“Not only was she a woman, but she was Japanese” – Glenn Scott Wright, director, Victoria Miro Gallery
By Heather Z. Rothstain
Photo: Wikipedia
LOS ANGELES – I wasn’t interested in her work, then I watched this documentary. Move over Warhol, stand back Claes Oldenburg, Kusama’s time is now!
Kusama Infinity – The Life and Art of Yayoi Kusama begins with a shot of Kusama wearing a vibrant red bob wig and hot pink polk-a-dot top that mimics her work. I’m brought back to my memory of being at The Broad, a contemporary art museum in downtown Los Angeles and immersed in her installation “Infinity Mirror Room-The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away (2013).” I stepped into the mirrored lit chamber, only for a minute, as each visitor was only allowed a set amount of time due to the long lines to see Kusama’s work. Calm, quiet, solitude, engulfed in hallucinogenic LED lights, mirrors and surrounded by serene water. An Instagramable moment. Then it was over.
At the time, I never thought I would investigate her work further, nor be interested in learning more about this artist, until watching this documentary. I had no idea how influential Kusama’s work had been in art history and that there was more to her story.
The documentary begins with a short synopsis of Yayoi Kusama’s family background; her home of Matsumoto City, Japan; growing up there during World War II; and her journey over the Pacific Ocean to New York. The audience sees a memory of Kusama in a field of flowers in Japan and how that experience and visual memory is carried with her throughout her career and is the origin of her current light installations.
Her more recent popularity among the younger generations is due in part to her critical social media success. This is actually what first turned me off about Kusama’s work but upon watching this documentary I was immediately swayed to realize what a remarkable artist Kusama is, in addition to what an impact as a Japanese woman she had on art history.
The film navigates through her struggles of trying to make it in the New York art world in the 60’s. Curators of prominent national and international museums are interviewed on Kusama’s journey to become the artist she is today and there are subtitled interviews of Kusama herself. The film quickly makes clear that Kusama begins her art career as a painter, something I did not know as she is now famous for her conceptual light immersion installations, and that her initial pieces were a series of repetitious dots and infinity nets on canvas.
She befriended the likes of Georgia O’Keefe and Joseph Cornell along her journey. As the film illustrates, Kusama experienced much rejection and criticism, always pushed boundaries with her work, was overlooked in favor of her white male contemporaries, struggled on and off with mental illness, and eventually returned to her home in Japan where she lives today. The film however, has an uplifting ending: you get to see her rise to the success that she is today, the top-selling female artist in the world.
Whether you are an aesthete, interested in the avant garde and women’s rights movements of the 60’s, or simply enjoy a good story of overcoming impossible odds, this film will engage. The documentary prompted the desire to know more about
Kusama’s work and regret that I might have easily overlooked her story. The film captures Kusama’s life through its heart breaking and uplifting moments and leaves viewers with a sense of justice and hope. Go see it.
The 76-minute long Kusama Infinity – The Life and Art of Yayoi Kusama was directed by Heather Lenz, produced by Karen Johnson, and is to the joint credit of Magnolia Pictures, Tokyo Lee Productions Inc., Submarine Entertainment, Dogwoof, Parco, and Dakota Group LTD.
The documentary opens September 28 at the Landmark Theatre Ken Cinema, 4061 Adams Avenue in the Kensington neighborhood of San Diego.
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Rothstain is a Jewish educator and teaching artist in Los Angeles.