Lot  052 Ravenel Spring Auction 2020

Ravenel Spring Auction 2020

Sky with a Cirrocumulus Cloud

Yayoi KUSAMA (Japanese, 1929)

1988

Acrylic on canvas

53 x 45.5 cm

Estimate

TWD 11,000,000-17,000,000

HKD 2,828,000-4,370,000

USD 365,100-564,200

CNY 2,594,000-4,009,000

Sold Price


Signature

Signed reverse Yayoi Kusama , dated 1988 and titled Sky with a Cirrocumulus Cloud in Japanese

PROVENANCE:
Mainichi Auction Inc., April 16, 2011, lot 303
Shinwa Art Auction, Post War & Contemporary Art, Tokyo, April 16,
2016, lot 33 (sold 7,200,000 Japanese Yen)
Private collection, Asia


This painting is to be sold with a registration card issued by Yayoi Kusama Studio.

+ OVERVIEW

Born in 1929 in Matsumoto City, Nagano Prefecture, Japan, Yayoi Kusama chronically suffered from auditory and visual hallucinations since the age of 10. Fighting against pain, uneasiness and fear every day, she resorted to drawing constantly to find relief and overcome her illness. Thus, artistic creation became her method of survival. Kusama was introduced to the United States by Georgia O’Keefe in the 1950s. In 1956, she travelled to Seattle before later moving to New York City, where she began her radical, era-defining style of art. In 1959, she held a solo exhibition at Brata Gallery, where her Infinity Nets series earned her great fame in the artists’ circle in New York. She held joint exhibitions with outstanding contemporary artists like Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg and Jasper Johns. Kusama was also an activist during the sexual revolution and anti-war movement in the 1960s. During that time, she realized the concept of “return to humanity” within the hippie culture worked very well with her own works. The rise of hippie culture marked the start of her golden age in New York. In 1973, Kusama returned to Japan, and started to accept treatment for her condition in 1977. However, the isolation of the treatment caused her to be gradually forgotten by the mainstream culture and the press. In her studio, however, Kusama became increasingly bold, expanding on the variety of media, including collage, sculpture, and even literature.

Kusama spent her whole life attempting to deconstruct her world of “infinity”. However, her achievements in literature were overlooked in later discussions. Nevertheless, i t is exactly her otherworldly storyline that gave rise to her subconscious instability, which in turn serves as her vital inspiration for visual arts. In these literature pieces, her obsessive anxiety is nowhere to be seen. Instead, these works give the viewers a glimpse of Kusama’s interest in objects and her endless sense of love. Kusama wrote more than 19 novels, short stories and poems, all filled with eccentric plots and fantasies with complicated psychological meaning. Her works of literature encompass issues about the beginning and the end of life, as if trying to reiterate her lifelong struggle against hallucinations. With Kusama’s re-creation of and distancing from many experiences during the previous period of her life, she is able to concentrate her love, warmth and round dots onto her works, allowing such topics to convey a message of love.

In 1988, Kusama held Yayoi Kusama: Soul Burning Flashes exhibition at Fuji Television Gallery. With the help of Hidenori Ota, who was a staff member at the gallery, Kusama was able to begin her journey to international fame in the late 1980s. In the same year, Kusama released the novel collection Between Heaven and Earth, which includes a novel of the same name, as well as another one titled Women’s Meadow. Unlike her earlier works that set the stage in New York, these novels instead took place in the mysterious mountains in Japan. Kusama is a pioneer in achieving the “natural” state of the destined era of female artists. With her paths no longer closed off, she plans to open up the conceptual door toward her “passion and lust” graffiti for the next century. The quality of literature is her prelude towards naturalism, and it was in such an environment and mindset that she created her works in the late-1980s. Similarly, Sky with a Cirrocumulus Cloud was influenced by her ongoing creation of literature at the time. Her painting pieces in this period are poetic and extremely narrative, as if they too carry the weight of her poems. The names she bestowed on her works are also more concrete and poetic, inspired by clouds, rain, summer monsoons, and stars. A proud sense of existence expresses her awe towards life and nature, which encompasses time and universe, and inspires viewers to think about the meaning of their existence and objects that surround them in their daily lives.

The work, Sky with a Cirrocumulus Cloud, is an organic extension from Kusama’s Infinity Nets. Her visual world is still surrounded by countless round spots, nets and endlessly repeating patterns. The net and the lines, the dots and the surfaces, the carmine and bluegrey all seem to tangle around each other i n her works. Her detailed brushwork with acrylic paint covered the endless colors with naturally falling geometric figures, and formed layers of structures with different shades. As the artist recalls: “my hands and body are under threat of being overrun…… All the changes of my art forms are the eventual consequences of my inner (activities).” Kusama follows the natural way to paint tiny round dots on bright backgrounds, cleverly and naturally presenting a depth of perspective. The geometric dots lead the vision to flow along the course of the net, forming a dense, repetitive wave of dots that would swallow everything. Such a technique presents an impulse that extends into infinity, mesmerising the viewer with that sense of endlessness. All of Kusama’s changes in art presentation are the eventual consequences of her inner self, making her works seemingly radiating a sense of life energy awaiting to be unleashed.
Related Info

Select: Modern & Contemporary Art

Ravenel Spring Auction 2020

Sunday, July 19, 2020, 1:00pm