WALKING AND WEEPING

I hear that Yayoi Kusama has an exhibition titled Cosmic Nature, in the New York Botanical Garden, a place I won’t be walking in the forseeable future, given the current state of Covid rules, which is a damned shame. Some of it looks like this:

I’ve always thought Kusama’s work was cosmic though not exactly natural, though there are days when I have trouble knowing what either of those words means. The art looks fun and colourful and playful and it has primary colours and polka dots, which is enough for me, and more than that the NYBG website says, ’Her artistic concepts of obliteration, infinity, and eternity are inspired by her intimate engagement with the colors, patterns, and life cycles of plants and flowers.’ So OK, everybody wins.

In general I do think there are few things more fun than walking through a garden and being smacked in the eye with a startling piece of art, like this one in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden: ‘Spoonbridge and Cherry’ by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen.

In 1966 Yayoi Kusama created a performance titled Walking Piece which was recorded in a series of eighteen color slides, which doesn’t seem quite enough. Kusama walked the streets of New York City wearing a kimono and carrying a customized parasol, and from time to time, she wept without reason, though frankly who needs a reason?

The images still look good over 35 years later and might make you question received ideas of otherness and exoticism, although it seems to me these are ideas that have served Kasuma very well over the years.

It might not have meant so much in Tokyo.