Completely Dotty
Posted: September 17, 2012 Filed under: Galleries, Museums, Private Collections | Tags: abstract expressionism, alice s adventures in wonderland, art, Art Brut, art fix, Body Festivals, infinity, Japanese contemporary art, mental health, polka dots, Surrealist art, thats crazy, women artists, Yayoi Kusama 5 Comments
Yayoi Kusama, detail Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: With Artwork by Yayoi Kusama, Penguin, 2012
“If it were not for art, I would have killed myself a long time ago.” Yayoi Kusama
On the subject of being crazy and creating mind-blowing art let’s talk Yayoi Kusama.
She came to prominence in the 70’s when she staged Body Festivals – naked people walking around clothed only in painted polka dots. And since then the dots have not stopped.
Polka dots are a way to infinity. Yayoi Kusama
Kusama leads the avant-garde contemporary art world. She checked herself into a Japanese mental institution in 1973 and since 1977 has called it home. She is escorted each day to her studio and is walked back to the hospital at night.
The Whitney now features an eye-popping retrospective of her work which you can browse when you click the picture above. She’s a published poet and novelist. Louis Vitton partnered with her to make this fall’s hottest, spotted accessories.
Her latest work sold for $5.1 M, the highest amount for a living female artist.
Don’t know about you, but that doesn’t seem too crazy to me. Just badass.
igetitart 
I chuckled out loud… it is bad ass.
and the painting is wickedly good. I can actually feel my iris or is it my lens, or both, working to focus on the contrast between the yellow and black, red and black and black and white. My brain isn’t certain which is background and which is the proper subject of my focus. I love it when art creates a physical sensation like that. It’s like a tickle session for my eyeballs.
thumbs up, and I’ll have some of that candy she’s taking!
I even picked a “low key” accessible piece, and it’s still very visceral and perhaps brutal in its aggressive lines and patterning. Her installation art “Fireflies on the water” is considered a major work. You cross a rail-less bridge into a dark mirrored room hung with thousands of LED pinpoint lights. You look down into a watery pool which reflects the lights yet again. Its an infinity of darkness and pricks of light as “self” is multiplied and obscured. Dark and light in eternal reflecting repetition. Brilliant and terrifying.
love this posting!
badass indeed!
Great posting. Definatley bad ass. The kind of madness that leads to geniality and greatness.