Profiles of two Japanese artists
On her Tokyomango blog, Lisa Katayama profiled two fascinating Japanese artists I'd never heard of: Yayoi Kusama (L) and Mariko Mori (R).
Kusama lives in a mental hospital near her studio in Tokyo because psychiatrists don't understand how her complex brain functions (she's obviously a genius). She turns 80 next year, but that hasn't stopped her momentum of obsessive, repetitive dot-drawing. Dot dot dot dot dot. That's what she sees, so that's what she draws. Abused as a child, suicidal as a teen, and plagued with OCD for the ensuing half century and beyond, she has often claimed that her objective in life is to obliterate herself and her world through art. The dots, Kusama has said, symbolize disease: she often covers herself in them, and when that's not enough, she covers museum walls, random objects, and public statues in them as well. Of course, her art is so famous and cool that nobody objects. Walking into a Kusama-dotted room really feels like walking into an alternate universe.
Mori isn't afraid to combine aliens with Buddhas or to experiment with materials and concepts normally unheard of in the art world. She spent part of her thirties voyaging to historic sites across the world in a time-traveling alien pod. When she got back, she created the Wave UFO, a giant teardrop-shaped spaceship that shows visitors their brainwaves as projections on the wall while they sit in Technogel lounge chairs. "The past, present, and future exist in harmony in her work," says Stover. "It represents the space-ageyness of Japan."Futurist Japanese Artists Show Us Life in the Next Century (Tokyomango)
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Kusama was profiled in the brilliant series Japanorama by Jonathan Ross which aired on the Beeb. She once belonged to the Factory and has had an ongoing battle with madness, but her work is HIGHLY regarded and sought-after.
Mori and Kusama are the most famous Japanese woman artists this side of Yoko Ono. Both had great shows at LACMA at the end of the 1990s, and were featured at various Venice Biennials, etc.
"Kusama lives in a mental hospital near her studio in Tokyo because psychiatrists don't understand how her complex brain functions (she's obviously a genius)".
She asked herself to be hospitalized after suffering a breakdown and had been in and out of hospitals over the last decades. If every "obvious genius" had to be institutionalized because psychiatrists don't understand how their brain functions, there wouldn't be much creativity and invention out there.
Those are Japanese artists? You're kidding.
Yayoi is pretty awesome, I saw her stuff at the Kennedy Center this past winter.
(She's obviously a genius.) And HIGHLY regarded.
I'm glad I've been told how much I should appreciate these two. I never would of guessed.
If she ASKED to be hospitalized she's scared, poor thing.
#4,
Which stereotype have they failed to fulfill?
I got to see the wave UFO but it was closed for repairs.
Now that I've typed the phrase I realize it would make a nice bumper sticker.
Thank you for all the new, expanded art posts of late, by the way.
Keep it coming!
Those are some trippy contacts Mori's wearing.
If I'm not mistaken, Kusama also appears in the oddly mesmerizing "Marc Jacobs and Louis Vuitton" documentary that came out last year. Marc Jacobs visits her in a meeting of creative minds.
How could you have never heard of these two? They are really famous, especially Yayoi Kusama. She's even in my junior high art textbook, which is only like 20 pages long. I remember seeing a big show of hers in maybe 1996 in New York. A lot of my friends thought it was meaningless pattern-fetishism, but I find her work to be a profound comment on the worlds we all create for ourselves, whether we're insane or not.
yeah,her work is more in Seurat than in Ingres
oooooohhhhh, stand in the corner. Pun of the week.
stolen, of course
It looks like this Yayoi Kusama is the Cruella DeVille of The Cheats. It must have taken at least 101 The Cheat skins to cover that room.
Kusama is amazing! My favorite from her is a piece she did where the walls and ceiling are mirrored and on the floor are large and small orange dots and mannequins with wigs covered in dots. You can see it in the Argyle Museum at myspace dot com /variouscool
Kusama's yellow room with black dots ("Day") is from the Kennedy Center's (I work there) Festival of Japan back in February. It was installed in a passage room leading to an Atrrium with a large installation by Tadao Ando, and on the opposite side, another Kusama passage room, that one black with yellow dots ("Night"). It was pretty cool to come to work and hang out in there before the crowds showed up.
