New York City has long been a magnetic force for artists; a place in which they flock for inspiration and recognition alike. Though many artists struggle in New York; they find it hard to pay their rent and forgo paying phone bills in exchange for art supplies. Only a few sell their work, let alone change the direction of the art world, and a scant number are noticed by gallery and museum giants. 

One museum giant, The Whitney Museum of American Art, has recently chosen to recognize Yayoi Kusama in an exhibit Whitney Director Adam Weinberg, calls "a historic retrospective," providing a representative selection of work from a career that has lasted more than sixty years. 

Today, Kusama is known as one of the most important living Japanese artists.

Things were somewhat different when she first arrived to New York City in 1957. Though she'd received notable recognition in Japan in the early 1950s, here in the states few knew her name. Kusama would ride the the ups and downs of an artist’s life in  New York for nearly 20 years. Engaging in a symbiotic artistic relationship with the city, that would inspire her, challenge her and guide her artistic inspirations.  

During her years in New York she would rub shoulders with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Mark Rothko, as well as with other pivotal artists who were, themselves, living and working in the New York art scene. They would all find themselves engaged in a time where the Pop movement was in its infancy, abstract expressionism was developing, and minimal art was beginning to be explored. 

Many times throughout her career Kusama found herself laboring in dark basements and scavenging for food. However, she would not let any amount of hardship deter her from what some describe as an obsessive desire to create. 

During a press preview at the Whitney last week, Director Wienberg recalled a moment when the artist was asked if art made her happy, in which she had responded, "I never thought if art makes me happy or not. I don't have anything else. Art is everything for me."

Amid Kusama's struggles early on in her career in New York, her family would send much needed support via airmail- this was the only way she could communicate with them during these hard times. She made a collage of these air mail stickers. On a large canvas she pasted each tiny sticker until it filled the entire 64 by 34 inch canvas. 

Today, 55 years after coming to New York, Airmail Stickers is on display at the Whitney. Though this piece is extraordinary and represents a historic chapter in Kusama's life, the exhibit as a whole tries not to highlight any individual piece. Instead it focuses on the magnitude of Kusama's body of work. 

Kusama's work is characterized by obsessive repetitive forms; her signature work is with dots. At first glance it may not seem like much. However, the exhibition at the Whitney is laid out in a chronological format. As you walk through the gallery, through her history, you began to grasp the momentousness of her work.

Through carefully preserved writings and documents, the exhibit encompasses Kusama's struggles and experiences of being Japanese during and after WWII, being in America during the Vietnam war and being a woman, a Japanese woman, in a predominately white, male New York art scene.

An entire room is committed to Kusama's dedicated documentation of her life, which in essence, is her art. The documentation gives more depth to her work by adding history; it helps the viewer understand why she used certain materials, and teases us with an inkling of what was going on in her mind during the creative process. 

Though her accomplishments far exceed many artists' dreams, none of them have come without agonizing work and inner turmoil. The Whitney released a statement from Kusama with exhibit materials saying, "If it hadn't been for art, I would have killed myself a long time ago."

One piece that seemed to encompass the whole exhibition was a collage on paper by Joseph Cornell, made for Kusama in 1967. Joseph Cornell was a longtime friend and partner of Kusama's for a decade, and was markedly her only romantic, though sexless, relationship to date. He died in 1972, and in 1973 Kusama returned to Japan, ill. In 1977 she voluntarily admitted herself into a psychiatric institution where she lives to this day, and has begun to reinvent herself as a novelist and poet. 

A poem in the collage, also by Cornell, reads:

Now that Kusama has flown back to us, to New York City. Let us all drink to Yayoi.

 

View published article here.