Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Years

Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Years
Primary School Education Resource Kit
Principal Sponsor
City Gallery Wellington is managed by the Wellington Museums Trust with major funding support from the Wellington City Council.
City Gallery Wellington Education Programme is a Ministry of Education Learning Experiences Outside the Classroom provider.
Image: Yayoi Kuma, Dots Obsession-Day (detail), 2008. Mixed media. Installation view: “JAPAN! CULTURE + HYPER CULTURE” at The Kennedy Center,
Washington, D.C. Courtesy: Victoria Miro Gallery / Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo © Yayoi Kusama, Yayoi Kusama Studio.
Education Resource Kit
INTRODUCTION & EXHIBITION DETAILS
03
How to use this Education Resource Kit
04
Exhibition introduction: Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Years
04
Artist profile: Yayoi Kusama
05
Artist’s statement: ‘My message to the world’
06
Exhibition themes
• Altered perception/optical illusion
• Immersive environments/physicality and scale
• Repetitive pattern/obsessive art-making processes
• Identity, persona, and self-obliteration
EDUCATION PROGRAMME
08
09
• Education Programme and Curriculum links
• Pre and post visit activity suggestions
CONTEXTS, CONCEPTS AND PROCESSES
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Timeline
12
Artist’s techniques and processes
• Installation
• Screen printing
• Sculpture/soft sculpture
• Painting
• Performance/video
13
Related art genres
• Minimalism
• Op Art
• Pop Art
• Abstract Expressionism
• Feminism
• Performance Art
15
Te Ao Māori: Mātauranga Māori concepts
EXTENSION ACTIVITIES
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18
20
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Māori artist comparisons: Reuben Paterson
Shona Rapira Davies
Visual art project ideas
• ‘Kusama’ your class room
• Kusama fashion parade
• Suspended sculptures
• Soft sculptures
• Mirror magic
• Repeat pattern prints
Art terms glossary
Te Reo Māori glossary
Online resources and further reading
ARTWORK ANALYSIS
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Artwork analysis: Yayoi Kusama, The Moment of Regeneration, 2004
How to use this Education Resource Kit
Yayoi Kusama, Narcissus Garden 1996. Installation view. The 33rd Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy. Image courtesy the artist, Yayoi Kusama Studio, Victoria
Miro Gallery, London and Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo © Yayoi Kusama, Yayoi Kusama Studio.
This Education Resource Kit has been written by City Gallery
Educators Helen Lloyd, Miri Young and Amanda Hereaka.
It is designed to support teachers bringing students to
visit the exhibition Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Years at City
Gallery Wellington. The kit provides additional information
about the exhibition and suggested activities to use in the
classroom with students before and after a Gallery visit. It is
intended to complement the exhibition brochure, exhibition
publication and City Gallery Education Programmes.
Further information about the artist is available on the
Gallery website, in the Gallery reading room, and in the
recommended reading list at the end of this kit.
The Te Ao Māori section of this kit outlines some of the
Māori concepts related to the Education Programme for
Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Years. The Māori artist comparison
is designed for students to use in the research of artist
models, and to extend cross-cultural learning.
Before booking a visit, teachers are advised to contact a
member of the Education Team to discuss your specific
curriculum focus. All Gallery based programmes can be
tailored to meet the specific learning and timetabling needs
of each group.
The images presented within this resource kit are for educational use only,
and should not be reproduced or published without permission of City
Gallery Wellington.
© The City Gallery Wellington 2009, the artist, authors and photographers.
Published by the City Gallery Wellington. All rights reserved. The publisher
grants permission for this education kit to be reproduced only for education
purposes and strictly in relation to the exhibition Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored
Years. All artworks are copyright and used with permission.
Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Years is a partnership between Museum
Boijmanns van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Museum of Contemporary Art,
Sydney and City Gallery Wellington. It is curated by Jaap Guldemond
(Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen), Franck Gautherot, Kim Seungduk (Le
Consortium, Dijon), with additional works selected for Australasia by Judith
Blackall, Director of Artistic Programmes, Museum of Contemporary Art,
Sydney and Paula Savage Director, City Gallery Wellington.
Catalogue details:
Yayio Kusama: Mirrored Years
304 pages. 175x235mm
Essays by Midori Yamamura, Diedrich Diederichsen, Franck Gautherot and
Kim Seungduk, and an interview between Franck Gautherot and Lily van
der Stoker.
Please note:
Teachers are advised that the exhibition includes two video
artworks which contain some nudity. We recommend that
teachers view the exhibition before bringing students if you
are concerned. These videos are not part of the Education
Programme.
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Exhibition introduction
Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Years
Artist profile
Yayoi Kusama
‘I Kusama am the Modern Alice in Wonderland.’
Yayoi Kusama
‘When we obliterate nature and our bodies with polka dots,
we become part of the unity of our environment, I become
part of the eternal, and we obliterate ourselves in love.’
Yayoi Kusama
The exhibition Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Years offers
visitors ‘the Kusama Experience’—an immersion in a
range of strange, evocative environments, with a focus
on mirroring, reflection and repetitive patterns. It covers
the range of Kusama’s artistic production—from wallmounted assemblages and paintings to room-sized mirrored
installations, which offer the viewer an experience of
endlessness, and infinity.
Kusama describes herself as an ‘obsessive artist’; her work
reveals a fixation with repetition, pattern and accumulation.
In addition to holding an integral and complex role in
art history, Kusama has been highly influential to a new
generation of artists and designers. Her unique perception,
originality and uncompromising vision have ‘helped
position her as one of the most acclaimed and respected
contemporary artists working today’ (Judith Blackall, MCA
Education Kit, 2009).
Kusama’s installations offer students an exciting otherworldly sensory experience. Students become fully
immersed in the physical engagement of Kusama’s
installations which explore space, light, texture, pattern,
colour and scale. This experience allows students to be
acutely aware of the responses they have, often their own
image is relfected back, so that they literally become part of
the artwork they are viewing.
Portrait Yayoi Kusama. Image courtesy the artist, Yayoi Kusama Studio,
Victoria Miro Gallery, London and Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo © Yayoi Kusama,
Yayoi Kusama Studio.
•Yayoi Kusama was born in 1929, in Matsumoto, Nagano
Prefecture in Japan
•In Japan Kusama studied ‘Nihonga’ painting, a formal
Japanese technique using ground pigment and animal glues
•Kusama left Japan when she was 27 (1958) and moved
to New York City where she established her reputation as a
leader in the avant-garde art world
•In New York she organised ‘happenings’ and performance
art pieces
•She has exhibited work with Claes Oldenburg, Andy
Warhol, and Jasper Johns (major artists in the Pop Art
movement of the 1960s)
•She returned to Japan because of health reasons in 1973,
and now lives in Tokyo
•Kusama has twice represented Japan at the Venice
Biennale, in 1966 and 1993
•In 2006, Kusama became the first Japanese woman to
receive the ‘Praemium Imperiale’, one of Japan’s most
prestigious prizes for internationally recognised artists
Yayoi Kusama, Invisible Life 2001. Convex mirrors. Courtesy the artist,
Yayoi Kusama Studio, Victoria Miro Gallery, London and Ota Fine Arts,
Tokyo © Yayoi Kusama, Yayoi Kusama Studio.
•Kusama turned 80 in March, 2009. She has struggled
with mental illness throughout her life, often experiencing
hallucinations and anxiety, and currently chooses to live in a
mental hospital. Kusama continues to play a prominent role
in the international art world.
•In November 2008, Christies New York sold a work by her
for $5,100,000, a record for a living female artist.
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Artist’s statement
My message to the world:
‘Love Forever’
When I was about ten years old, I began painting pictures
and making sculpture-like objects by lining up small pebbles
from a river behind my parents’ house on the dried river
bed. These are the origins of the forms that I have been
creating throughout my life ever since I can remember,
giving it my all. I have been treading a long path of my
forever-shining life seeking the truth, evolving continually.