It's all here: http://flickr.com/search/?ss=2&ct=6&w=all&q=kennedy+center+japan&m=text
There was a Yayoi Kusama cafe in Tokyo's Roppongi Hills for a couple months - pink with white polka dots everywhere, mirrored walls. Really surreal! I never went in to eat, though - all those polka dots everywhere would make me too dizzy to eat.
I was in the UFO wave in groningen last year. Wonderful.
See also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQlye_NDzzA
Am I not the only one who thinks this is just a continuation of the modern Japanese trend towards digestion and regurgitation of well tread concepts?
It's 1997, only in anime Technicolor.
Most of japanese designs are futuristic in nature now a days. They are the worlds center for high technology products and this is one good example. They are also good in "mini" products.
They also started making robots. Example of that is the Sony robots those that dance. I dont know what was the name of that but it was awesome.
charles
http://www.rsrcsndmny.blgspt.cm
Kusama did the only installation that ever caused me to panic (a little). it was a darkened room with pinlights hung at different lengths everywhere, with mirrored walls. After enjoying the wonder of it and then bumbling round for a while, i really did wonder if i could find the exit without calling for help.
Yayoi Kusama (and others) released a multimedia art project with Peter Gabriel that was presented as a sort of computer game/experience some time ago.
Her contributions were simultaneously creepy and wonderful.
I checked out the comments section just to see how many other folks thought about "Lil Dot" from the old Harvey comics. Guess I'm getting old. Anyway, Dot was a little girl who had but one fixation...dots. Reality imitating low-brow art to create highbrow art.
http://www.toonopedia.com/littldot.htm
So Mori's kind of a visual arts Nina Hagen?
I can dig that.
cipals15,
Your blog link goes on your profile page. Thanks.
...Well, if there was ever anything that could ever convince me that I'm not doing the right drugs, it's this mess. That room looks like what Jonah would have seen inside Nostromo had he been swallowed while on a plaid acid trip gone bad.
After seeing this, I must do penance. I have two Robin Askwith "Timothy Lea" films to scour my glozzies with now...
I saw the Mori video at the Peabody Essex Museum in Essex, MA, a few months ago. I had no idea what it was, other than mesmerizing peformance art. They'd put it in a room with Japanese artifacts with no other context. Thanks for putting it in some!
The Canadian band Superchunk has a song entitled "Art Class (Song for Yayoi Kusama)" on their album Here's to Shutting Up. That's where I first heard of her, even though the song doesn't reference Kusama directly (I think).
Superchunk's actually from Chapel Hill, NC.
I got to go inside Mariko Mori's Wave UFO at the 2005 Venice Biennale. Three people would lie inside with EEG monitors hooked up to throw visualization patterns on an overhead three-part circular screen, one 120-degree pie wedge per person. The idea was that each person tried to meditate and generate alpha waves so the three wave patterns formed a circular pattern. Problem for me was the pod space was too short and I guess the assistant hooking up the EEG monitors didn't check too closely, because all I got on my screen were jagged waves. I looked later and saw the plug was loose, so the waves must have come from line noise or were quite good at visually translating #@!%!*?! and dark clouds with cartoon skulls-and-crossbones. I waited in line for *two hours*.
Offal: same!
Mark...really? REALLY? I'm actually surprised you hadn't heard of them. Prolific and working long before Takashi Murakami hit the BIG big time, they are well known and respected in Japan.
Lisa Katayama calling them 'Futurists,' however, is inaccurate, and the descriptions she herself makes subvert that categorisation.
@ Mithrandir: Except both of their careers precede such a generalisation, putting them ahead of the regurgitation curve. Mori's more thoughtful and critical than you allow.