Yayoi Kusama

signed and titled in English and dated 2005 on the reverse

Moma Contemporary, Fukuoka
Private Collection, Asia
Sotheby's, New York, 13 May, 2009, lot 151

Japan, Shimane, Iwami Art Museum, Yayoi Kusama, February - May 2006

This work is generally in good condition. There are some minor wear and handling marks as well as occasional pinpoint patches of paint loss around the edges, with the most noticeable one measuring ca. 1 cm on the lower right corner on panel 3. Having examined the work under ultraviolet light, there appears to be no evidence of restoration.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Parallel Reality
Yayoi Kusama

“My nets grew beyond myself and beyond the canvases I was covering with them. They began to cover the walls, the ceiling, and finally the whole universe.”

Five decades ago, when Yayoi Kusama boldly left Japan to pursue her dream of being an artist in America, no one could ever imagine the immense influence the young Japanese female artist would later exude on the course of both Western and Asian contemporary art today. From the large-scale Infinity Nets paintings, phallus-like soft sculptures, polka dots-covered collages, mirrored installations, to notorious street performances, the artist has truly created a body of psychedelic works that not only withstood the test of time, but successfully broke away from the limits of nationality, geography, and ultimately art. Among her eclectic oeuvre, the Infinity Nets is certainly the earliest and most iconic series that first established Kusama’s position in the Western art world. Throughout time, it would also become a fundamental and distinctive visual code within contemporary art discourse today. Produced in 2005, the quadriptych Infinity Nets (Lot 51) is considered an exceptionally monumental work from the mid 2000s, featuring a rare colour palette of red and green that showcased a crucial aesthetic transition within the later stage of the series.

Presenting endless repetitions of minute solid red arcs above a layer of acrylic green paint on the vast canvas surface, the lot on offer is a representative Infinity Nets painting from 2005. Compared with smaller paintings from the same year, this four-panel work, measuring over 5 metres long, especially exemplifies the meticulous skill and stamina of Kusama that are reminiscent of her phenomenal heights in New York and Europe. The combination of the red and green colour also contributes to the exceptional appearance of the work, bridging with the underlying monochromatic aesthetics of the first Infinity Nets paintings she created from late 1950s. At the same time, the rendering of the acrylic paint found here would also reflect an important stylistic move by the artist in the 1980s, when she shifted from using the oil paint medium. Thus, the textural surface can certainly be seen as a link between the early thickly coated paintings from New York, and the esthetically refined works after her return to Japan. In 2005, the artist had produced an array of installations work and paintings that transcended onto a new aesthetics plane. Among all these creations, the Infinity Nets can be considered to be a rare and raw encapsulation of the artist’s inner drive in tracing back to the absolute origin of her much celebrated kaleidoscopic artistic practice.

Since the beginning of her stay in New York City in 1958, Kusama was determined to rise to the forefront of the international art scene. She knew that she must refrain from popular trends to achieve her own status among the many avant-garde groups in the local art scene, brilliantly demonstrating an unparalleled vision of the period. “Around that time, it was flooded with action paintings. Everyone jumped at this style and this type of painting easily sold at a high price. However, I believed it is important for me to create unique art that comes only from within myself, in order to establish my life as an artist. Therefore, I introduced my painting: ‘Infinity Nets’, in which the inclination is the complete opposite to these action painters.”¹ With its initial appearance tracing back to an early series of watercolor works entitled Pacific Ocean from 1959, the Infinity Nets was featured in Kusama’s first solo exhibition Yayoi Kusama, in New York City at the Brata Gallery in October 1959, just one year after her arrival.

