スタッフKの国立新美術館「草間彌生 わが永遠の魂」レポート（英文）
2017年2月22日から5月22日まで国立新美術館で開催されている個展「草間彌生 わが永遠の魂」を新人スタッフKこと勝見美生がレポートしました。
英文でのレポートですが、お付き合いいただければ幸いです。
REPETITION.
ACCUMULATION.
SELF OBLITERATION.
I encountered these three terms many times while browsing the Yayoi Kusama exhibition at the National Art Center, Tokyo (“YAYOI KUSAMA: My Eternal Soul,” February 22 - May 22). They seem to be the overarching motifs of her experience and body of work. Kusama turned 88 last month and has been making art for much of that time. The works represented in My Eternal Soul span 70 years from her early life in her hometown of Matsumoto, her time in New York City, and her activity today. The one Kusama exhibition I went to over a decade ago in DC is virtually gone from my memory, and I didn’t know much about her despite her cultural largeness, so I was excited to see such a wide range of her work.
In the first small room I was surprised to find a series of paintings quite different from Kusama’s iconic style. Her whole body of works stems from her hallucinations and experience with mental illness but these early pieces were dark and heavy, similar to the ones she would create later in her life following a series of personal tragedies, and not very similar to her pop contemporary works. There was one 1948 work that caught my eye titled “Onions.” In it you could recognize the same polka dots and bulbous organic shapes that have become iconic today.
Of course the majority of what was shown were her very recognizable works. An endless number of dots crowding around each other, the infinite stretching nets of paint, the multitude phallic “soft sculptures,” the layered collages of stickers and faces, etc. They showed her technique of repetition and accumulation, the same thing over and over creating a space that is infinite within itself. REPETITION and ACCUMULATION seems to be the method of that third key phrase, SELF OBLITERATION. In my reading, self obliteration seems like an act of disappearing - not the disappearance of the soul, but a dissolution of identity into the whole universe, becoming an abstraction like art itself.
Outside of the gallery space proper was a small room where visitors could participate in a public piece, “Obliteration Room.” We each received a sheet of stickers that we were instructed to use up completely. The setting was a stark white furnished room, where certainly many people have felt anxiety in the face of that ideal of traditional domesticity - there we were given one output of destruction, in obliterating something terrible, the same space gained a new myriad meanings. ...Now I don’t know if that is valid but the exhibition seems have given me something to think about.
The video piece titled “Happening” was central to at least my understanding of Kusama’s work. “Happening” is a collection of performance art of Kusama putting dots on things in her environment - nature, animals, objects, and people, even on water. In one scene, she sits on a horse covered in dots - she reminded me perhaps of the fifth horseman, who uses her destructive powers to save humanity before the other four run through. The name of the exhibition and the series of panels, “My Eternal Soul,” is apt in that way, labeling Kusama’s body of work as the thing she will leave on Earth that dissolves into our culture and lives forever.
(かつみ みお）
＊画廊亭主敬白
六本木の国立新美術館がたいへんなことになっているらしい。入場券を買うのに一時間待ちとかと聞いて、なるほどと納得しました。
いつもは招待券など余ってしまうのに、今回ばかりはあっという間になくなってしまった。海外からのお客様がみんな欲しがるのである。
これから行かれる人は、先ずコンビニで予め入場券を買ってから六本木に向かってください。
＜私は美術界とはまったく関係がない。絵描きの友達ともごぶさたしている。ただひたすら自分の中に入りこんでいく。オープニングの招待状はいっぱい来るが、みんな行かない。だから、交流はない。何々会の会員でもない。画壇の人とは話をしないし、画壇には出ていかない。酒は飲まないし、タバコはすわない。完全にセルフコントロールしている。とにかく、すべて芸術の制作に没頭している。そうして、一日一日を生きている。＞
草間彌生『無限の網ー草間彌生自伝ー』（新潮文庫）より
所謂画壇を無視してひたすらたった一人で闘ってきた草間先生、亭主が「泣きたいほど売れなかった」と愚痴ともつかぬ思い出話を書いたときでさえ、まさかまさかここまで人気と評価が沸騰するとは思いませんでした。
先日、大阪の安藤忠雄先生（秋に同館で大展覧会を予定）からいただいた電話でも草間展のフィーバーの影響で「主催者が15万人は入れてくれいうて困っとるんや」とのことでした（すいません、大阪弁詳しくないもんで）。
長生きはするもんですね。
●今日のお勧め作品はもちろん草間彌生です。
草間彌生
《夕映えの雨》
1992年
シルクスクリーン
52.5×45.5cm
Ed.75
サインあり
※レゾネNo.171（阿部出版 2005年新版）
こちらの作品の見積り請求、在庫確認はこちらから
※お問合せには、必ず「件名」「お名前」「連絡先（住所）」を明記してください。
ときの忘れものの通常業務は平日の火曜～土曜日です。日曜、月曜、祝日はお問い合わせには返信できませんので、予めご了承ください。
2017年2月22日から5月22日まで国立新美術館で開催されている個展「草間彌生 わが永遠の魂」を新人スタッフKこと勝見美生がレポートしました。
英文でのレポートですが、お付き合いいただければ幸いです。
REPETITION.
