Hundreds of soft white sculptures covered in red dots multiply in the mirrors of Infinity Mirror Room – Phalli’s Field. Years ago, I saw the installation at the old Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. Visitors could step inside, and for a moment I had the room to myself. There was so much to see. Much later, I saw the same work again, this time being restored at Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen.
Born in Matsumoto, Japan, in 1929, Yayoi Kusama started drawing repeated patterns as a child, long before dots became synonymous with her name. Life, death and infinity would become recurring subjects throughout her work. She settled in New York in 1958. Her paintings, soft sculptures, performances and installations placed her among the avant-garde of the 1960s. Phalli’s Field, created in 1965, was her first mirrored environment. The version in the Boijmans collection dates from 1998.
Kusama exhibition in M+ Hong Kong, Black Pumpkin photographed by Edoardo Matteoni/Unsplash
Fashion was already part of her work in the 1960s. The Kusama Fashion Company, founded in New York in 1968, produced clothes with dots, cut-outs and openings. Some were sold at Bloomingdale’s. Decades later came Louis Vuitton. The first collaboration, under Marc Jacobs, launched in 2012, followed by another in 2023. Kusama’s dots appeared across clothes, bags and accessories, while enormous figures of the artist appeared on Louis Vuitton façades around the world.
Kusama installation in M+ Hong Kong
In Hong Kong, Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now at M+ presented more than 200 works spanning seven decades. Inside one of the installations, visitors were given less than a minute. A member of staff took several photographs in quick succession, leaving me alone among black and white spheres, dots and mirrors.
This September, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam opens a major retrospective covering more than seventy years of her work, from early paintings and Infinity Nets to fashion and installations. There is a lot I want to see.
Images by the author. Black Pumpkin photographed by Edoardo Matteoni/Unsplash
