Yayoi kusama autobiography pdf merge books
Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama.
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Page URL: HTML link: Citations:Yayoi Kusama's (b. ) history of mental illness is by now legendary. A little-known aspect of this artist is that, similar to the way she orchestrates her public persona with impeccably coordinated dresses and matching wigs, Kusama obsessively fabricates significant aspects of her autobiography that help to enhance the myth of her artistic genius.
Such an obsession can be seen as symptomatic of her fuanshinkeisho (or anxiety neurosis). The diagnosis is casually mentioned in the original, Japanese version of her autobiography--published as Mugen no Ami: Kusama Yayoi Jiden in (1) In Infinity Net, the translation is "panic attack" (), leaving Western readers room for interpretation.
Yayoi kusama autobiography pdf merge files: Yayoi Kusama: A Panorama of My Youth, Media of Modern Art Contemporary Gallery; Fukuoka, Japan Yayoi Kusama: The s and s, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York Yayoi Kusama: Ten Paintings from the '60s to the Present, Ota Fine Arts; Tokyo, Japan Yayoi Kusama, Ouka Shorin; Nagano, Japan Yayoi Kusama: Recent Work, Robert Miller Gallery, New York.
Kusama is relentlessly savvy. Since Infinity Net is a translation of her ten-year old autobiography, it does not reflect the latest scholarly research on Kusama, including this author's own, based on the artist's archival records that became accessible in That to a significant extent Infinity Net is a "memoir as fiction" becomes quite evident when contrasted with these materials.
Infinity Net opens with the artist's flight to Seattle in and a familiar episode: Kusama found a book of Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings "in a secondhand bookshop" in her hometown, Matsumoto, which provided a "thread" to her travel to the United States. Wanting to write to O'Keeffe, she took a "six-hour train ride" to Tokyo, visited the U.S.
Embassy, and "leafed with trembling hands through their copy of Who's Who, looking for O'Keeffe's address" (12). In her original letter to O'Keeffe, found in the archive, dated November 15, , however, Kusama wrote: "Some days ago when I dropped in the exhibition of American Arts Books which was held at U.S.I.S. [U.S. Information Service], I saw a photograph of your work 'Corn' there and then thought of finding out your address by asking the corporation of U.S.I.S." (3) This is but a small example of how Kusama dramatizes events by altering historical details.
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Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama By Yayoi Kusama. Tate Publishing. £ (hb). pp. ISBN: Yayoi Kusama was born in She is, perhaps, Japan’s.Infinity Net should be considered as an extension of Kusama's semiautobiographical literary works that she began in , treated in Part Five of this five-part autobiography.
Unmentioned in the opening section of Infinity Net is Kusama's relationship with some Pacific Northwest artists. In December , she wrote to Neil Mietzler, a student of the Seattle artist Kenneth Callahan (she wrote to Callahan around the same time she wrote to O'Keeffe).
She sent a set of artworks and asked him to explore the possibility of mounting an exhibition of her work in the U. S. (4) The following January, he brought her works to his Seattle dealer, Zoe Dusanne, who immediately offered Kusama an exhibition. (5) Although, Kusama presents herself as a singular artist, her correspondence with Mietzler indicates that she was also very much a product of her time.
(6)
Two of her early U.S. exhibitions have been re-titled in this memoir: Kusama's first solo exhibition in New York in was not "Obsessional Monochrome" (23) but "Kusama," (7) and the title of her Gres Gallery exhibition in Washington, D.C. was not "Infinity Net" (30) but "Yayoi Kusama--The Painting." (8) The new names help Kusama to emphasize how her early development in New York resulted from "the thousands of pictures I had made over the course of a decade" (27), leading to her phenomenal Net paintings, large overall paintings that resemble monochromatic nets.
By January , Kusama had embarked on her soft sculptures, based on found objects, but after Martha Jackson Gallery's influential "New Forms--New Media" exhibition (), many up and coming artists also were incorporating found objects in their works.
Kusama "remembers" premiering her soft sculpture in "October of ," in a group show at Green Gallery, a prominent vanguard venue in New York.
She also recalls, "The work contributed to this exhibition by Claes Oldenburg was a man's suit made of stiff papiermache" (39), a recollection borne out by the installation photograph. Oldenburg later said, "I remember the sofa. That probably was the first time I saw her [Kusama's] work." (9) In fact, this group show took place in June , as confirmed by Brian O'Doherty's review in The New York Times, which appeared on the same page as a paid exhibition advertisement mentioning Kusama and Oldenburg.
