My most recent visit to the Rockaways was to experience Yayoi Kusama’s magnificent Narcissus Garden (1966–present) in a still intact if ramshackle former train repair facility, dating to the time when Fort Tilden, now part of the Gateway National Recreation Area, was still an active military installation. Kusama, now 89 years old and one of the...
First presented by the artist as an unofficial project outside the Italian pavilion at the 1966 Venice Biennale, Narcissus Garden (1966) consists of 1,500 reflective orbs spread throughout a space. In the work's first iteration, Kusama wore a golden kimono or red onesie and stood amid the plastic orbs alongside signs that read 'Narcissus...
Art lovers and Instagram fanatics will both have a good reason to head to the Rockaways this summer: Yayoi Kusama's shimmering Narcissus Garden will be installed there starting July 1. The work is made up of 1,500 mirrored stainless steel spheres placed in the imposing confines of Fort Tilden, a former Army base on the beach in Queens. The...
In the 1950s, the artists of the newly formed Gutai group of Japan worked fast and fearlessly, changing styles and mediums at will, staying abreast of the latest postwar developments abroad. The mood of this band of innovators was eclectic — and electric — as demonstrated by "Gutai: 1953-1959," an ambitious show at Fergus...
Seventeen years in the making, the documentary Kusama - Infinity, which premiered at this year's Sundance Film Festival, witnesses Yayoi Kusama moving from obscurity in late 1950s New York City to international fame in recent years as the top-selling female artist in the world — all while living for the last 40 years in a mental...
Glowing pumpkins, psychedelic polka dots and infinite mirror reflections: the grand dame of Japan's art world, Yayoi Kusama, has long been famed as the anti-queen of minimalism. So it might come as some surprise to see that a new Tokyo museum devoted to the 88-year-old artist is the antithesis of her eye-popping artworks. Instead, the Yayoi Kusama...
Chinese collectors have so quickly become a mainstay of the art market that it is easy to forget that wealthy Southeast Asian connoisseurs started buying contemporary art decades earlier.
Held over nine sites and including 33 artists, the first edition of the Honolulu Biennial takes place between 8 March and 8 May 2017. Entitled Middle of Now | Here, the Biennial challenges the idea that Hawaiʻi is in 'the middle of nowhere'. Covering more than 30 percent of the Earth's surface, the Pacific is the largest unified living space on...
Yayoi Kusama's polka-dotted pumpkin overlooking the ocean, James Turrell's Open Sky installation, and an entire art space by Walter De Maria are just a few of the groundbreaking works on display at Benesse Art Site Naoshima, a cluster of once-polluted islands in Japan's Seto Inland Sea rehabilitated by contemporary art and architecture by Tadao...
Don't ask Yayoi Kusama what's been the highlight of her career. She might be 87 years old, internationally renowned and about to have major, simultaneous exhibitions in the United States and Japan, but she's not done yet.
It's hardly Tokyo's most inspiring area, but here in Shinjuku ward, amid a shambolic jumble of low-rise housing, is where artist Yayoi Kusama keeps her fastidiously maintained studio: an elegantly unadorned concrete building that strikes a conspicuous note in the otherwise nondescript quarter. Almost every day, she comes here to paint from 9 a.m....
The psychedelic and experimental spirit of Yayoi Kusama is celebrated in a recent exhibition at Hirshhorn, Washington D.C. Infinity Mirrors is an examination of her lasting legacy and talent, as shown through her continued experimentation into the limits of creative mediums over a 65-year career. Throughout her life, she has worked with a wide...
Keen to distinguish the Armory Show, which is facing competition from almost 300 other contemporary art fairs around the world, the New York art fair’s executive director, Benjamin Genocchio, is playing up the gritty industrial space of Piers 92 and 94 on the Hudson River. For the fair’s 2017 edition, which runs from March 2 through March 5, the...
Why do we need art? How does it benefit us and why should artists be paid to contribute to society in this way? These questions have been a constant in the industry, with discussions of value, both monetary and psychologically. The Museum of Old and New Art, Tasmania, puts these angles into conversation in their new exhibition On the Origin of...
The contemporary art fair which takes place at Taipei World Trade Centre from November 11 to 14 this year, is organized by the Taiwan Art Gallery Association (TAGA) in alliance with Asia Pacific Art Gallery Association (APAGA). The organizers hope to consolidate the respective strengths of each region, as well as unify the sophisticated, unwavering...
Victoria Miro stages a group exhibition by artists concerned with socio-political issues of their day, who question the status quo and the power structures found within societies, and who take the language of protest as a means to explore its potency. Inspired by Alice Neel’s 1936 painting Nazis Murder Jews, the exhibition draws together new...
Infinitely obsessed is Yayoi Kusama with her Pepsi-red polka dots, which arrive this time to another site of obsession: Philip Johnson’s Glass House, the modernist estate that the pioneering architect spent years developing and cultivating in New Canaan, Connecticut. This summer, the beloved Japanese artist collaborated with the institution...
Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s first North American touring exhibition in two decades is scheduled to go on display at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. in February 2017. The exhibition, titled Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors, will be a survey of the artist’s Infinity Mirror Rooms...
In anticipation of next spring’s Honolulu Biennial — which will feature local and Indo-Pacific contemporary art — the Honolulu Biennial Foundation will present Yayoi Kusama’s first Hawaiian exhibition starting this week. The Tokyo-based artist’s Footprints of Life, a 15-piece installation of giant blob sculptures...
Hawaii has a population of more than 1.4 million people but not a single museum is dedicated to contemporary art, said Isabella Ellaheh Hughes, a co-founder of the first Honolulu Biennial, which will open in spring 2017. “We can both highlight our tremendous local talent as well as bring in national and international contemporary artists...
This summer the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is showing Christian Marclay’s The Clock for the sixth time since it acquired the work in 2011. The audience response to the 24-hour collage of film clips has been “tremendous” says a spokeswoman for the institution, who adds that each screening attracts long queues. So what...
Dasha Zhukova’s Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow was unveiled to the press on Wednesday with a tour by the architect Rem Koolhaas, who explained how he preserved the Brutalist architecture of the Soviet-era building in Gorky Park that has been taken over by the institution.
According to a survey of museum attendance in 2014, the most popular artist in the world is a woman – Japan’s Yayoi Kusama. The artist, who is 86 and has lived voluntarily in a mental health institution in Tokyo since 1977, drew over 2 million people throughout South and Central America to a retrospective including her famous...
The standout feature is the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored Room – Filled with the Brilliance of Life (2011). A walkway with water on either side leads visitors through a darkened space aglow with hundreds of twinkling lights dangling from the ceiling. Reflections in the mirrored walls and water give visitors the...