All my life I have had aspirations for world peace and love,
with a deep and passionate ‘hymn of praise to humanity’.
During this process, I always envision the continual and
repetitive appearances and disappearances of beautygenerating hallucinations that well up in my mind. I named
this phenomenon ‘stereotypical repetition’.
During the days of my never-ending life of hard work, I
developed a ‘psychosomatic syndrome’ as a result of
painting too many pictures. I have translated this into
my work through a large number of diverse themes that
include: ‘Prisoner Behind a Curtain of Depersonalisation’,
‘Sex, Food Obsession’, ‘Aggregated Earth’, ‘Infinite Space
of the Universe’, ‘Psychosomatic Art’, ‘Longing for the
Universe’, ‘Driving Image’, ‘Cellular Thinking’, ‘Death of
Vacuum’, ‘Are There Ends in the Universe?’ among others.
Yayoi Kusama, GOING OUT INTO THE FIELD 2006, from the series Love
Forever 2004-7. Silk screen on canvas. Courtesy the artist, Yayoi Kusama
Studio, Victoria Miro Gallery, London and Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo © Yayoi
Kusama, Yayoi Kusama Studio.
From now until the last day of my life, I will keep developing my creative process and my artistic philosophy while maintaining
an artistic position on everything.
I may be physically getting older, but I am ever so enthusiastic now about creating art work. My consistent avant-garde
approach to art, I think, has exerted a great influence on the art work of American and European artists, as well as other
artists, especially Lucas Samaras’ Mirror Room, Claes Oldenburg’s Soft Sculpture and Andy Warhol’s Stereotypical
Repetition: Cow Wallpaper, in which cow heads are repeatedly shown on posters all over the walls. These are the historically
famous titles Kusama invented. I have been involved in Pop art, Minimal art, Happenings, Environments, Avant-garde films
and others, as well as in Zero in Europe, while pursuing and realising my philosophy of art.
My ever inexhaustible energies will continue to evolve as long as I live beyond the limit of my body. The incredible beauty of
humanity for which I say ‘Love Forever’. I have been struggling throughout my life with this everlasting message.
I believe my aspirations will not fade away after I am gone and I want to leave it to those interested in my art as a message
from Yayoi Kusama – an eternal wish for ‘peace’ and the renunciation of war based on ‘humanity’.
Yayoi Kusama – February 2009
5
Exhibition themes
Kusama has developed artwork across a broad range of
media, and throughout her career she has continued to
explore and re-examine particular subjects, themes and
ideas. These include altered perception and optical illusion,
immersive environments, physicality and scale, repetitive
pattern and obsessive art-making processes. Her work also
examines aspects of her own identity, a projection of
particular personas and the notion of self-obliteration.
Altered perception and optical illusion
Much of Kusama’s work explores a longstanding interest in
altered perception and optical illusion. Many of Kusama’s
installations demonstrate her fascination with the notions
of infinity and self obliteration. Her dizzying use of
fluorescent polka dots on every surface of the installation
I’m Here, but Nothing (2000) alters the viewer’s perception
of depth and space, the walls, ceiling and floor appear to
become destabilised, and the objects within the room seem
to float in space. While experiencing this installation, the
boundaries of objects blur and our usual anchors for
sensing depth, space and perspective are unsettled.
Immersive environments, physicality and scale
Since the early 1960’s Kusama has been making
immersive environments that engage us with our own
perception, physicality and scale. Infinity Mirror RoomPhalli’s Field (1965) is the artist’s first all-enveloping,
mirrored environment. Inside this room the viewer stands
mirrored to infinity in a dizzying, disconcerting and
hallucinatory spatial experience. Viewing this artwork, we
lose our sense of beginning and end, and succumb to
Kusama’s spell of overwhelming repetition.
which the viewer feels immersed, overwhelmed and obliterated by the scale of these giant amorphous forms.
Yayoi Kusama The Earth in Late Summer 2004. Styrol, wood, cloth, paint.
Courtesy the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, the artist, Victoria
Miro Gallery, London and Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo © Yayoi Kusama, Yayoi
Kusama Studio.
Repetitive pattern and obsessive art-making
processes
Kusama is a self professed ‘obsessive’ artist often
employing an obsessive, repetitive art-making process.
Much of her work demonstrates a fascination with repetitive
pattern. Early in Kusama’s career, she began covering
surfaces (walls, floors, canvases, and later, household
objects and people) with the polka dots that subsequently
were to become a trademark of her work. She refers to the
dots as ‘Infinity Nets’ which may be inspired by her
occasional altered perception and hallucinatory
experiences. The process of making her ‘Infinity Net’
paintings involves painting thousands of repeated miniature
brush marks over large expanses of canvas. This experience
of painting is intensely repetitive and holds the potential to
evoke a meditative state of mind.
Identity, persona, and self-obliteration
Through her performances, captured and presented on
DVD, Kusama examines aspects of her own identity,
critiquing gender and racial stereotypes. She experiments
with the manipulation of her own image, and projects
various personal personas through her performances and
publicity photographs. The idea of self-obliteration is
recurrent in her work and appears in many of her
performances. By covering herself and her surroundings
with dots, Kusama blurs the boundaries between self and
environment, or self and other, while providing the viewer
with an insight into her unique ‘hallucinatory’ experiences of
altered perception.
Yayoi Kusama, Clouds 1999. Vinyl balloons. Courtesy the artist, Victoria
Miro Gallery, London and Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo © Yayoi Kusama, Yayoi
Kusama Studio.
Physicality and scale are explored by Kusama in her recent
sculptural installation Clouds (2008). This work comprises
twenty large-scale inflated forms, a development on her soft
sculpture and earlier installations which featured brightly
coloured inflated balloons with polka dots. Clouds creates
an illusion of other-worldliness, of infinite dark space, within
6
EDUCATION
EDUCATION
PROGRAMME
PROGRAMME
Yayoi
Kusama,
Im Here,
butbut
Nothing
2001.
DotDot
sheet,
ultra
violet
fluorescent
light,
furniture,
household
objects.
Courtesy
thethe
artist,
Yayoi
Kusama
Yayoi
Kusama,
Im Here,
Nothing
2001.
sheet,
ultra
violet
fluorescent
light,
furniture,
household
objects.
Courtesy
artist,
Yayoi
Kusama
Studio,
Victoria
Miro
Gallery,
London
andand
OtaOta
FineFine
Arts,
Tokyo
© Yayoi
Kusama,
Yayoi
Kusama
Studio.
Photo:
Ezko
Hosoe.
Studio,
Victoria
Miro
Gallery,
London
Arts,
Tokyo
© Yayoi
Kusama,
Yayoi
Kusama
Studio.
Photo:
Ezko
Hosoe.
Education Programme and Curriculum links
Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Years Gallery Programme:
1 hour
Explore and discuss this exhibition by taking part in Gallery
based activities that examine the themes and ideas in
Kusama’s work.
Key competencies Thinking, using language and symbols,
managing self, relating to others, and participating and
contributing.
Curriculum strands Visual Arts/Toi ataata:
Understanding the Arts in Context, Communicating and
Interpreting.
Achievement objectives Visual Arts/Toi ataata:
Level 1-2: Share ideas about how and why works are made,
and their purpose, value and context. Share ideas, feelings
and stories communicated by objects and images.
Level 3-4: Investigate the purpose of objects and images
and identify the contexts in which they are made viewed
and valued. Explore and describe ways in which meanings
can be communicated and interpreted.
