Yayoi Kusama is one of the most recognisable and culturally influential artists working today. Born in Tokyo in 1929, the artist has been haunted by vivid hallucinations and dreams throughout...
Yayoi Kusama is one of the most recognisable and culturally influential artists working today. Born in Tokyo in 1929, the artist has been haunted by vivid hallucinations and dreams throughout her life, the basis of which inspires much of her art. Kusama’s artistic practice is a form of self therapy, a way of escaping her mind and re-creating the infinite repetitions that infiltrate her mind. She described how “My art originates from hallucinations only I can see. I translate the hallucinations and obsessional images that plague me into sculptures and paintings”.
Under the advice of Georgia O’Keefe, Kusama moved to New York in 1958 remaining until 1973 when she returned to Tokyo. Kusama credited America as “the country that raised me”. Although Kusama often presented herself as an outsider, wearing full Japanese dress to events, while in the city she befriended some of the most influential artists of the time including Andy Warhol and Donald Judd.
Created in 1978, ‘Far End of Silver Clouds’, comes from Kusama’s celebrated nets series, a body of work that has dominated her oeuvre since the 1950s. Here, swathes of net emerge from the hazy clouds just like a vision, drifting in and out of the scene. From different angels different colours emerge, silver from one side and blue from another. Kusama regularly experiments with optic, creating works that transform before the eye. Kusama once described how “The nets that I paint not only transcend me, they transcend the canvas. These nets continue to spread the walls, and the ceiling. Ultimately, they cover the entire universe”. The enthralling and mesmeric nature of ‘Far End of Silver Clouds’ gives a unique insight into Kusama’s vision and deft handling of conceptual and spatial abstraction.
In 2016, Kusama was presented with the Order of Culture, one of the highest honours to be bestowed by the Imperial Family in Japan. She is the first woman to receive the award for drawing and sculpture. The same year, she was also named one of Time Magazine’s World’s 100 Most Influential People. Having represented Japan in the 1993 Venice Biennale, Kusama has gone on to have a touring retrospective at Centre Pompidou, Paris and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. She has also had solo exhibitions at such institutions as The Broad, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane and The National Museum of Art, Osaka.