Kusama: Infinity (2018)

☆ ☆ ☆

Kusama: Infinity (2018) – H. Lenz

Somehow I expected that the pop art polka dots that I associate with Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama would flow from a cheery positive personality overflowing with joie de vivre.  Not true.  This documentary about her life showed me just how little I knew about Kusama and how wrong I was in my assumptions.  Instead, Kusama suffered through the sexism and racism of the New York art scene in the ‘50s and ‘60s and the backlash back in conservative Japan when she became associated with naked happenings at the end of the latter decade.  This drove her to depression and nearly to suicide.  I did not know she had a celibate romance with much older artist Joseph Cornell who was obsessed with her.  After her career (but not her motivation or the quality of her work) fizzled in New York, she returned back to Japan to slowly rebuild her life (in a psychiatric institution -- where perhaps she still voluntarily lives?).  And of course, she did make a come back and now is apparently the highest selling living artist in the world.  I first saw her work in Pittsburgh at The Mattress Factory in the late ‘90s – one of her mirrored room installations (that do seem to extend to infinity).  More recently, she contributed a series of small rooms, a cottage of sorts, where visitors placed flower stickers wherever they wanted (and soon the entire exhibit was plastered), to the Melbourne NGV Triennial last year.  Her work is certainly worth experiencing – but I didn’t realise the different phases she had gone through (and her influence on other contemporary artists) and the depth of her thoughts and feelings.  So, even though the documentary itself is not anything more than typically presented, it certainly gave me a greater appreciation and feeling for Kusama.  Perhaps the polka dot dress and dyed red hair are just a great marketing tool.