Kusama is one of Japan's best known living artists. Early in her career, Kusama moved to New York, over the objections of her family. There she quickly established herself in the mid-century avant-garde art scene, working in a broad range of mediums including drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, installation, and performance art. This installation belongs to a series of works begun in 1962 in which she takes everyday objects, such as shoes, furniture, suitcases, and kitchen equipment, and transforms them into something strange by covering them with phallic forms that are hand sewn, stuffed with cotton, and patined. White Kusama has said that she uses this practice to come to terms with her sexual fears, the sculpture is alos a humorous commentary on the art world. Her work is characterized by repetition, pattern, and obsession, and this form has been used as a recurrent voacbulary throughout her fifty-year career.
From Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts 89 (2015)
From Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts 89 (2015)
Details
Artist | Yayoi Kusama, American, born 1929 |
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Title |
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Date | between 1976 and 1977 |
Medium | shoes, cotton, and paint |
Dimensions | Storage: 9 3/4 × 48 × 22 1/2 inches (24.8 × 121.9 × 57.2 cm) |
Credit Line | Founders Society Purchase, W. Hawkins Ferry Fund, with funds from the Friends of Modern Art |
Accession Number | 2000.46 |
Department | Contemporary Art after 1950 |
Not On View |
Provenance
2000-present, purchase by the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)
Published References
Bulletin of the DIA 89, no. 1/4 (2015): 6 (ill.).