Yayoi Kusama: Inventing the Singular

An examination of Yayoi Kusama's work that goes beyond the usual biographical interpretation to consider her place in postwar global art history.

Yayoi Kusama is the most famous artist to emerge from Japan in the period following World War II. Part of a burgeoning international art scene in the early 1960s, she exhibited in New York with Andy Warhol, Donald Judd, Claes Oldenburg, and other Pop and Minimalist luminaries, and in Europe with the Dutch Nul and the German Zero artist groups. Known for repetitive patterns, sewn soft sculptures, naked performance, and suggestive content, Kusama's work anticipated the politically charged feminist art of the 1970s. But Kusama and her work were soon eclipsed by a dealer-controlled art market monopoly of white male American artists. Returning to Japan in 1973, Kusama became almost as famous for her self-proclaimed mental illness and permanent residence in a psychiatric hospital as she was for her art. In this book, Midori Yamamura eschews the usual critical fascination with Kusama's biography to consider the artist in her social and cultural milieu. By examining Kusama's art alongside that of her peers, Yamamura offers a new perspective on Kusama's career.

Yamamura shows that Kusama, who came of age in totalitarian wartime Japan, embraced art as an anticonformist pursuit, seeking a subjective autonomy that resulted in the singular expression of her art. Examining Kusama's association with European and New York art movements of the 1960s and her creation of psychedelic light-and-sound "Happenings," Yamamura argues that Kusama and her heterogeneous peers defied and undermined various pillars of modernity during the crucial transition from the modern nation-state to global free-market capitalism.

The art market rediscovered Kusama in the 1990s, and she has since had a series of high-profile exhibitions. Recounting Kusama's story, Yamamura offers an incisive, penetrating analysis of postwar art's globalization as viewed from the periphery.

這本書探討了草間彌生的作品，超越了一般的傳記解讀，考慮到她在戰後全球藝術史中的地位。

草間彌生是第二次世界大戰後日本最著名的藝術家。在1960年代初期的國際藝術界中，她與安迪·沃荷、唐納德·賈德、克拉斯·奧登堡等流行和極簡主義藝術家一起在紐約展出，並與荷蘭的Nul和德國的Zero藝術家團體在歐洲展出。草間彌生以重複的圖案、縫製的軟雕塑、裸體表演和具有暗示性的內容而聞名，她的作品預示了1970年代政治性的女性主義藝術。然而，草間彌生和她的作品很快被由白人男性美國藝術家控制的藝術市場壟斷所遮蔽。草間彌生於1973年返回日本後，她因自稱的精神疾病和在精神病院的永久居住地幾乎和她的藝術一樣出名。在這本書中，山村翠避開了對草間彌生傳記的一般批評迷戀，而是考慮到藝術家在社會和文化環境中的位置。通過將草間彌生的藝術與她的同行作品相比較，山村翠提供了對草間彌生職業生涯的新觀點。

山村翠指出，草間彌生在極權主義戰時日本成長，將藝術視為一種反傳統的追求，追求主觀的自主性，這導致了她獨特的藝術表達。通過研究草間彌生與1960年代歐洲和紐約藝術運動的聯繫，以及她創作的迷幻光聲「Happenings」，山村翠認為草間彌生和她的異質同行在從現代民族國家到全球自由市場資本主義的重要轉型期間，挑戰並破壞了現代性的各個支柱。

藝術市場在1990年代重新發現了草間彌生，此後她參加了一系列高調的展覽。山村翠講述了草間彌生的故事，提供了對從邊緣地區觀察的戰後藝術全球化的深入分析。

Midori Yamamura is a Lecturer in Art History at Fordham University.

山村翠是福特漢姆大學藝術史講師。