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- Convenor:
-
Daniela Moro
(University of Turin (Italy))
Send message to Convenor
- Discussant:
-
Hannah Osborne
(University of East Anglia)
- Format:
- Panel
- Section:
- Visual Arts
- Location:
- Auditorium 1 Jan Broeckx
- Sessions:
- Sunday 20 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Brussels
Short Abstract:
Kusama Yayoi is globally renowned as one of the most important artists from Japan of the past century. The three papers in this panel, ranging from visual art to literature, aim to provide different perspectives on how the artist used images of the self in her variegated work.
Long Abstract:
Kusama Yayoi 草間彌生 (b. 1929) is globally renowned as one of the most important artists from Japan of the past century. Her style has undergone many transformations during her prolific career, following her international repositioning as well as her artistic experimentations, which ranged from painting on paper and canvas, to performance, literature, and all-encompassing and immersive installations.
The panel proposed for the 2023 EAJS Conference is composed of three papers that will explore different areas of Kusama’s practice. The first talk focuses on the impact of her art and her exhibitions on the European artistic milieu. In particular, it will inspect the pivotal shows that took place in Italy in the 1960s, which were crucial in defining the artist’s presence and identity on the international sphere and generated great attention towards her work. The second paper inspects the deep connection between the artist’s body and her works that became particularly evident during the decade 1958-1968, when Kusama was based in New York City. Finally, the third panel focuses on the literary side of Kusama’s career, often overlooked: this final talk moves from Kusama’s years in New York to the artist’s relocation in Tokyo at the end of the 1970s, seeing it through her fictional work "Manhattan Suicide Addict", a pseudo-autobiographical piece of writing that she produced in this period.
The three papers aim to provide different perspectives on the images of the self in the multi-faceted works of the artist, and to shed light on how Kusama’s representation of her own identity varied during this extremely prolific period of her career. Positioning the artist is also crucial in order to inspect how the experimentations of those years have laid the foundation for Kusama’s production of the latest decades.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Sunday 20 August, 2023, -Stefano Turina (University of Turin)
Paper short abstract:
Kusama Yayoi’s Italian experiences between 1965 and 1966 received little critical attention on the contrary of other European travels, such as his connection with Netherlands and the Group Zero, or her presence in Germany. This paper would like to put Italian Kusama’s exhibitions in context.
Paper long abstract:
From the fundamental exhibitions of the 1980s to the most recent publications, such as the recent retrospective exhibition in Berlin (2021) or the book Kusama with love from Holland (2021), Kusama Yayoi’s European experiences were investigated, but the Italian context received little attention. Based on extensive archival research and part of a more complex wider project devoted to investigate the relations between Japanese and Italian art during the 1950s and 1960s, the first paper proposed for the One thousand visions of self. Kusama Yayoi through art and literature panel examines in detail the artists and galleries networks of the time, as well as Kusama strategies in Italy and the impact of her presence and of her exhibitions in the local artistic contexts.
Taking into consideration the brief experience of Kusama Yayoi in the Italian context allows us on the one hand to reflect on many aspects of her careers and on the other to reflect on the status of Japanese contemporary art in Italy during the 1960s. From the two phallic armchairs (Accumulations) part of the Zero-Avantgarde exhibition in Milan and Venice, to her solo Driving image show exhibition in Milan, to the pivotal Narcissus Garden organized at the 33 Venice Biennale (1966) this three exhibitions re-present three different stages of her artistic production: from the everyday object covered with protuberances that recalls the more classical sculpture, to the whole gallery transformed in a projection of her annihilated self, which the viewer is invited to explore and interact with, to the Narcissus Garden where hundreds of reflective spheres multiply the self - Kusama’s and the participants’ self - and the gazes. It was after this experience - well documented by photographs and articles - that Kusama embarked in the famous New York “happenings” that involved not only herself, but also other people around her in public performances, in which she tried to project her self on others, a self that is annihilated and annihilating but at the same time all embracing, reaching new challenging results.