The five monumental paintings on view were a tremendous sensation and immediately captured the art world’s attention, including then critic Donald Judd, Picasso scholar Dore Ashton, and artist Frank Stella, who collected one of the earliest paintings. In many ways, the monumental size of the lot on offer would echo back to the dominating presence of these early works. In his article “Reviews and Previews: New Names This Month- Yayoi Kusama” from Artnews, Donald Judd commented, “Yayoi Kusama is an original painter. The expression transcends the question of whether it is Oriental or American. Although it is something of both, certainly of such Americans as Rothko, Still and Newman, it is not at all a synthesis and is thoroughly independent.”² Indeed, the minimalistic quality of endless white arcs atop the black backgrounds can certainly be described as Kusama’s main vehicle in breaking into the maledominated New York art scene at the time. They would eventually also become a crucial force against the dominating Abstract Expressionism ideal in New York, ultimately paving the way for the rise of Minimalism and the repetitive aesthetics of Pop Art. As we see in her later career, it is important to note that Kusama did not truly belong to any particular movement, but rather she has been creating her own path towards global recognition all along.

The original and distinctive aesthetics of the Infinity Nets series not only caused viral momentum within the United States, but also gained attraction from across the Atlantic Ocean in the European art scene. Along with Mark Rothko, Yayoi Kusama was one of only two artists invited from America, and ultimately the only Japanese female artist to participate in the “Monochrome Malerei” (Monochrome Painting) exhibition curated by Udo Kultermann at the Staedtisches Museum in Leverkusen in March 1960. It was a major exhibition devoted to works created after the Post- WWII period, with artworks by some of the most renowned avant-garde artists at the time such as Yves Klein, Lucio Fontana, and Piero Manzoni. To exhibit her Infinity Nets paintings along with these artists was a further affirmation of the intrinsic essence of the series. Through this exhibition, many scholars have attempted to compare and contrast the aesthetics between Kusama’s works with different Western artists including Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, and the European artist group Zero; it was arguably a gesture that was unheard of at the time for any Japanese female artists. According to scholar Alexandra Munroe on Kusama’s participation in the exhibition, “Characteristics of Kusama’s Infinity Nets paintings which relate to the Zero and Nul artists’ work are monochrome and non-compositional design, as advanced and articulated by Yves Klein, a mentor of the Zero group. […] Kusama’s paintings differ from Zero and Nul, however, in many of the same ways it differed from American Minimalism. […] Kusama’s repetition was never mechanistic or deductive, but the product of obsessional, compulsive performance.”³

Having experienced serious hallucinations since she was young, the organic pattern created with a simple movement of the wrist is essentially a meditative channel for the artist to transcend the plague of ongoing hallucinations to the real world. It is also a crucial foundation upon which the artist extends her later practice beyond the canvas. “My nets grew beyond myself and beyond the canvases I was covering with them. They began to cover the walls, the ceiling, and finally the whole universe. I was standing at the center of the obsession over the passionate accretion and repetition inside of me.”⁴ Throughout the 1960s and after the artist’s return to her homeland in 1973, the Infinity Nets would frequently reappear in different media and forms. While some of the later paintings bear a gradient appearance, others began to take on bold colour tones and sizes. The lot on offer, with its brilliant colour-palette and multi-paneled structure, without  a doubt, testifies to the parallel between the lineage of the pattern and the artist herself, as what Kusama has declared, “painting, which is powerful enough to wrap up the whole universe, not to mention the earth, is Kusama’s Infinity Nets. I will probably continue to paint this endless web, which I have worked on for the past 40 years. Yayoi Kusama is unchangeable.”⁵

1 The Struggle and Travel of My Soul, Geijutsu Seikatsu, 1975
2 Donald Judd, “Reviews and Previews: New Names This Month- Yayoi Kusama.” Artnews 58, No. 6, October, 1989, p. 17
3 Alexandra Munroe, “Radical,Will: Yayoi Kusama and the International Avant Garde-Kusama’s Painting and Sculpture in the 1960s”, Yayoi Kusama: Between Heaven and Earth, Fuji Television Gallery Co., Ltd, 1991
4 Udo Kultermann, “Yayoi Kusama and the Concept of Obsession in Contemporary Art”,Yayoi Kusama: Obsession
5 Yayoi Kusama Recent Oil Paintings, Ota Fine Art, 1998