Programme content - students will:
• Engage in an introduction to the main exhibition including
information about the artist, art style, exhibition content,
artwork themes, art making techniques and exhibition
context. Respond to what they see, articulating their
own ideas, thoughts, feelings, and interpretations of the
artworks.
• Pose questions about the artworks to further their own
and each others ideas and understandings about what
they represent, what feelings they evoke and their possible
meanings. Respond to questions prompted by the Gallery
Educator about the artworks, value, purpose, and context,
and the artist’s intentions, ideas, and working practices.
• Participate in hands-on group and/or individual activities
in the Gallery designed to facilitate enquiry learning, focus
careful looking /investigation, explore ideas and responses,
and develop visual literacy while meeting the needs of
different learning styles.
Yayoi Kusama, Waves at day break 2006, from the series Love Forever
2004-2007. Silk screen on canvas. Courtesy the artist, Victoria Miro
Gallery, London and Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo © Yayoi Kusama, Yayoi Kusama
Studio.
8
Yayoi Kusama, Untitled 1939. Pencil on paper. Courtesy the artist, Yayoi
Kusama Studio, Victoria Miro Gallery, London and Ota Fine Arts Tokyo ©
Yayoi Kusama, Yayoi Kusama Studio.
Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Years Workshop Programme:
1.5 hours
See a selection of works in the Kusama exhibition and
develop your own Kusama inspired artwork in the Education
Studio.
Key competencies Thinking, using language and symbols,
managing self, relating to others, and participating and
contributing.
Curriculum strands Visual arts/Toi ataata: Developing
Practical Knowledge, Developing Ideas.
Achievement objectives Visual Arts/Toi ataata:
Level 1-2: Explore a variety of art materials and tools to
discover elements and principles of art making. Investigate
visual ideas in response to a variety of motivations; observation and imagination.
Level 3-4: Explore and use art making conventions,
applying knowledge of elements and principles of art
making. Develop and re-visit visual ideas in response to a
variety of motivations; observation and imagination,
supported by the study of an artist’s works.
Programme content - students will:
• Engage in an introduction to the main exhibition including
information about the artist, art style, exhibition content,
artwork themes, art making techniques and exhibition
context.
• Respond to what they see, articulating their own ideas,
thoughts, feelings, and interpretations of the artworks.
• Participate in individual and/or group art making
activities in the Education Studio, in response to the
exhibition’s themes and content. Specific activities TBC. Art
making activities may focus on: experimenting with
different types of art making and different materials; art
styles; art techniques and art making processes; exhibition
content and themes; communicating meaning in different
ways; expressing ideas in response to a question or
proposal; investigating formal elements of art.
Pre and post visit activity suggestions
Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Mirrored Room (Fireflies on the Water) 2000. Light bulbs, water, mirror room. Image courtesy the
artist, Victoria Miro Gallery, London and Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo © Yayoi Kusama, Yayoi Kusama Studio.
Pre visit suggestions
• Think about what you might see and learn when you visit
and fill out the pre-visit sheet on City Gallery’s website at
www.citygallerywellington.org.nz
Post visit
• Describe what you have learnt and seen on your visit and
fill out the post- visit activity sheet on City Gallery’s web site
at www.citygallerywellington.org.nz
• Play the Kusama interactive game at the website
http://qag.qld.gov.au/kids/activities/online_interactives/
kusamas_world_of_dots2/interactive
• Discuss and create an artwork inspired by Kusama (see
activity ideas on pages 18 and 19 of this Resource Kit).
• View some of Kusama’s artwork on the website
http://www.victoriamiro.com/artists/_31/
• Discuss where you can find examples of pattern around
you, both natural and man made patterns.
• Brainstorm the meanings of the following words: contrast,
sculpture, installation, pattern, texture, scale, infinity,
illusion.
• Look at the Primary Students Artwork Analysis (on page
23) in this Education Resource Kit and as a group, take
turns to ask the questions, discuss and answer them
together. Read out the information points about the artwork.
Can you think of any other questions you could ask about
this artwork?
• Look at examples of art work by some of the artists listed
on page 12 and think about ways in which these artist’s
artworks are similar or different to Kusama’s artwork.
• Make a design of your bedroom, and draw in some
patterns inspired by Kusama to transform it into an
installation. Use cardboard and a shoe box to build a small
marquette or model diorama of your design.
• Look at the Māori artist comparison between Kusama
and Shona Rapira Davies on page 17.
• Include a visit to Te Aro Park following your visit to City
Gallery and encourage students to sketch a part of Rapira
Davies’ Te Waimapihi (1992) and their favourite Kusama
installation. Use these drawings to discuss similarities and
differences between the two artworks.
• Show students images of Reuben Paterson’s artwork on
page 16 and available online, and look at his use of pattern
and colour. Encourage students to plan or make a diorama
artwork inspired by Kusama’s 3D environments and
Paterson’s use of Māori patterns, and colour.
9
CONTEXTS, CONCEPTS & PROCESSES
Yayoi Kusama, Narcissus Garden 1966. Installation view, XXIII Venice Biennale. Image courtesy the artist, Yayoi Kusama Studio, Victoria Miro Gallery,
London and Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo © Yayoi Kusama, Yayoi Kusama Studio.
Timeline
Reproduced from MCA Sydney, ‘Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Years Education
Kit’ 2009, written by Kate Scarfield.
YAYOI KUSAMA
1929: Born in Nagano Prefecture, Japan.
1939: Remembers having first series of visions and
hallucinations (Age 10). Produced the drawing Untitled
(Mother).
1942-48: Training and practice in traditional Nihonga
painting.
1948-51: Studied at the Arts and Crafts School, Kyoto
Japan.
1955: Written correspondence with American artist Georgia
O’Keefe.
1957: Moved to United States to live and work, arriving first
in Seattle.
1957-58: Arrived in New York and began studying at the Art
Students League.
1959: First exhibition of Infinity Net paintings at Brata
Gallery, New York.
1962: Exhibits Accumulation soft sculptures at Green
Gallery’s group show, New York. Is the only female to take
part in thewidely acclaimed Nul (Zero) exhibition at the
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
1963: Aggregation: One Thousand Boats Show at Gertrude
Stein Gallery, New York.
1964: Driving Image Show. First environment exhibited at
Castellane Gallery, New York.
1965: Infinity Mirror Room (Phalli’s Field). Begins first series
of performances.
1966: Presents Narcissus Garden at the 33rd Venice
Biennale.
c.1966: Walking Piece
1967-69: Stages Happenings and performances across
New York.
1973: Returns to Japan.
1977: Takes residence in Seiwa Hospital, Tokyo Japan.
1989: Began publishing collected poems and literary works.
1993: Selected to represent Japan at the Venice Biennale.
Presents Infinity Mirror Room (Pumpkin).
2000: Yayoi Kusama retrospective exhibition at the
Serpentine Gallery, London.
2001-2: Yayoi Kusama exhibition at Le Consortium, Dijon,
France. Toured to Denmark and Korea.
2004-07: Love Forever series.
Yayoi Kusama in New York c. 1968. Image courtesy the artist, Yayoi
Kusama Studio, Victoria Miro Gallery, London and Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo ©
Yayoi Kusama, Yayoi Kusama Studio.
ARTWORLD & WORLD
1924: Surrealism founded by Andre Breton in Paris, France.
1930: The Great Depression.
1939: World War II Begins.
1941: Japanese bomb Pearl Harbour, Hawaii.
1945: Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
World War II ends.
c.1946: Abstract Expressionist movement begins in New
York, United States.
c.1950: Pop Art movement gains strength in United States.
1956: Videotape invented.
1962: Andy Warhol presents silkscreen One Dollar Bill
works at Green Gallery’s group show, New York.
(Sept) 1962: Claes Oldenburg exhibits first series of soft
sculptures at Green Gallery, New York.
c.1962: Minimalism resurfaces as a movement in reaction
to Abstract Expressionism.
