Legendary, semi-reclusive and still vibrant, Yayoi Kusama – whose work spans more than six decades of intense productivity in Japan and the United States – is the subject of a retrospective opening at the Whitney Museum of American Art on July 12, 2012.
Kusama, who turned 83 in March, has created an extensive body of work since the 1940s ranging from her earliest explorations in painting to new works made in the past few years.
This survey is the artist’s first major exhibition in New York in fifteen years and celebrates a career of exceptional duration and distinction, tracing the development of Kusama into one of the most respected and influential artists of her time.
“This is the first large-scale museum retrospective of Kusama’s career to be staged in the west since ‘Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama 1958-1968,’ the seminal survey of her work organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Japan Foundation in 1998,” Chris Dercon, director of Tate Modern, said. “Love Forever focused exclusively on Kusama’s production during her years in the United States. This exhibition, by contrast, seeks to show the full breadth of the artist’s output throughout her lengthy and varied career, contextualizing Kusama’s American sojourn with representations of her early and late career in Japan.”
On view at the Whitney through September 30, the traveling exhibition is organized in collaboration with Tate Modern and has been seen over the past year in Madrid, Paris and London; the Whitney is its final stop.
Curated by Frances Morris, Tate’s Head of Collections, the Whitney installation is overseen by curator David Kiehl. Both Tate and Whitney presentations are supported by Louis Vuitton.
Born in Matsumoto, Japan in 1929, Kasuma immersed herself early into the study of art, integrating a wide range of Eastern and Western influences while training in traditional Japanese painting and exploring the European and American avant-garde.
In 1958, Kasuma arrived in New York where she worked hard to gain recognition. By the 1960s and early 1970s, she became the major figure in the New York avant-garde, associated with key developments in Pop, Minimalism and performance art while exhibiting alongside artists she came to know well including Donald Judd, Andy Warhol, Joseph Cornell and Claes Oldenburg.
The exhibition is accompanied by a major new catalogue and the first English translation of Kusama’s autobiography “Infinity Net.”
The Whitney Museum is located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street, New York City. Museum hours are Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Friday from 1 p.m. to 9 p.m., closed Monday and Tuesday. General admission: $18. Full-time students and visitors ages 19-25 and 62 & over: $12. Visitors 18 & under and Whitney members: Free. Admission is pay-what-you-wish on Fridays, 6-9 p.m.
More information: www.whitney.org