Art Review


STYLEetc hit London for their Art Review.


Yayoi Kusama Infinity Mirrored Room - Filled with the Brilliance of Life, 2011 © Yayoi Kusama


Photo credit: Lucy Dawkins/Tate Photography


With work spanning over six decades, the 82 year old artist Yayoi Kusama has secured her place as Japan’s most internationally renowned and celebrated artist. Frequently associated with repetitive polka dots, this exhibition at the Tate Modern shows the inspiring evolution of the artist, from her earliest explorations into the traditional Japanese Nihonga style painting to the western influences which drew her, in the 1950’s, towards the experimental art of New York. Kusama merges


East and West, reality and fantasy with a hypnotic attention to the development of self.


The exhibition unfolds in a series of fourteen stylistically unique rooms. Her early watercolour paintings show an abstract, surrealist approach to nature, inspired by her childhood in the provincial Matsumoto City, but at times these feel restrained and unconvincing. Kusama’s transition to New York, and to the large-scale canvases which depict her Infinity Net paintings,


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shows her artistic development. This series of work, depicting monotone,


pock-marked


landscapes, illustrates Kusama’s versatility, hinting at a perpetual pattern.


Kusama’s progression from a single colour palette to the vibrant, often jarring acrylic paintings from 2009 onwards, is striking, as is her gradual movement from paintings and sculpture to full scale installations. The phallic protuberances which cover Kusama’s Accumulation


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