Vale to an extraordinary artist: Yayoi Kusama

(Credit: the Tate Galleries video channel.)

"I followed the thread of art and somehow discovered a path that would allow me to live." - Yayoi Kusama, 2012.

"Ms. Kusama said she was inspired by hallucinatory visions she had experienced since childhood, in which she could hear the voices of flowers, pumpkins and dogs. Art served as a form of therapy: She wrestled with many of the vivid images in her head by re-creating them in her art, and at times was said to paint without interruption for 40 to 50 hours straight."

"She wrote in her 2002 autobiography that she encountered her first pumpkin — a human head-sized orb that spoke to her — at a seed farm she visited with her grandfather, and was drawn to its "generous unpretentiousness" and "spiritual balance." Violets, she said, also seemed to speak to her, and patterns overwhelmed her vision."

- Two excerpts from Juno Carmel's excellent article, Yayoi Kusama, whose art evoked hallucinatory wonder, dies at 97.

Inset right is a photo of Kusama, aged 10, found in another great article, Yayoi Kusama & Pumpkins -  What you should know, where all photos in this post were sourced.

***

When I heard Yayoi Kusama (inset left) died earlier this month (August 14), I was saddened for 2 reasons: the loss of an extraordinary artist, and my inability to finish the Feminist Art & Empowerment series (2018-2019) in which she would have appeared. There is certainly a lot more information about her on the web now, however, and much more of her  work to be found. She was a true Energizer Bunny... she never stopped.

One thing that is new to me is her strangecollection of "hallucinations" and her ability to communicate with animals, pumpkins and flowers... "and patterns of stones from the nearby river which would come to life in her waking dreams."

 In ways she reminds me of another "obsessed" Japanese artist: Sakiko Ide, who was also born in the 1920s, survived WWII, lived in New York,* and had her own strange relationship with flowers... specifically the variety held by the young Kusama above, chrysanthemums. Both also attempted suicide; tragically, Ide (allegedly) succeeded. Happily, Kusama did not. Instead, after several suicide attempts she checked herself into a Japanese psychiatric hospital in 1975. and made it her permanent residence, maintaining an art studio nearby where she continued making her art, and working her magic, till her last breath. Gotta do what you gotta do.

I wouldn't have chosen her solution - it seems as if spending half your life in a hospital might reinforce the idea that one was ill and something was wrong; a stressful position for an artist... or anyone. But, it worked fine for her. She made it work. Not all of us who "follow the thread of art" do half so well. ;-)

For more about her life from a feminist perspective, try The Woman's Studio, or the article, Yayoi Kusama, the Modern Alice in Wonderland.

To view videos of her cosmic Infinity Mirror Room installations and exhibitions try here, here and here.

A Dream I Dreamed, installation, Yayoi Kusama, 2014

_________________________________________________________

* A humorous anecdote about Kusama in New York (from Carmel's article:

          

"During her 1968 "Nixon Orgy" in Lower Manhattan, Ms. Kusama bluntly offered to have sex with the president-elect if he would call for a ceasefire. 'Anatomic explosions are better than atomic explosions,' she announced in leaflets distributed on the street."

Art From the Outside (Looking In)

An untitled element from Emery Blagdon's Healing Machine. This photo and

the two inset below were found on this Дай зин! webzine page.

(Click to enlarge.)

"As a young man, he apparently lost his parents and three of his five younger siblings to cancer, and he designed his shed––which housed a system of elegant, spindly mobiles and delicate freestanding sculptures made out of baling wire and found objects––to produce energy fields with preventative, restorative, and curative powers. The objects’ reflective, kinetic, and color properties were intended to resonate and release an electromagnetic force to combat physical and psychic pain. Blagdon’s cure also relied on an equally remarkable, but smaller, group of abstract geometrical panel paintings, which display a transcendental sense of color, proportion, and pattern."

- From Rachel Brice's 2009 post: Emery Blagdon and His Healing Machines.


"In the past century the human spirit's great need for the creation of art has come sharply to the fore – not through the commercialized vulgarity that is now the art market (my GOD – could anything so high sink so LOW?), but rather through the intimate obsessive worlds of artists (outsider or otherwise) who create for themselves and themselves alone, without thought of monetary gain, public approbation or acceptance of any kind.

...Compelled to create a world of healing machines to stave off illness, Emery Blagdon gave light and meaning to his life through wire, tinfoil, and a variety of organic and inorganic materials. These machines, and the paintings that helped power them, brought down and focused healing energy to allow Blagdon to continue living. Did he create to live or live to create? As with all true artists, the answer is either elusive, or both - but in Blagdon's case it is particularly poignant because just a few months after his machines stopped working he tragically passed away."

- From composer John Zorn's (2016) .pdf: Emery Blagdon. (Inset, left: another element of Blagdon's Healing Machine.)


"Over the years, the parameters of Outsider Art have expanded dramatically to include art made by a wide variety of art-makers who share this common denominator of raw creativity. Outsiders come from all walks of life, from all cultures, from all age groups.

In recent years, Outsider Artists may have even come to outnumber Insider Artists who have achieved critical validation within the elite art world, and yet who speak with increasingly less clarity and relevance to us about the human experience. Dubuffet's description of officially recognized art has never been more relevant: 'everyone immediately sprinkles it with champagne, and lecturers lead it from town to town with a ring through its nose. This is the false Monsieur Art.'"

- Excerpt from a description of Outsider Art found on this Outsider Art Fair page.

***

It's probably interesting to note that two of the quotes (above) regarding Outsider Artist, Emery Blagdon, originate from a belly dancer (Rachel Brice), and a musician (John Zorn), as opposed to an art critic or an art historian. And, why is this? Well, it might have to do with the nature of Emery Blagdon himself. Born in 1907, he was a self-taught artist living in the outbacks of Nebraska, who spent over 30 years of his life assembling an art installation (of sorts) - his Healing Machine - which he never intended to exhibit, and one of which he never sold one molecule of. In other words, he was a creator's creator, following his own inner vision and instinct and, pretty much, ignoring the rest of world; specifically the art world. Had his work not been "discovered" in the 1970's by Dan Dryden - a Nebraskan pharmacist who would eventually work as a sound engineer for the Philip Glass Ensemble in New York - his monumental work may have been disassembled for scrap metal after his death and the world would be none the wiser.

Then again, creatives of all persuasions find inspiration in the realm of Outsider Art. Once again, the Outsider represents the true artist's artist... understood more deeply by artists themselves as opposed to the curators, the critics, the categorizers, and the culture mavens who flock to the carcasses of artistic endeavor. So, in the eyes of the world Emery Blagdon was an oddball. In the eyes of a fellow artist, Blagdon is both a hero and an anti-hero; a maverick who left his mark outside the mainstream before the "mainstream" ultimately absorbed him. (Inset, right: a third element from the Healing Machine.)

But, in many respects, Emery Blagdon's story is a happy one compared to many of the Outsiders who came before him. He, at least, managed to stay well outside the walls of a mental institution. In reality, what we now consider Outsider Art was originally the sort created by psychiatric patients, and other marginalized non-members of society. And, it was a genre of art which would've have remained under the radar - possibly forever - had it not been for the fine, observant eye of French artist, Jean Dubuffet, who in the 1940s identified what he referred to as Art Brut - raw art - that is, art created by those on the fringe of society: prisoners, loners, the mentally ill, and, in some cases, children...