1965: Vietnam War begins.
1966: Mirror Room by Lucas Samaras.
c.1966: Women’s Liberation movement begins.
1969: First man on the moon.
1970: The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer published.
1973: Vietnam war ends.
1981: AIDS first identified.
1989: Tianamen Square Massacre, China. Berlin wall come
down, Germany.
1993: Marcel Duchamp retrospective exhibition, Venice.
1997: Beginning of Asian economic crisis. The controversial
Sensation exhibition is shown at the Royal Academy of Art,
London. Tours to Berlin and New York.
11
Artist’s techiques and processes
The artwork in the exhibition Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Years
covers a wide range of media, techniques and processes
including installation, silk screen printing, sculpture/soft
sculpture, painting, and videos of performances. Kusama
began her career as a painter, and studied traditional forms
of painting as a student in Japan. After moving to New York
she began to broaden her practice, experimenting with
sculpture, soft sculpture, performance and installation
work. Now living back in Japan she continues to make large
scale sculptures and installations but has also recently
produced an extensive series of silk screen prints.
Kusama began making three dimensional installations
around 1963, and these were some of the earliest
examples of installation art ever produced. A recent
installation I’m Here, but Nothing (2000, recreated 2009)
has been recreated at City Gallery Wellington. Kusama
asked the Gallery to build a simply furnished family living
room. She gave instructions that every surface should be
covered with polka dots glowing under ultra-violet light. The
visitor’s experience in this room is evocative of Kusama’s
childhood hallucinations where her perception of the world
was momentarily obliterated by polka dots.
In 1962 Kusama made her first sculptural objects: an armchair and a couch covered in a profusion of stitched, stuffed
fabric protuberances, titled Accumulations. Her early softsculptures were exhibited in September 1962 at Green
Gallery New York, in a group show which included early
works by Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg. Since then
Kusama has completed many large scale permanent public
artworks around the world, including representing Japan at
the Venice Biennale in 1993 with an accumulation of silver
spheres Narcissus Garden. She is continually exploring the
sculptural possibilities of inflatable forms, evidenced in her
recent piece Clouds (2008).
The earliest works in the exhibition, Kusama’s ‘Infinity Net’
paintings are depictions of patterns in nature such as the
minute structures found in leaves, coral or butterfly wings.
Kusama obsessively covers the entire canvas with small
repetitive painted loops, creating the appearance of a
monochromatic net. The ‘Infinity Net’ paintings offer viewers
a disorientating almost dizzying experience, when looking at
them from a distance. In 1961, a couple of years after she
arrived in New York, Kusama exhibited a white net painting
that was almost three metres high and ten metres long.
Paintings on this scale transform the spaces they occupy
and represent an early form of installation art.
Yayoi Kusama, Walking Piece 1966. Set of 24 colour slides. Courtesy the
artist, Yayoi Kusama Studio, Victoria Miro Gallery, London and Ota Fine
Arts, Tokyo © Yayoi Kusama, Yayoi Kusama Studio. Photo: Ezko Hosoe.
Yayoi Kusama in her studio, 2007. Image courtesy the artist, Yayoi Kusama
Studio, Victoria Miro Gallery, London and Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo © Yayoi
Kusama, Yayoi Kusama Studio. Photo: Ezko Hosoe.
The most recent works in the exhibition, Kusama’s suite
of 50 new works on canvas Love Forever (2004-2007) are
silkscreen prints which have taken three years to
complete. The monochromatic prints feature a myriad of
mesmerising and sweeping lines, delicate forms, figurative
and organic shapes, whorls, lips and eyes, cats, trees and
polka dots. The artist creates these by initially drawing on
the canvas with a marker pen. The works are then
transferred to silkscreen to be printed.
12
While working in New York Kusama orchestrated and
appeared in many performances. Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored
Years includes seven video works. Walking Piece (1966)
sees the artist walking through the streets of New York
wearing traditional Japanese dress. This performance draws
attention to issues of race, gender and identity and was
documented by twenty-four colour slides which have been
transferred to DVD. In this work Kusama manipulates her
identity and questions other people’s perceptions of her.
Through her performance works Kusama’s identity
becomes central to her practice, and is a theme which
carries through much of her subsequent artwork.
Art historical context - related genres
Kusama’s work is difficult to define in relation to any
particular genre of art. It is more organic than other
Minimalist Art, more abstract than Pop Art, and more
psychologically affecting than most Op Art. It pre-figures
Feminism but has much to contribute to it, and Kusama’s
early ‘Infinity Net’ paintings have an Abstract Expressionist
quality. Kusama’s work can be understood to combine
elements from all these genres, effectively escaping any
strict genre definitions. The following list of art genres can
be studied in relation to aspects of Kusama’s work.
Minimalism
Kusama’s early ‘Infinity Net’ paintings explored a Minimalist
notion of painting akin to many artists who were developing
work in America in the 1960’s and 70’s that explored the
ways in which art can be pared down to its most
fundamental features.
Other artists to study: Donald Judd (b. 1928 d. 1994), and
Frank Stella (b. 1936- ).
New Zealand artists: Milan Mrkusich (b. 1925- ) and Julian
Dashper (b. 1960- ).
Op Art
Optical illusion and altered perception are examined by
Kusama throughout many of her paintings and installations.
Kusama shares a fascination with Op artists who use
certain types of patterns to create a discordant
figure-ground relationship. This relationship plays on the
way vision functions to produce an unsettling perceptual
experience for the viewer.
Other artists to study: Victor Vasarely (b.1908 d.1997) and
Bridget Riley (b.1931- ).
New Zealand artists: Gordon Walters (b.1919 d. 1995) and
Sara Hughes (b. 1971- ).
Pop Art
In 1960 Kusama started experimenting with mixed media,
collaging airmail stickers, labels, dollar bills and postage
stamps in repeat patterns. This is evident in her installation
Walking on the Sea of Death (1981) a room covered with
999 repeated images of a boat sculpture, first exhibited in
New York at Gertrude Stein Gallery in 1963. A contemporary
and friend of Kusama, Andy Warhol was also experimenting
with the repetitive use of images at this time, evidenced in
his Cow Wallpaper installation (1966) at Castelli Gallery in
New York.
Other artists to study: Jasper Johns (b. 1930- ) and Roy
Lichtenstein (b.1923 d. 1997).
New Zealand artists: Billy Apple (b. Barry Bates in 1935,
became Billy Apple in 1962- ) and Dick Frizzell (b. 1943- ).
Yayoi Kusama, Infinity-Nets (OQABT) 2007. Acrylic on canvas. Courtesy the
artist, Yayoi Kusama Studio, Victoria Miro Gallery, London and Ota Fine
Arts, Tokyo © Yayoi Kusama, Yayoi Kusama Studio.
Abstract Expressionism
Kusama’s ‘Infinity Net’ paintings were being produced and
exhibited in New York at a time when Abstract Expressionist
art was the dominant force in the western avant-garde art
scene. Kusama’s paintings, while abstracted in form also
imply an expression of ideas concerning the spiritual, or
alerted states of conscious.
Other artists to study: Mark Tobey (b. 1890 d. 1976) and
Jackson Pollock (b.1912 d.1956).
New Zealand artists: Max Gimblett (b. 1935- ) and Allen
Maddox (b. 1948 d. 2000).
Feminism
Issues of gender and sexuality began to appear in Kusama’s
work during the 1960’s, pre-dating many artists considered
to be part of the Feminist art movement which flourished
in the 1970’s in America. Kusama’s soft sculptures of the
1960’s which employ multiple phallic shapes and her naked
performances exploring sexuality, encourage a feminist
reading of her practice.
