Yayoi Kusama

(Japanese, born 1929)

Untitled
1952

Footnotes

This work is registered with the Kusama Enterprise, Tokyo.

Provenance
Private Collection, Japan
Sale: Christie's, New York, First Open Post-War & Contemporary Art, 21 September 2011, Lot 11
Crane Kalman Gallery, London
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 2012

Exhibited
Nagano, Komagane Kogen Art Museum, Yayoi Kusama, 1998


A curvaceous crimson mass, jagged along one edge and speckled with delicate blue dots: a flower bursting open into bloom, or perhaps a richly ripe fruit splitting open. Above it a network of black lines, splitting and intersecting like roots or branches, maybe veins or synapses, each conjunction decorated with chalky white circles. Quite what we see in Yayoi Kusama's ethereal Untitled of 1952 remains unclear, undefined. In its representation of imagined biomorphic shapes and symbolic structures, this fascinating early work by Japan's most celebrated living artist perfectly demonstrates the delight that can be found in the unexpected, or the even barely understood.

Dating from Kusama's early years in Japan, Untitled of 1952 includes a number of the visual tropes for which her work is now renowned. The polka-dots which can be seen here in blue and white are, of course, her visual leitmotif, one which she still employs today in her paintings, sculptures and installations. The black network of lines that we encounter in this work can be clearly related to the Infinity Nets, those complex paintings of intersecting lines which still make up a large part of Kusama's extensive oeuvre. In its use of materials, the present work reveals the influence of the artist's skills in Nihonga, a traditional Japanese technique of painting on paper in which Kusama trained for a number of years, beginning her studies in Kyoto in 1948. Its subject matter is, however, far from traditional, more reminiscent of European surrealism. There are clear analogies with the paintings of Joan Miró, and there is certainly a suspicion that André Breton's theory of automatism, in which the free and unguided use of the artist's hand reveals the deepest thoughts and feelings from the subconscious, is at play here. Interesting comparisons could also be made with the drawings of Kusama's near contemporary Louise Bourgeois; but while Bourgeois' imagery is often dark, verging on the nightmarish, Kusama remains more hopeful, more optimistic, her work brimming with colour and life, imbued with awe and amazement.

Yayoi Kusama's art inhabits a strange netherworld, a liminal space which exists between reality and illusion. Created partly as a refuge from her difficult family situation, drawings such as Untitled of 1952 were also influenced by the psychological symptoms which affected Kusama from a young age. This work hovers on the blurred boundaries between the actual and the imagined, often taking inspiration from the artist's own experience with hallucination and mania. Although they may emerge from her own personal battles and internal conflicts, the results of Kusama's explorations into the unknown, the uncanny and the undefinable, are always poignant and achingly beautiful. Surreal and dreamlike, this delicate watercolour invites us into the tumultuous and unpredictable mind of the artist, revealing a place filled with colour and form. With Untitled of 1952, Kusama opens the door into her very soul, asking us to walk through and embark on a journey which may be fraught with danger, but also filled with wonder.