(10) After the group show, Oldenburg embarked on his own distinctive soft sculptures and debuted them at Green Gallery that September, which immediately brought him to international attention.
Kusama suggests her influence on Oldenburg by writing that his former wife, Patty Mucha, asked her to "forgive us!" (39), though Mucha says she does not remember apologizing to Kusama.
(11) Kusama fails to mention the most important fact: her nervous breakdown at seeing Oldenburg's sewn sculptures. Donald Judd (Kusama's upstairs neighbor between and ) recalled that she had suddenly become "very paranoid about the New York art situation." (12) Another neighbor, the painter Ed Clark, remembers that she suddenly became obsessed with the thought that her ideas might be appropriated, which compelled her to close all the curtains on the windows of her loft facing Park Avenue and 19th Street.
(13) Kusama almost surely suffered from anxiety neurosis, and to calm herself down, on September 29, eleven days after Oldenburg's opening, she mentions in her diary (for the first time) that she took Doriden (a prescription "minor tranquilizer"). (14) Being mindful of her health, Kusama apparently recorded the days she took this medicine.
Sidney Tillim's lengthy three-page review of Oldenburg's exhibition appeared in the November Arts Magazine, (15) and beginning on November 9, Kusama took Doriden for ten consecutive days. On November 24, she was hospitalized at St. Luke's Hospital's psychiatric ward, most likely following a panic attack. (16)
Because of her self-proclaimed mental illness, Kusama's art-historical reassessment has been delayed: she repeatedly has said that she suffers from hallucinatory visions where she sees "nets" and "dots" that profoundly affect her artistic development and manifest themselves in her visual vocabulary.
In Part Two of Infinity Net, focused on the artist's growing up in Japan, Kusama dates the first experience of "visual and aural hallucinations" to (62); however, in June (while preparing for her Tate Modern retrospective), she re-edited the autobiographical narrative that she had been previously supplying for official purposes and deleted a line describing her "hallucinatory visions." (17) Thus, as I have argued elsewhere, for her autobiography, Kusama had backdated to the "hallucinatory visions" that were most likely side effects of the tranquilizers she began taking in (18)
The fact of Kusama arriving in the United States during the golden age of post-World War II pharmaceutical science is key to understanding Part Three, focused on psychedelic art.
Many psychiatrists during this time believed that neurological conditions were caused by chemical imbalances in the body, and that it was possible to restore balance using psychotropic drugs. (19) In recent interviews, Kusama mentioned a "successful psychiatric treatment" around (20) By the mid-twentieth century, some psychiatrists were treating obsessional neurosis with LSD, (21) and Kusama's gradual personality change from an introvert to an extrovert during this period coincided with the new studies made by the behavioral psychologist Timothy Leary.
Based on Aldous Huxley's hypothesis, Leary believed that active hallucinogens could turn on never-activated parts of the cerebella, thereby expanding human consciousness and altering human behavior. (22)
In late summer , Leary premiered his neurological art in the form of a "sound-and-light show." He believed that exposing a person to a peculiar amalgam of sound, flashing lights, and projected images could generate visions similar to those experienced through LSD and activate dormant parts of the brain.
Based on Leary's theory, by Kusama developed her own "audiovisual-light performance," entitled Self-Obliteration.
Yayoi kusama autobiography pdf merge Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama By Yayoi Kusama. Tate Publishing. £ (hb). pp. ISBN: Yayoi Kusama was born in She is, perhaps, Japan’s.By scientifically altering people's perception, she aimed to bring about "sexual liberation" ().
Infinity Net is most valuable when it comes to Kusama's own views about her gender (the "second sex," as Simone de Beauvoir indelibly named it), informing us that this was a key factor in shaping both her life and art. In , when Kusama decided to leave Japan, the "country was too scornful of women" (93).
In New York, based on her experience, she decided to become an agent for "sexual revolution" (). She returned to Japan permanently in , in part as a result of the hostile reception she met with from (male) critics (). After just a few years in Japan, in Kusama voluntarily took refuge in a mental health clinic in Tokyo, and there she continues to wait for her proper historical assessment.
Any history is a written record that reflects a personal perspective, one inevitably influenced by the governing structure of society--an unequal structure, as Michel Foucault has made clear, produced by the conjunctions of sexuality and power. (23) Compared to her white male peers, such as Judd, Oldenburg, and Andy Warhol, Kusama has often been marginalized.
