Kusama in Milano

Amazed to see a full half page feature on Yayoi Kusama in my Financial Times the other day over breakfast. The Dots Obsession just keeps growing! Now 80, Kusama is settling into a third (or fourth) age of productivity and acclaim, that makes her arguably the most visible contemporary Japanese artist. It’s a hopeful life story. After all the New York performance art of the 1960s, she fell out of favour with the critics, then was derided by the Japanese press as a crazy old lady. It took a rehabilitation by curators such as David Elliott in the 1980s and 90s to bring her back to what is surely now an untouchable place in post-war global art. She also owes much to the careful stewardship of Hidenori Ota at Ota Fine Arts who has managed her career through good and not so good times, as well as the sustained patronage of Ryutaro Takahashi who has bought many of her works.

What I also like about Kusama’s work is its simplicity. Far from the excess of over-theorised, over-textual art, her art is basically one simple idea played out in endless visual and tactile forms – an obsession that nevertheless reflects a core existential truth. The new show, appropriately titled, I Want to Live Forever, takes place in Milan, Italy until February 14. Apparently it was proposed and curated by the almighty Gagosian empire, the distinct worlds of commerce and curatorship blurring uncomfortably once again.

http://www.mostrakusama.it

ADRIAN FAVELL
http://www.adrianfavell.com