The Sublime Nature of Yayoi Kusama's Artwork in the Contemporary World

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The Sublime Nature of Yayoi Kusamas Artwork in the Contemporary World
With the desire to escape her obsessive-compulsive neurosis condition, Yayoi Kusama releases her hallucinations through her outstanding art pieces. The unique style of displaying her art has made her a noteworthy artist in contemporary art. One steps into another world that is more than an exhibition but of infinite possibilities when looking at her canvasses (such as the Infinity Net), walking through her installations (such as Infinity Mirror Rooms), or witnessing her performance. Her art style is a concentration of polka dots, infinity nets, mirror displays, pumpkins, and body art. The artist aims to eliminate the world's happenings with a single dot. Kusama senses that the physical world is overtaken by endlessly repeated forms, which she represents in her work using polka dots. For Instance, infinity mirror rooms created a multiplying illusion in the visitor's mind, setting a three-dimensional scene of the infinite space in the subconscious mind. This write-up will explore how Kusama's artwork fits in her career, how the artwork diverges from the characteristic of its moments and the prevailing critics of scholars who have written her work.[Ferrell, Susanna S. "Pattern and disorder: Anxiety and the art of Yayoi Kusama." (2015).]
How Kusama Art Work Fit/Diverges from the Career of Its Artist or Work that is Characteristic of its Moment
Many artists say their artwork and lives are closely linked. This reality is actual for Yayoi Kusama, whose artistic work of polka dots and infinity net motifs is an outward expression of a single-minded performance that has lasted for decades. Her artwork shows attributes of minimalism, pop art, and feminism. She brings the themes to life using her psychedelic polka dot styles. Kusama's artwork reflects the contemporary art movement through pop art, whereby contemporary art is a big deal in the 21st century. Richard Meyer outlines that contemporary art is not simply a function of the current movement or immediate past but also a relationship between the volatile forces of history and the ever-shifting present. Through her artwork, Kusama is an artist with character and one of the most influential artists in New York.[Fitzgerald, Michael. "Maximising minimalism." Art Monthly Australasia 314 (2019): 50-55.] [Gombrich, Ernst Hans. "Image and word in twentieth-century art." Word & image 1, no. 3 (1985): 213-241.]
The artist studied Nihonga at the Kyoto School of Arts and Crafts, a traditional Japanese painting form that emerged in the Meiji period. She later relocated to New York, where she was inspired by the rise of abstract expressionism after several solo exhibitions in Japan. After arriving in New York, she began a series of infinity nets that incorporated soft sculptures, paintings, films, and installations. The nets were inspired by the artist's hallucinations of overcoming endless netting. The infinity nets harmonized with the work of other emerging pop and minimal art movements. European groups, such as the Zero, brought her to the attention of the New York avant-garde, which later won Donald Judd’s recognition. In the 1960s, Kusama began to create large-scale installations that she referred to as accumulations characterized by everyday objects covered by white phallic protrusions. The accumulations inspired Claes Oldenburg's soft structures and brought forth the aspects of American pop art.
Kusama's artwork fits her career. She develops her unique style through the art movement and is highly appreciated worldwide. For Instance, she received the Asahi prize in 2001, the education minister's encouragement price, and the foreign minister's commendation in 2000. In 2002, she received the medal with a dark navy blue ribbon. She has also secured awards, including the National Lifetime Achievement Award and the Order of the Rising Sun. She is the first woman to receive the most prominent Japanese prize for internationally recognized artists Premium Impariale. Kusama has also collaborated with Louis Vuitton, where the launch of her collection remains the most prominent artist partnerships initiated by a fashion brand. Her art has also been exhibited in multiple museums, including the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Hirshhorn Museum, and the Sculpture Garden.[Yamamura, Midori. "Yayoi Kusama: Biography and Cultural Confrontation, 1945–1969." (2012).]
Kusama's artwork has gone against the works of its moment, which had strict rules regarding feminism and abstract expressionism. The feminist art movement raised world awareness of gender equality through artwork that reflects their values, feelings, and lives. The movement expanded the traditional role of women in society from homemakers to artists. Female artists like Kusama used traditional techniques such as painting to contemporary art forms like conceptual art, sculptures, performance art, and installation art to share their perspectives with their audience. Kusama created the first de-gendered artworks in the history of feminism. She named accumulation and aggregation sculptures, which display women's duty in a society covered with phallic protrusions. The traveling life 1964 demonstrates feminism in that women are presented by high heel shoes climbing the ladder, filling their steps with phallic features of different sizes representing how men menace womanhood.
Image 1: Travelling Life 1964
Kusama also staged provocative happenings that involved her painting polka dots on participants' bodies to express sexual liberty. In the 20th century, artists' bodies were used as objects and subjects of the artwork. Artists represented the body in all possible guises, naked or painted, bound or beaten, and spasmodic or still. She deviated from the traditions by becoming the first artist to tear the barriers between art and life, whereby she began living her art on her skin and that of others. Her exploration of the human body went beyond the male genital, whereby she staged happenings around New York, the performances she referred to as self-obliteration. She used polka dots to paint the bodies of individuals to obliterate them and return to the infinite environment. She discovered the endless variations of polka dots played out across her body and those of others in museums, public parks, television, and the press. During this period, Kusama produced significant works that reflected broader body and performance art developments. Between 1968 and 1969, Kusama staged her events across Manhattan, from the New York stock exchange and UN buildings to the Brooklyn Bridge, the statue of liberty, and Centrals parks Alice in wonderland statute. Therefore, the artist was known for her anti-capitalist, anti-establishment, anti-war, and free-love happenings.
The aggregation of one thousand boats in 1963 consisted of a narrow boat that she covered with protruding phallic extensions, which she displayed at Gertrude Stein Gallery, along with 999 posters displaying the same boat. The exhibition displayed what would later be known as self-obliteration. Her creations were a form of self-obliteration as a source of trauma and fear expressed positively. The exhibition became a source of inspiration for infinity. The black wallpaper representing the 999 boats has the expression as if the boats were abandoned in a dark tunnel with white coral growing on the boat's surface. The work was a self-portrait of her psyche because the boat stood unusable, stranded, and ...