-based Japanese female artist of the 60s who won undying fame by marrying a certain Liverpudlian.
"She came to see me when she was very poor – 5 or 6 years before she met John Lennon," Kusama says with the pride of an artist whose fame was secured by her work rather than her nuptials. "She was so poor because she didn't make any important shows. She was working at a coffee shop, and her husband was an apartment super."
The obsession and sometimes spite with which she defends her legacy might be ascribed to the mental fragility that has added to her artistic mystique. But if she is, as is supposed, a little crazy, she is crazy like a fox, as almost every twist and turn of her long career – from her groundbreaking work in New York in the 1950s and 60s, when she developed unique abstract minimalist net paintings to her more recent work, creating mind-boggling installations and 'art environments' – has proved her uncanny artistic judgment. The exhibition, which opened at MoMA, Tokyo, even includes a sketch from 1939 by the 10-year old Kusama revealing an early interest in dots that clearly hasn't gone away.
Other works show various early influences. Lingering Dream (1949) is a nod in the direction of the stylized plant-scapes of Georgia O'Keeffe, the American artist who encouraged Kusama to move to America in 1957; the powerful Accumulation of the Corpses (1950) sees this biomorphoic language used to express dark, troubled feelings. Her exploration of sexuality led to her phenomenal "Sex Obsession" works from the 60s onwards, in which normal objects like chairs, stepladders, and boats were encrusted with dozens, sometimes hundreds, of soft phallic protuberances, sewn from cloth and stuffed with cotton, the precursors to Oldenburg's works. One of the most hilarious of these is Macaroni Dress (1963), a delicate tutu-like dress on which a profusion of soft, cloth phalluses appears to have grown like mold.
"I was troubled about sex because I don't like men's phalluses," she explains. "Then I made many phalluses–thousands and thousands – and this helped me to overcome my sex obsession."
In works such as her Self Obliteration series, in which dots are used to not quite hide the self, it is possible to see a connection with certain Asian philosophies and religions, like the polymorphous nature of the life force in Shinto or the self abnegation of Buddhism. However, any comparison that diminishes the pure, individual creativity of the artist, is apt to draw a strong reaction from Kusama.
"It’s not from Buddhism or Shinto," she insists. "I am me. I was Kusama only. I made the new idea more than Shinto, more than Buddhism. The development of my philosophy in sculpture, installation, and happenings, was all my ideas against the old-fashioned ideas."
C.B.Liddell
NY Arts
2005
"When the Vietnam War became the worst, like Iraq, I made many happenings all over New York, at churches, the UN," she remembers proudly, "I burned 40 or 50 flags of the United States."
The fact that her art has now won wide acceptance is one more reason why the constant emphasis on fighting seems misplaced. Despite having conquered the art world, Kusama is very much still on her crusade, as she greets me at her Tokyo studio wearing a flame-colored DayGlo wig and a dress decorated with a pattern lifted from one of her more vivid pattern paintings; these outward trappings cause her to stand out physically from the dull, gray fabric of reality.
 |
| An example of Kusama's soft sculpture. |
She is unsparing in her discussion of rivals, insisting that I don't mention by name another New York-based Japanese female artist of the 60s who won undying fame by marrying a certain Liverpudlian.
"She came to see me when she was very poor – 5 or 6 years before she met John Lennon," Kusama says with the pride of an artist whose fame was secured by her work rather than her nuptials. "She was so poor because she didn't make any important shows. She was working at a coffee shop, and her husband was an apartment super."
The obsession and sometimes spite with which she defends her legacy might be ascribed to the mental fragility that has added to her artistic mystique. But if she is, as is supposed, a little crazy, she is crazy like a fox, as almost every twist and turn of her long career – from her groundbreaking work in New York in the 1950s and 60s, when she developed unique abstract minimalist net paintings to her more recent work, creating mind-boggling installations and 'art environments' – has proved her uncanny artistic judgment. The exhibition, which opened at MoMA, Tokyo, even includes a sketch from 1939 by the 10-year old Kusama revealing an early interest in dots that clearly hasn't gone away.
 |
| Accumulation of the Corpses (1950) |
Other works show various early influences. Lingering Dream (1949) is a nod in the direction of the stylized plant-scapes of Georgia O'Keeffe, the American artist who encouraged Kusama to move to America in 1957; the powerful Accumulation of the Corpses (1950) sees this biomorphoic language used to express dark, troubled feelings. Her exploration of sexuality led to her phenomenal "Sex Obsession" works from the 60s onwards, in which normal objects like chairs, stepladders, and boats were encrusted with dozens, sometimes hundreds, of soft phallic protuberances, sewn from cloth and stuffed with cotton, the precursors to Oldenburg's works. One of the most hilarious of these is Macaroni Dress (1963), a delicate tutu-like dress on which a profusion of soft, cloth phalluses appears to have grown like mold.
"I was troubled about sex because I don't like men's phalluses," she explains. "Then I made many phalluses–thousands and thousands – and this helped me to overcome my sex obsession."
 |
| Self Obliteration Net Obession Series 1966 |
"It’s not from Buddhism or Shinto," she insists. "I am me. I was Kusama only. I made the new idea more than Shinto, more than Buddhism. The development of my philosophy in sculpture, installation, and happenings, was all my ideas against the old-fashioned ideas."
C.B.Liddell
NY Arts
2005
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