Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
[Music]
Making art was something she seems to have done
in opposition to her family, but she also was
inately talented and you look at the early
drawings and they are completely exquisite.
The challenges to become an accomplished
artist in a Japanese provincial milieu must have
driven this notion that at some point she
would have to escape. She was on a train to
stardom, she knew exactly what she wanted to do.
She had a suitcase full of drawings and she set
about selling herself.
[Music]
When she first came to New York, it was a man's
world. The art world was aggressively male.
It was a cut-throat period, you know, I think it
was very difficult to be a woman artist.
[Music]
She was taking away your ability to focus,
breaking all boundaries of space. And the
exhibitions that I had in particular, "The
openings where you could stick your head in
Peep Show," that did the job. It was an
octagonal room, painted black, and there were
and the ceiling of it set up a series of lights.
The rhythm of that machine was faster
and faster. Up until Kusama, there were many
artists from the Renaissance on who were involved
with perspective and infinity but it was all a
fake because you knew, you the viewer, you were
always aware that you were the master. That it
was a painting, it was encompassed by a
frame and the artist was playing with
space but it wasn't enveloping you.
To go back to Tokyo and to start from scratch
again for Kusama was quite extraordinary
because she wasn't known there and she hadn't
been recognized.
Clearly the strains and stresses of life, the
memories, forced her to withdraw. What she's
always done, she's always managed that process
incredibly well. Kusama is now living in a
mental institution. By day, she occupies across
the street, in a busy, suburban neighborhood of
Tokyo, a very well-appointed studio facility
where she has a team of assistants and she has
a space for painting, she has a space for her
library, her archive. And every morning she
gets there and she's a consummate professional.
She works from nine to six. And I think there's
a sort of managing madness about Kusama which
is so utterly sane, which is really interesting.
She's used her trauma, she's used these
experiences in her past. She's been able to
harness experiences that might drive other
people insane to enormously productive ends.
She's an extraordinary person in that way.
[Music]