Other artist to study: Judy Chicago (b. 1939- ), Lynda Benglis
(b. 1941) and Miriam Schapiro (b. 1923- )
New Zealand artists: Vivian Lynn (b. 1931- ) and Jacqueline
Fahey (b.1930- ).
Performance Art
Both Kusama and Joseph Beuys participated in
‘Happenings’, which were originated by Alan Kaprow in the
1960’s (who is famous for having coined the term). Kusama
performed in and directed many of her own performances
and Happenings in New York during the 1960’s.
Other artists to study: Yves Klein (b. 1928 d. 1962), and
Yoko Ono (b. 1933- ).
New Zealand artists: Jim Allen (b. 1922- ), Amy Howden
Chapman (b. 1984- ) and Kah Bee Chow (b. 1980- ).
13
EXTENSION ACTIVITIES
Yayoi Kusama, The Earth in Late Summer 2004. Styrol, wood, cloth, paint. Courtesy the artist, Victoria Miro Gallery,London amd Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo
© Yayoi Kusama, Yayoi Kusama Studio.
Te Ao Māori: Mātauranga Māori concepts
This section relates aspects of Kusama’s work with Te Ao
Māori, focusing on Kusama’s use of repetition, pattern and
accumulation and her exploration of other-worldliness and
physical examination of space. Linking these three themes
within Māoridom is the koru: a symbol of eternity/
infinity, it spans light and dark (our world/other-worldliness,
normal/sacred), its unfurling curl representing the past,
present and future. The use of koru in kowhawhai painting
within the wharenui (meeting house) sees it repeated and
accumulated to represent real forms in nature as well as
figuratively representing whakapapa (geneology). This leads
us to examine the role of kowhaiwhai within the structure of
the wharenui and to consider the design of the wharenui as
a physical representation of the human form.
The world of light and darkness
As the sun rises each morning and sets each evening, the
world follows a daily cycle of light (Te Ao) and darkness
(Te Pō). Māori creation stories emphasise this movement
from nothingness and darkness to the world of light: Te Ao
Mārama. It is said that the world itself is created each
morning with the rise of the sun.
Te Kore – a world beyond
It is traditional Māori belief that there is something beyond
the world of everyday experience: we do not live in a closed
system where what we see is all there is. This other world
or dimension is known as Te Kore, the ‘void’, in most tribal
traditions.
Cleve Barlow has suggested that Te Kore means chaos, a
state which has always existed and which contains
‘unlimited potential for being’. Māori Marsden, a Tai
Tokerau elder and Anglican minister, had a similar belief. He
said that Te Korekore (a variant of Te Kore) was ‘the realm
between non-being and being: that is the realm of potential
being’. Some believe that Te Kore is where the ultimate
reality can be found. Others think that it is where Io, the
Supreme Being, dwells. The idea of Te Kore is central to
notions of mana (status), tapu (sacred and restricted
customs) and mauri (life force).
Kowhaiwhai
Kowhaiwhai painting is generally associated with heke
(rafters) of whare whakairo (carved ancestral house). The
kowhaiwhai painted heke provides connections between all
parts of the wharenui and helps give structure and
coherence to the design. Kowhaiwhai design are made
from combinations, repetitions, reflections and rotations of
a basic design element, typically the form of a koru, along
a central unbroken line: the manawa. The curving manawa
line, in some designs absent or implicit, is ‘the heart pulse
of the pattern’ representing the indivisibility of the past,
present and future. Kowhaiwhai designs allude to patterns
found in nature and symbolise growth, as well as give expression to whakapapa.
(Helen Kedgley, ‘The Koru and Kowhaiwhai: The Contemporary renaissance
of kowhaiwhai painting’, Pataka, 2002)
Symbolism of the meeting house
The wharenui (meeting house) is the focal point of a marae.
It has great spiritual significance, embodying its people’s
past and its shape representing the human form. Often
it bears the name of a famous ancestor. Each part of a
wharenui is a representation. At the apex of the gable,
attached to the tahuhu or ridgepole is the koruru (head).
The maihi (bargeboards) are the arms, outstretched to
welcome guests. The tahuhu is the backbone, the heke
are ribs. The porch is termed the roro (brain). The kuwaha
(mouth) or door is the symbolic entry where the physical
and spiritual realms come together. The window becomes
the matapihi (eye) and the interior the koopu (womb).
The poupou (carved posts) depict notable descendents of
the famous ancestor. The poutokomanawa (central support
pillars), which are carved naturalistically, hold the heart or
mana of the tribe.
(‘Tane-Nui-A-Rangi’, University of Auckland, 1988)
(Te Ahukaramū Charles Royal. ‘Te Ao Mārama – the natural world’, Te Ara
- the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 21-Sep-2007, http://www.
TeAra.govt.nz/TheBush/UnderstandingTheNaturalWorld/TeAoMaramaTheNaturalWorld/en)
Te Koru
The koru symbolises an unfurling fern leaf. The fern was
important as a food and medicine to Māori, as such it was
a common motif in Māori design. The koru is often used to
represent creation. Its circular shape conveys the idea of
perpetual movement, and its inward coil suggests a return
to the point of origin. The koru therefore symbolises the way
in which life both changes and stays the same. The koru is
a symbol for our national identity. It is used for commercial
logos, such as Air New Zealand, and the silver fern is an
integral part of our national sporting teams’ uniforms (All
Blacks, Silver Ferns) and adorns our unofficial national flag.
(Te Ahukaramū Charles Royal. ‘Te Ao Mārama – the natural world’, Te Ara
- the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 21-Sep-2007. http://www.
TeAra.govt.nz/TheBush/UnderstandingTheNaturalWorld/TeAoMaramaTheNaturalWorld/en)
15
Māori artist comparisons: Reuben Paterson
Reuben Paterson, Ngati Rangitihi
In 1997 Paterson graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts
from Elam School of Fine Arts at University of Auckland.
He was the youngest recipient and the second Māori to
receive the Moet et Chandon Fellowship to Avize, France
1997. In 2005 he won the Development Prize in the Wallace
Art Awards — the prize a three-month residency with the
International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New
York valued at $15,000.
Paterson has been exhibiting since 1995 and more recently
has had numerous prestigious public exhibitions: in 2000
he was represented at the 8th Festival of Pacific Arts
Biennale d’Art Contemporian, Noumea, New Caledonia. In
2001 his work was shown at Te Tuhi, Auckland; Te Wa-the
space, Wanganui; Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki; City
Gallery Wellington, Te Whare Toi; and Pataka, Porirua. In
July 2002 he exhibited at Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa
Tongarewa, and in 2005 he was selected to exhibit in the
International Biennale of Contemporary Art at the National
Gallery in Prague.
Reuben Paterson, Admiral Tangaroa 2002. Glitter on canvas. Image
courtesy the artist.
http://www.milfordgalleries.co.n
http://www.reubenpaterson.com
http://www.gowlangsfordgallery.co.nz/artists/reubenpaterson/
Like Kusama’s brightly coloured, soft sculptural forms or her
colourful net paintings, at first glance Reuben Paterson’s
glitter paintings of kowhaiwhai are bright, sparkly, fun,
tactile and sensuous.
However, on closer examination we find a darker subtext to
both artists’ work.
Paterson’s glitter paintings are extremely seductive,
attracting viewers like magpies to shiny objects of promise.
They hint at the ideas of beauty as a magnet for visual
attraction. The artist is exploring more than the twinkling
light qualities of the sparkling glitter; its intrinsic character
transcends the everyday, the mundane or the worldly, and
now implies the celestial, the spiritual and the celebratory.
(Rhoda Fowler, “The Wharenui that Dad Built,” Te Tuhi, 2001)
Patersons’s decorative traditional kowhaiwhai designs
in glitter dust suggest ‘the assured defiance of Māori
culture in the face of loss…’, but they also ‘…emit an air of
melancholy’.
