Yayoi Kusama has been obsessively and nearly incessantly creating artwork since the 1950s. The Japanese artist exhibited her first signature "Infinity Net" painting--a large canvas covered with a hypnotic array of little dots--in New York City in 1959. Since then she's shown her work the world over. Kusama's long career has overlapped the surrealist, expressionist, and pop-art movements, to name just a few, and though she has drawn inspiration from some of these sources, she has remained steadfastly focused on her own artistic vision. Her collections of wriggling, overstuffed spongy tubes overtaking floors, pieces of furniture, and rowboats; the polka dots covering her Infinity Net paintings, mirrored rooms, mannequins, and even her own skin; the mottled, gourdlike sculptures she installs in mirrored rooms--all of these visual motifs recur consistently in her work and evoke both Western and Eastern aesthetic influences.Yayoi Kusama is one of Phaidon's contemporary artists series, which includes, among others, books on Thomas Sch++tte, Jeff Wall, and Jessica Stockholder. Yayoi Kusama features an interview with Kusama in which she discusses her lifelong mental illness and her love affair with Donald Judd, along with the anti-establishment art "happenings" she staged in Manhattan in the 1960s and the major themes in her work. A pictorial survey, a collection of her own writing, and a Takuboku Ishikawa poem she selected to accompany her work round out the volume. This is a highly recommended book for readers already familiar with Kusama's oeuvre and those interested in learning more about this important artist. --Jordana Moskowitz

Yayoi Kusama (Phaidon Contemporary Artists Series)

Arts & Photography

Hoptman, Laura

TATEHATA, AKIRA

KULTERMANN, Udo

History & Criticism

Phaidon Press

An updated edition of the acclaimed monograph, celebrating one of the most iconic and revolutionary artists of our time.
"Yayoi Kusama transcended the art world to become a fixture of popular culture, in a league with Andy Warhol, David Hockney, and Keith Haring." —The New York Times
Kusama is internationally renowned for her groundbreaking work on themes such as infinity, self-image, sexuality, and compulsive repetition. A well-known name in the Manhattan scene of the 1960s, Kusama's subsequent work combined Psychedelia and Pop culture with patterning, often resulting in participatory installations and series of paintings. This revised and expanded edition of the 2000 monograph, which is arguably still one of the most comprehensive studies on her work to date, has been augmented by an essay by Catherine Taft and a collection of new poems by the artist.

Yayoi Kusama: Revised & expanded edition (Phaidon Contemporary Artists Series)

Taft, Catherine

Humor & Entertainment

Louis Vuitton, the global luxury fashion house, and world-famous artist Yayoi Kusama partner again, and in the storied history of the brand's epic collaborations with artists, this is the most ambitious to date. In this important volume about this powerhouse collaboration, artwork by trailblazing artist Yayoi Kusama is featured alongside the groundbreaking fashion collection she designed with Louis Vuitton, and is organized around the seminal artistic themes that inspired the project. Edited by Ferdinando Verdi and Isabel Venero, the volume includes contributions from renowned experts in both fashion and art, including writer Jo-Ann Furniss who explores the collaboration, designer Marc Jacobs who initiated the house's relationship with Kusama, and curators Mika Yoshitake and Philip Larratt-Smith, both of whom have organized important exhibitions on the artist's work. And Hans Ulrich Obrist, the renowned curator and Artistic Director of Serpentine Galleries, London, Hans Ulrich Obrist talks with longtime Kusama expert Akira Tatehata. &nbsp; In the spirit of this iconic partnership and with a nod to the popular fascination with Kusama, the book includes musings from some of the most important contemporary artists and musicians working today--including Arca, Katherine Bradford, Anne Imhoff, Ryan McNamara, Raúl de Nieves, Ryan Trecartin, Nora Turato, and Jacolby Satterwhite--talking about Kusama's impact and her extraordinary ability to build fantastical worlds through her signature polka dots and mirror balls, which are joyful representations of her deeply thoughtful philosophy about art and the universe.

Louis Vuitton Yayoi Kusama

KUSAMA, YAYOI

OBRIST, Hans-Ulrich

Yoshitake, Mika

ARNAULT, DELPHINE

Individual Artists

Rizzoli

Yayoi Kusama: I Who Have Arrived in Heaven features new work from the artist's critically acclaimed 2013 inaugural exhibition at David Zwirner, which spanned the gallery's three locations in New York. Kusama's extraordinary and highly influential career spans paintings, performances, room-size presentations, outdoor sculptural installations, literary works, films, fashion, design and interventions within existing architectural structures. Opening this book is a series of exquisitely produced color plates of brightly colored, large-format square paintings. Part of a recent body of work, they allude to universal spheres or basic life forms and highlight Kusama's unique amalgamation of representational and nonrepresentational subject matter. Also featured is the video installation, Song of a Manhattan Suicide Addict, in which the artist herself is seen performing a song she composed while an animated slideshow of selected artworks moves behind her and the two mirrored infinity rooms. Infinity Mirrored Room--The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away encompassed a cube-shaped, mirror-paneled room that featured a shallow reflecting pool as its floor; hundreds of multicolored LED lights were suspended at varying heights from the ceiling, flickering on and off in a strobelike effect. Another mirrored infinity room, Love Is Calling, stands as one of Kusama's most immersive, kaleidoscopic environments to date. It was composed of a darkened, mirrored room illuminated by inflatable, tentacle-like forms--covered in the artist's characteristic polka dots--that extended from the floor and ceiling, gradually changing colors.

Yayoi Kusama: I Who Have Arrived in Heaven

David Zwirner Books

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