Federica Cavazzuti (University of Turin)
Paper short abstract:
The paper focuses on Kusama Yayoi's exploration of the connections between her works and the body, an aspect that became crucial in her New York (1958-1968). These years brought new experimenting energy to her production, during which Kusama realized solo and group performances in public locations.
Paper long abstract:
The second paper proposed for the "One thousand visions of self. Kusama Yayoi through art and literature" panel selected a specific aspect of Kusama’s practice, that is, the connection between her artworks and the artist’s body – a characteristic that became particularly evident during the period spent in New York.
From 1957 the artist relocated to Manhattan, where she lived for a decade. The choice was motivated by the intentions to find her own space on the international scene and had important echoes on her career: it brought new experimenting energy and helped her creating important connections with other artists.
Several photographs from the beginning of the 1960s portray Kusama in her studio, together with her canvas and often with outfits matching the paintings; the presence of the artist embodies the physical bond that connects the painter with her artworks, to the point that the body becomes an extension of the canvas itself.
This link is maintained also in later photographs, such as the famous nude portrait that shows Kusama from behind in her 1963 installation "Aggregation: One Thousand Boats Show", a boat surrounded by its 999 identical photographic reproductions. The boat is entirely covered by phallus-shaped sculptures, which started appearing in Kusama’s work since the beginning of the 1960s, occupying objects, spaces, and obliterating items that are typically attributed to women. They symbolize the overwhelming male predominance on all aspects of life, to which Kusama opposes her own body: famous photographs depict the artist laying on the installations taken over by the soft sculptures and suggest reflections on the male gaze and its eroticization of the female, non-white body.
In the following years, Kusama started focusing on public performances that involved dancers and were set in New York famous locations, such as "Grand Orgy to Awaken the Dead at MoMA" (1969), which took place in the fountain in front of the famous museum. The impulse of these years has been faithfully recorded in the documentary "Self-Obliteration" (1967) realized by Kusama with director Jud Yalkut, alternating natural environments and psychedelic rooms made by the artist.
Daniela Moro (University of Turin (Italy))
Paper short abstract:
In this paper, I attempt a reading of the fragmentary and mainly incoherent prose of "Manhattan Suicide Addict", taking into consideration the difference of the expressive means of prose in regard with the others used by Kusama, and trying to focus on the representation of her own artistic persona.
Paper long abstract:
The third paper proposed for the "One thousand visions of self. Kusama Yayoi through art and literature" panel is based on the artist’s literary production. It focuses in particular on the first novel, a pseudo-autobiographical work that recalls her years in New York, Manhattan jisatsu-misui-jōshūhan マンハッタン自殺未遂常習犯 (Manhattan Suicide Addict, 1978). While there are a few but quite significant studies (Munroe 1998, Hayashi 2007, Würrer 2017) dedicated to later works of fiction such as Kurisutofā danshō kutsu クリストファー男娼窟 (The Hustler’s Grotto of Christopher Street,1984), Manhattan Suicide Addict, the starting point of her career as a professional writer, has not been given enough attention by the academia.
Notably, her art and literature have many stylistic and thematic common points, such as repetition and obsessive themes (Munroe 1998) or the stress on dichotomic aspects of reality (Pachciarek 2014). Nevertheless, Kusama declares that through writing she was able to “shed light on a different facet” of herself, one that she “could not reach with plastic art” (Kusama 2011:207). In this paper, I will attempt a reading of the fragmentary and mainly incoherent prose of Manhattan Suicide Addict, taking into consideration the difference of the expressive means of prose in regard with the others used by Kusama, and trying to focus on the representation of her own artistic persona. Putting it into comparison with others, I will try to reflect on the value of Kusama’s first work of fiction, which she compulsively completed in less than one month. By doing this, I aim at enriching the larger reflection not only on the artist’s literary works, but also on the artist’s vision of herself emerging through her own art and literature.