(David Broker, Eyeline magazine concerning Biennale Noumea, 2000)
Paterson continues the contemporary tradition of
resuscitating and updating customary Māori motifs by the
use of non-traditional media that can be seen in the work of
artists such as Sandy Adsett, Cliff Whiting and Buck Nin.
His work extends the customary Māori use of design and
pattern, of weaving and layering. It may resemble glittering
piupiu, fishing nets, a swatch of fabric, or a detail from
an haute-couture creation. Paterson explains fashion is a
strong influence, ‘it is an art form that combines aspects
of decorative art and industrial design and a definite part
of popular culture that permeates our social history. It is a
symbolic system, a protective clothing form and a kind of
performance art’.
(Artist statement, 1997)
16
Reuben Paterson, Do you know any Māori Jokes? 2002. Glitter on
canvas. Image courtesy the artist.
Māori artist comparisons: Shona Rapira Davies
Shona Rapira Davies, Ngati Wai,
Nga Puhi
Kusama’s work Walking Piece (1966) draws parallels with
Shona Rapira Davies’ work, which often highlights aspects
of identity (cultural, gender and race) examining political
issues from a Feminist perspective. Rapira Davies’ work, Te
Waimaphihi (1992, Te Aro Park, also known as pigeon park)
is a large, immersive work and represents a waka and like
Kusama’s environment plays with scale and perspective.
Shona Rapira Davies graduated with a Diploma of Fine
Art from Otago Polytechnic in 1983 and was the Frances
Hodgkins Fellow at the University of Otago in 1989.
Shona Rapira Davies, Te Waimapihi 1992 (Te Aro Park)
Shona Rapira Davies, Te Waimapihi 1992 (Te Aro Park)
Shona first exhibited Nga Morehu (The Survivors) at the
Wellington City Art Gallery in 1988. Nga Morehu was
purchased in 1992 by the National Art Gallery (now
Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington).
In March 1992 Nga Morehu was included in Headlands:
Thinking through New Zealand Art at the Museum of
Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia, in collaboration with
the National Art Gallery, New Zealand. Other series by
Shona include ‘Drawings for the cicada tree’; ‘Not exactly
a Māori work of art’; ‘Palisades’, and ‘Teaching aids for
Kahurangi and Immigrant’. She featured in ‘Prospect’ 2004
at City Gallery Wellington and exhibits in public and dealer
galleries throughout New Zealand.
Te Waimapihi
From 1988 to 1992 Shona designed and completed Te
Waimapihi (Te Aro Park) in Wellington, a major ceramic tile
permanent work and considered one of New Zealand’s
most successful public sculptures. The work is a simple and
striking visual design, yet it contains layers of significance
and meaning. Through Te Waimapihi Rapira Davies begins
to expose the history of the Whanganui a Tara region, and
acknowledges the Māori dimension of the city. Te Waimapihi
cannot be appreciated fully from the ground, but the overall
effect to be seen from atop neighbouring buildings.
‘Rapira Davies’ work in Te Aro Park testifies to her ability,
like that of our tupuna (ancestors), to survive. Her park
carries messages of war and messages of peace, as
does Rapira Davies herself and our iwi. It is located in the
continuum of Māori art, part of the past, here in the present
and a Taonga for the future’
(Rangihiroa Pa Noho, ‘Shona Rapira Davies: catalogue’, Bowen Galleries,
1994.)
Shona Rapira Davies is interested in creating a discourse
around Māori political issues from a Feminist perspective.
Her sculptures, usually life sized clay models, are the
physical manifestation of her culture’s pain. Her use of clay
references the land.
17
Visual art project ideas
Kusama makes fun experiential artworks. Try making some
of your own Kusama inspired artworks:
costumes and add some face/body paints/wigs to
complete the look. Perform a fashion parade and take
photos of everyone wearing the costumes. Set up a catwalk
to perform on which is also inspired by Kusama. Invite other
students to watch you and film the fashion parade
performance. Choose some music to accompany the
parade. Do the costumes and catwalk make you want to
move in certain ways? Experiment with different types of
poses or movements while dressed up, and document them
through film, photography or drawings.
Yayoi Kusama, Im Here, but Nothing 2001. Dot sheet, ultra violet fluorescent light, furniture, household hobjects. Courtesy the artist, Yayoi Kusama
Studio, Victoria Miro Gallery, London and Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo © Yayoi
Kusama, Yayoi Kusama Studio. Photo: Ezko Hosoe.
‘Kusama’ your classroom
Inspiration: I’m Here, but Nothing, 2000
Kusama likes to create environments where people can feel
lost or disorientated. To make your own, use
fluorescent sticky dots to cover all the objects in your
classroom, including the walls floors and ceiling. Black out
the light with blinds/curtains and switch on a fluorescent
light. Explore your transformed room. Take some pictures
of the room. Put some fluorescent dots on yourself and
become part of the environment. Film yourself in the space.
Invite students from another class to experience your
‘Kusama’ room. Ask them how it felt. Write a description of
the feeling of exploring the dotty space. When you have
removed the dots and turned your classroom back to
normal, draw a picture from memory of what it looked like
when it was covered in fluorescent dots in the dark.
Yayoi Kusama, Kusama’s Self-Obliteration 1968. 16 m m film, transferred
to DVD. Courtesy the artist, Yayoi Kusama Studio, Victoria Miro Gallery,
London and Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo © Yayoi Kusama, Yayoi Kusama Studio.
Kusama fashion parade
Inspiration: Kusama’s Self Obliteration, 1967
Kusama often uses herself as an artwork, has taken part
in performances and has created some unusual costumes.
Design and make your own costumes, cloaks, T shirts,
hats, etc inspired by Kusama’s artwork. Use dots and other
repeated patters in bright contrasting colours – sew, paint,
safety pin, print or collage your costumes and use
fabric, card, paper or other found materials. Dress up in the
18
Yayoi Kusama, Soaring Spirit 2008. Mirror balls, metal wire. Courtesy
the artist, Victoria Miro Gallery, London and Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo© Yayoi
Kusama, Yayoi Kusama Studio.
Suspended sculptures
Inspiration: Soaring Spirit, 2008
Kusama is interested in the ways in which sculptures take
up space, and sculptures which give the illusion of hanging
in space. Design and make your own hanging sculptures.
Use different size balls – table tennis balls, tennis balls,
footballs, beach balls etc, and make casts of them by wrapping them up in layers of cellotape or masking tape. (Make
sure the first layer has the sticky side of the tape facing you,
not the ball otherwise it will not come off when you want it
to. Stick the final layer of the tape with the sticky side down,
otherwise it will stick to everything!). You will need to apply
at least three layers of tape to make the cast of the ball firm
enough.
Cut the tape layered cast away from the ball using a sharp
craft knife, fill the two halves with something, eg scrunched
up paper, and stick the two halves of the ball back together
again using more tape. Attach some fishing line to each ball,
and then carefully cover it (without squashing the shape of
it). Use silver foil, or silver spray paint, or paint. Finally hang
the ball sculptures together to create a group or installation,
thinking carefully about the overall shape(s) they create.
Take photographs of the sculptures and/or make drawings
of them. Experiment with hanging the sculptures in different
places – your classroom, the hall or corridor, outside etc.
Discuss which spaces you think they look the most effective
in and why.