To counter this, in , she decided to write her own autobiography/hagiography, altering certain aspects of her life and minimizing her discussion of her psychiatric state. Even with its mix of real and created memories, Infinity Net is valuable as it suggests many blind spots in the way official history is constructed, blind spots that can spur art historians to uncover specific historical fragments and destabilize the art-historical status quo.
Only within such a context can an artist such as Kusama be fully appraised--and appreciated.
*
Midori Yamamura is Visiting Assistant Professor in the History of Art and Design at Pratt Institute. She is the author of Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Years () and a contributor to the recent exhibition catalog, Yoyoi Kusama ().
Notes
(1.) Yayoi Kusama, Mugen no Ami: Kusama Yayoi Jiden (Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama) (Tokyo: Sakuhinsha, ),
(2.) Midori Yamamura, "Re-Viewing Kusama, Biography of Things," in Yayoi Kusama, Mirrored Years, eds.
Franck Gautherot et al., exh. cat. (Dijon: Les Presses du Reel, ),
(3.) Yayoi Kusama, letter to Georgia O'Keeffe, November 15, , folder "Georgia O'Keeffe," Kusama Papers, Tokyo, Kusama Yayoi Archive. Hereafter Kusama Papers.
(4.) Yayoi Kusama, letter to Neil Meitzler, December 17, , Neil Meitzler Papers, accession no.
, Special Collection Division, University of Washington Library, Seattle. Hereafter Meitzler Papers.
(5.) Zoe Dusanne, letter to Kusama, January 14, , Zoe Dusanne Papers, accession no.
, Special Collections Division, University of Washington Libraries, Seattle.
(6.) Mietzler Papers.
(7.) Yayoi Kusama, invitation to "Kusama" exhibition, vertical file, "Kusama, Yayoi," Washington, D.C., Smithsonian American Art Museum.
(8.) Beatrice Perry, "Yayoi Kusama--The Painting" (ca. April ), artist file, "Yayoi Kusama," Museum of Modern Art Library, New York.
(9.) Audio recording of Claes Oldenburg, interview by Alexandra Munroe and Reiko Tomii, New York, February 21, Fine Arts Library, University of Texas at Austin.
() Brian O'Doherty, "Seasons End: Abstractions and Distractions," New York Times, June 17, , p.
() Patty Mucha, e-mail message to author, September 20,
() Audiotape of Donald Judd, interview by Alexandra Munroe and Reiko Tomii, New York, December 8, , Fine Arts Library, University of Texas at Austin.
() Digital recording of Ed Clark (Kusama's neighbor between ), interview by author, New York, October 9,
() The date of Oldenburg's Green Gallery exhibition is recorded as Sept. Oct. 20, in David Platzker, Selected Exhibition History, Oldenburg: An Anthology (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publ., ), Barbara Rose's "Chronology" lists the dates as Sept.
Oct. 3, in Claes Oldenburg, ed. Barbara Rose (New York: MoMA, ), Since Kusama noted the opening as Sept. 18 in her calendar diary, Sept. , Kusama Papers, I follow Rose's chronology. Minor tranquilizers are distinguished from drugs such as Thorazine or reserpine, first called major tranquilizers and now more commonly classfied as antipsychotics or neuroleptics.
See Andrea Tone, The Age of Anxiety: A History of America's Turbulent Affair with Tranquilizers (New York: Basic Books, ), ix.
() Sidney Tillim, "Month in Review," Arts Magazine (November ):
() Kusama wrote: "I lost my confidence and out of despair, cut my wrist with a blade." Kusama, untitled Japanese statement, ca.
, Kusama Papers.
() Yayoi Kusama, "Press Release," June
() Yamamura, "Re-Viewing Kusama,"
() Tone, The Age of Anxiety, ix.
() Yayoi Kusama, interview by author, Tokyo, July 28, See also Midori Yoshimoto, Into Performance: Japanese Women Artists in New York (New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ. Press, ), 76, n.
() Robert S.
de Ropp, Drugs and the Mind (New York: Grove Press, Inc., ),
() Timothy Leary, "The Molecular Revolution" (), in Timewave Zero/A Psychedelic Reader, eds. Lionel Bovier and Mai-Thu Perret (Graz, Austria: Grazer Kunstverein, ), Kusama remembered "Timothy Leary's big lecture at Fillmore East Theater. And also [Leary's friend] Allen Ginsberg, they were taking drugs," as were "John Lennon and Yoko." Yayoi Kusama, interview by Alexandra Munroe, Tokyo, December 18,
() Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol.
1, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon, ),
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