Yayoi Kusama
"Kusama's is a wonderful behind-the-music story, the outsider, with destiny in her sights, who moves to the big city to prove herself, then collapses under the strain of striving, only to stage a comeback, bigger than ever." (Carl SwansonNew York Magazine2012-07-16)"The inescapable theme of infinity floods her work and finds its psychedelic way into the heart of even the most jaded of mainstream critics. Infinite and indispensible." (Patrik SandbergV Magazine2012-07-01)In Japan, she was regarded as "the queen of scandal," the critic Tatehata said, and not as a major artist. Yet she continued to create art, enlisting fellow hospital patients to assist her. The refurbishment of her reputation began with small exhibitions in Tokyo of the exquisite collages she made with magazine clippings that Cornell had given her. But her rediscovery on a larger stage dates from the pioneering 1989 exhibition in New York that was organized by Munroe at the short-lived Center for International Contemporary Arts. (Nobuyoshi ArakiW Magazine2012-06-01)Looking back, Kusama is an early example of an artist whose contribution is, essentially, a globalization of output. These works need no translation nor do they demand prolonged looking. Essentially they are mass displays of catchy stuff, ranging from airmail labels collaged by the hundred to phalli cast by the thousand, upstaged eventually by quite startling mirror mazes. (William FeaverARTnews2012-05-01)Ms. Kusama was born in the Japanese hinterlands in 1929, and the one big question that's clear in her work is this: How does an artist blossom in the wake of World War II? For Ms. Kusama, one of Japan's best-known artists, the answer was a sharp turn toward sometimes barely decipherable inscapes. She says she makes art "that does battle at the boundary between life and death." In series like Self-Obliteration and Infinity Net it seems that she would like nothing better than to evanesce into eternity. (Dana JenningsThe New York Times2012-04-27)