Softs sculptures
Inspiration: The Moment of Regeneration, 2004
Kusama began making soft sculptures in the 1960’s at a
similar time to other artists who also experimented with
soft sculptures such as Claes Oldenburg. Design and make
some of your own soft sculptures inspired by natural forms,
such as tentacles, shoots, coral, branches etc (imagine
something growing out of something else). Make a
template for your sculpture in paper and cut out the pieces
in fabric. Decorate the fabric pieces if desired. Sew or stick
the pieces together to make a hollow floppy shape, and
leave one part of the shape open (to put the filling in). Fill
the fabric shape with something that will make it stand up
eg balls of newspaper, scraps of fabric, clay, plaster,
sawdust, sand. When the shape is full and stands freely,
sew or glue up the opening. Position all the sculptures
together to make a group, or installation. Take photographs
of the sculptures, and/or make drawings of them. Think of a
title for the artwork. Write a description of it, and say what it
reminds you of, and what it was inspired by.
Yayoi Kusama, The Moment of Regeneration 2004. Courtesy the National
Museum of Modern Art Tokyo, the artist, Victoria Miro Gallery, London and
Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo © Yayoi Kusama, Yayoi Kusama Studio. Photo: Keizo
Kioku.
Mirror magic
Inspiration: Infinity Mirror Room-Phalli’s Field, 1965-98 (see
example on page 20)
Kusama is interested in the idea of infinity, and experiments
with the illusion of infinity in some of her installations. Use
some mirror tiles or mirrored card, and masking tape or
cellotape, to build a miniature room, which is full of
reflections and gives the illusion of infinity. Place a model,
or ‘cut out’ of a person, toy or action figure in the miniature
room and observe how that figure is reflected. Take some
photographs, and/or make some drawings of the figure and
the reflections. Re-build the miniature room in a different
shape to create new types of reflections – placing the figure
inside it as you are building to see the ways in which the
placement and direction of the mirrors/mirrored card alter
the reflections inside it. Repeat this a few times, building
different shaped miniature mirrored rooms and
documenting a figure inside them through drawings and/or
photographs. Write a description of what you think it would
feel like to be inside one of the mirrored rooms.
Yayoi Kusama, WOMEN WAITING FOR SPRING [TZW] 2005. Courtesy
the artist, Victoria Miro Gallery, London and Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo © Yayoi
Kusama, Yayoi Kusama Studio.
Repeat pattern prints
Inspiration: WOMEN WAITING FOR SPRING [TZW], 2005,
from Kusama’s ‘Love Forever’ series
Kusama enjoys experimenting with repeat patterns. Look
at the series of prints ‘Love Forever’ and copy some of
the repeat patterns in them. Look at some natural objects
(shells, leaves, waves, grass etc) and make drawings of the
repeat patterns you can see in them. Use this collection of
repeat patterns to make your own series of black and white
repeat pattern prints. Use black printing ink on white paper
and white printing ink on black paper to make some mono
prints of your repeat patterns. (Mono prints are a type of
direct print made by inking a flat surface such as a piece
of glass, then placing a piece of paper gently over it, and
drawing a pattern onto the back of the paper so that the ink
underneath transfers to the paper where the line is drawn.
The paper can then be pealed back to reveal the print).
There are lots of websites with step by step
explanations of how to make a mono print, this website
gives a brief description for beginners: http://orderartwork.
com/reproduction/Monoprinting.htm).
When you have made a collection of black and white prints,
hang them together as a large group to create an
installation. Look at all the prints and compare the
different shapes and patterns used in them. How are they
similar or different to Kusama’s prints? Can you tell what
natural forms inspired the shapes and patterns?
19
Art terms glossary
Abstract Expressionism: A movement composed of
American artists in the 1940s and 1950s which was
characterised by large abstract painted canvases. The
movement had two groups – Action Painters such as
Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, and Helen Frankenthaler, and
Colour Field painters such as Mark Rothko and Barnett
Newman. The Action Painters’ work is characterised by
sweeping,
gestural lines; the Color Field painters’ work is
characterised by large, unmodulated areas of color.
Appropriation: To appropriate something involves taking
possession of it for use in a new context. In the visual arts,
the term appropriation often refers to the use of borrowed
elements in the creation of new work. The borrowed
elements may include images, forms or styles from art
history or from popular culture, or materials and techniques
from non-art contexts.
Avant-garde: A group that is innovative and inventive in its
technique, particularly in the arts. Avant-garde represents
the pushing of boundaries of what is accepted as the norm
or the status quo, primarily in the cultural realm.
Genre: Genres are categories with no fixed boundaries,
they are formed by sets of conventions, and many works
cross into multiple genres by way of borrowing and
recombining these conventions.
Feminism: Feminism is the idea that women should have
political, social, sexual, intellectual and economic rights
equal to those of men. It involves various movements,
theories, and philosophies, all concerned with issues of
gender difference, that advocate equality for women and
the campaign for women’s rights and interests.
Installation: A form of art developed in the late 1950s to
challenge the dominance of painting and sculpture.
Installations are three-dimensional artworks designed to
transform the perception of a whole room or particular
space. Many installations are site-specific in that they are
designed to only exist in the space for which they were
created.
Happening: A performance, event, or situation considered
as art, especially those initiated by the artists’ group Fluxus
in the early 1960s. Happenings can take place anywhere,
are often multidisciplinary and non-narrative, and frequently
seek to involve the audience in some way. The key elements
of Happenings are planned, but artists sometimes retain
room for improvisation.
Minimalism: Minimalism describes movements in various
forms of art and design, especially visual art and music,
where the work is stripped down to its most fundamental
features. As a specific movement in the arts it is identified
with developments in post-World War II western art, most
strongly with American visual arts in the late 1960s and
early 1970s. It is rooted in the reductive aspects of
Modernism, and is often interpreted as a reaction against
Abstract Expressionism and a bridge to Postmodern art
practices.
20
Nihonga painting: literally “Japanese-style paintings” is
a term used to describe paintings that have been made in
accordance with Japanese traditional artistic conventions,
techniques and materials. Nihonga are typically executed on
washi (Japanese paper) or eginu (silk), using brushes. The
paintings can be either monochrome or polychrome. If
monochrome, typically sumi (Chinese ink) made from soot
mixed with a glue from fishbone or animal hide is used. If
polychrome, the pigments are derived from natural
ingredients: minerals, shells, corals, and even
semi-precious stones like malachite, azurite or
cinnabar. The raw materials are powdered into 16
gradations from fine to sand grain textures. A hide glue
solution, called nikawa, is used as a binder for these
powdered pigments. Initially Nihonga were produced for
hanging scrolls (kakemono), hand scrolls (emakimono) or
folding screens (byōbu). However, most are now produced
on paper stretched onto wood panels, suitable for framing.
Op Art: Op Art, also known as optical art, is a genre of
visual art that makes use of optical illusions. Op Art works
are abstract, with many of the better known pieces made
in only black and white. When the viewer looks at them, the
impression is given of movement, hidden images, flashing
and vibration, patterns, or alternatively, of swelling or
warping.
Pop Art: An art movement and style that started in England
in the 1950s and moved to the United States in the 1960s.
Artists were influenced by the media and advertising and
used familiar objects from popular culture as their
inspiration.
Performance art: Performance art is art in which the
actions of an individual or a group at a particular place and
in a particular time constitute the work. It can happen
anywhere, at any time, or for any length of time.
Performance art can be any situation that involves four
basic elements: time, space, the performer’s body and a
relationship between performer and audience.
Screen print: Screen prints are a form of stenciling. The
artist cuts out an image onto a sheet of paper or plastic
film. The image is then placed on a screen of silk or fine
mesh fabric. The image is coated with ink, which is forced
through the mesh onto the printing surface with a
squeegee.
Te Reo Māori glossary
Mana: prestige, authority, control, power, influence, status,
spiritual power, charisma – mana is a supernatural force in
a person, place or object
Manawa: heart (of a person)
Marae: be generous, hospitable; courtyard – the open area
in front of the wharenui, where formal greetings and
discussions take place. Often also used to include the
complex of buildings around the marae
Matapihi: window
Mauri: life principle, special nature, a material symbol of a
life principle, source of emotions
Piupiu: a type of skirt made of flax, crown fern
Pō: to set (of the sun), darkness, night, place of departed
spirits
Poupou: post, pole, upright slabs forming the framework of
the walls of a house, carved wall figures
Roro: brain, marrow, spongy matter, front end of a meeting
house, verandah, porch, lobby
Tāhuhu: ridge pole (of a house), subject of a sentence,
main theme, direct line of ancestry
Yayoi Kusama Infinity Mirror Room-Phalli’s Field (or Floor Show) 1965.
Sewn fabric, board, mirror room. Installation view. Castellane Gallery,New
York, USA. Courtesy the artist, Victoria Miro Gallery, London and Ota Fine
Arts, Tokyo © Yayoi Kusama, Yayoi Kusama Studio.
Ao: to dawn, be bright; world, Earth, globe, global, daytime,
cloud
Te Ao mārama: world of life and light, Earth, physical world
Heke: surfing, coming time, slope, rafter
Kōpū: belly, womb, abdomen
Te Kore: realm of potential being, The Void
Koru: be folded, looped, coiled, fold, loop
Tapu: sacred, prohibited, restricted, set apart, forbidden,
under atua protection; restriction – a supernatural
condition.
Tokomanawa: centre ridge pole of a meeting house (usually pou tokomanawa)
Whakapapa: genealogy, genealogical table, lineage, descent; to lie flat, lay flat, recite in proper order (e.g.
genealogies, legends, months), recite genealogies
Wharenui: meeting house, large house, main building of a
marae where guests are accommodated
Whare whakairo: carved house, meeting house
Te Aka Māori-English, English-Māori Dictionary and Index, http://www.
maoridictionary.co.nz/
Koruru: carved face on the gable of a meeting
house, often representing the ancestor after which the
house is named
Kōwhaiwhai: painted scroll ornamentation – commonly
used on meeting house rafters
Kūwaha: door, entrance, mouth
Maihi: bargeboards, the facing boards on the gable of a
house, the lower ends of which are often ornamented with
carving
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Online resources and further reading resources
Web sites
Yayoi Kusama’s official web site: http://www.yayoi-kusama.jp/
Fun interactive online game inspired by Kusama’s artwork
http://qag.qld.gov.au/kids/activities/online_interactives/kusamas_world_of_dots2/interactive
Biographical information about Kusama: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yayoi_Kusama
This site contains a range of photos of Kusama and her artwork
http://www.kusamadocumentary.com/photo.php
On line interview, Yayoi Kusama with Robert Murdock 1966 New York
http://collections.walkerart.org/item/archive/14
Artist profile and images of Kusama’s work
http://www.roslynoxley9.com.au/artists/49/Yayoi_Kusama/profile/
Slide show of a selection of Kusama’s artworks: http://www.victoriamiro.com/artists/_31/
This site contains some exhibition reviews of Kusama’s work
http://peterblumgallery.com/artists/yayoi-kusama/press
Detailed Biographical essay and images from past exhibitions: www.gagosian.com/artists/yayoi-kusama
Lists commercial galleries and museums that hold Kusama’s work
www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/kusama_yayoi.html
Multimedia presentation of some of Kusama’s artworks (requires Flash plug in)
http://www.visualarts.qld.gov.au/content/apt2002_standard.asp?name=APT_Artists_Yayoi_Kusama
Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. Exhibition information and downloadable teacher’s resource kit for Yayoi Kusama:
Mirrored Years: http://www.mca.com.au/
Printed material
Bishop, Claire (ed.), Installation Art : A Critical History, Tate Publishing, London, 2005 (pp. 87, 90 – 92).
Burke, Gregory, Roger McDonald & Fumio Nanjo, Mediarena: Contemporary Art from Japan, Govett Brewster Art Gallery, New
Plymouth, 2004 (pp 11-15, 20-21).
Devenport, Rhana, ‘YAYOI KUSAMA – IT STARTED FROM HALLUCINATION’, in APT 2002 : Asia –Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, ed. Lynne Seear, Brisbane: Queensland Art Gallery, 2002, (pp. 58 - 61).
Hoptman, Laura, Akira Tatehata & Udo Kultermann, Yayoi Kusama, Phaidon Press Ltd, London, 2000.
Mason, Penelope (ed.), History of Japanese Art, Pearson Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 2005 (pp. 389-391).
Miro, Victoria, Jo Applin & Glenn Scott Wright, Yayoi Kusama, Victoria Miro, London, 2008.
Munroe, Alexandra, Yayoi Kusama: The 1950s and 1960s, Paintings, Sculpture, Works On Paper, Paula Cooper Gallery,
Rhode Island, 1996.
Shuppan-Sha, Bijutsu, YAYOI KUSAMA: Eternity – Modernity, Japan, 2005.
Tatehata, Akira, PressPLAY: contemporary artists in conversation, Phaidon Press Ltd, New York, 2005.
Takashi, Azumaya, Kondo Kenichi, Kojima Yayoi, Uchida Mayumi & Kurata Akihiro, KUSAMATRIX : Kusama Yayoi, Kadokawa
Shoten Pub. Co.Ltd., Japan, 2004.
Zelevansky, Lynn, Laura Hoptman, Akira Tatehata & Alexandra Munroe and ed. Thomas Frick, Love Forever : Yayoi Kusama,
1958 – 1968, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 1998.
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Primary school artwork analysis
Yayoi Kusama, The Moment of Regeneration, 2004 (see full size image on reverse)
Yayoi Kusama, The Moment of Regeneration 2004. Sewn fabric, polyurethane, wood, paint. Courtesy the Museum of Modern Art Tokyo,
the artist, Victoria Miro Gallery, London and Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo © Yayoi Kusama, Yayoi Kusama Studio. Photo: Keizo Kioku.
Questions
1.
What can you see in this artwork?
2.
What do the shapes remind you of?
3.
If you could make up a title for this artwork what would you call it?
4.
How do you think this artwork was made?
5.
If you could touch it what do you think it would feel like?
6.
Where do you think Kusama got her ideas from when making this artwork?
7.
The title of this artwork is The Moment of Regeneration – what does ‘regeneration’ mean?
8.
Why do you think Kusama has given the artwork this title?
9.
If the sculpture could make sounds, what do you think they would be like?
10.
If the sculpture could move, how would it look?
11.
There are gaps between the different parts of this sculpture –do you think the artist wants people to walk through it? Why or why not?
12.
The sculptures look like they are growing out of the floor – if we could see below the floor – what might the underside of these forms look like?
13.
What do you feel when you look at the shapes?
14.
What do the colours and patterns on the shapes remind you of? If you could make this sculpture again what colours and patterns would you use?
Background information
• There are 55 different parts to this sculpture.
• They are called ‘soft sculptures’.
• Kusama made them from sewn fabric, polyurethane, wood, and paint.
• The dots on the sculptures are a repeat pattern that Kusama has used in many other artworks.
• These dots are symbolic for Kusama of the sun, earth and moon and remind her of the infinity of the universe.
• Kusama has said, ‘Our earth is only one polka dot among a million stars in the cosmos.’
Yoshimoto, Midori, ‘Performing the self: Yayio Kusama and her Ever-Expanding Universe’, in Into Performance: Japanese Women Artists in New York,
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Yayoi Kusama, The Moment of Regeneration 2004. Sewn fabric, polyurethane, wood, paint. Courtesy the Museum of Modern Art Tokyo, the artist, Victoria Miro Gallery, London
and Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo © Yayoi Kusama, Yayoi Kusama Studio. Photo: Keizo Kioku.