ACCUMULATION.
SELF OBLITERATION.
I encountered these three terms many times while browsing the Yayoi Kusama exhibition at the National Art Center, Tokyo (“YAYOI KUSAMA: My Eternal Soul,” February 22 - May 22). They seem to be the overarching motifs of her experience and body of work. Kusama turned 88 last month and has been making art for much of that time. The works represented in My Eternal Soul span 70 years from her early life in her hometown of Matsumoto, her time in New York City, and her activity today. The one Kusama exhibition I went to over a decade ago in DC is virtually gone from my memory, and I didn’t know much about her despite her cultural largeness, so I was excited to see such a wide range of her work.
Works from the artist's latest series "My Eternal Soul". Around 130 works are on exhibit for the first time.
In the first small room I was surprised to find a series of paintings quite different from Kusama’s iconic style. Her whole body of works stems from her hallucinations and experience with mental illness but these early pieces were dark and heavy, similar to the ones she would create later in her life following a series of personal tragedies, and not very similar to her pop contemporary works. There was one 1948 work that caught my eye titled “Onions.” In it you could recognize the same polka dots and bulbous organic shapes that have become iconic today.
Of course the majority of what was shown were her very recognizable works. An endless number of dots crowding around each other, the infinite stretching nets of paint, the multitude phallic “soft sculptures,” the layered collages of stickers and faces, etc. They showed her technique of repetition and accumulation, the same thing over and over creating a space that is infinite within itself. REPETITION and ACCUMULATION seems to be the method of that third key phrase, SELF OBLITERATION. In my reading, self obliteration seems like an act of disappearing - not the disappearance of the soul, but a dissolution of identity into the whole universe, becoming an abstraction like art itself.
Outside of the gallery space proper was a small room where visitors could participate in a public piece, “Obliteration Room.” We each received a sheet of stickers that we were instructed to use up completely. The setting was a stark white furnished room, where certainly many people have felt anxiety in the face of that ideal of traditional domesticity - there we were given one output of destruction, in obliterating something terrible, the same space gained a new myriad meanings. ...Now I don’t know if that is valid but the exhibition seems have given me something to think about.
The video piece titled “Happening” was central to at least my understanding of Kusama’s work. “Happening” is a collection of performance art of Kusama putting dots on things in her environment - nature, animals, objects, and people, even on water. In one scene, she sits on a horse covered in dots - she reminded me perhaps of the fifth horseman, who uses her destructive powers to save humanity before the other four run through. The name of the exhibition and the series of panels, “My Eternal Soul,” is apt in that way, labeling Kusama’s body of work as the thing she will leave on Earth that dissolves into our culture and lives forever.
(かつみ みお）
＊画廊亭主敬白
六本木の国立新美術館がたいへんなことになっているらしい。入場券を買うのに一時間待ちとかと聞いて、なるほどと納得しました。
いつもは招待券など余ってしまうのに、今回ばかりはあっという間になくなってしまった。海外からのお客様がみんな欲しがるのである。
これから行かれる人は、先ずコンビニで予め入場券を買ってから六本木に向かってください。
＜私は美術界とはまったく関係がない。絵描きの友達ともごぶさたしている。ただひたすら自分の中に入りこんでいく。オープニングの招待状はいっぱい来るが、みんな行かない。だから、交流はない。何々会の会員でもない。画壇の人とは話をしないし、画壇には出ていかない。酒は飲まないし、タバコはすわない。完全にセルフコントロールしている。とにかく、すべて芸術の制作に没頭している。そうして、一日一日を生きている。＞
草間彌生『無限の網ー草間彌生自伝ー』（新潮文庫）より
所謂画壇を無視してひたすらたった一人で闘ってきた草間先生、亭主が「泣きたいほど売れなかった」と愚痴ともつかぬ思い出話を書いたときでさえ、まさかまさかここまで人気と評価が沸騰するとは思いませんでした。
先日、大阪の安藤忠雄先生（秋に同館で大展覧会を予定）からいただいた電話でも草間展のフィーバーの影響で「主催者が15万人は入れてくれいうて困っとるんや」とのことでした（すいません、大阪弁詳しくないもんで）。
長生きはするもんですね。
●今日のお勧め作品はもちろん草間彌生です。
草間彌生《夕映えの雨》
1992年
シルクスクリーン
52.5×45.5cm
Ed.75
サインあり
※レゾネNo.171（阿部出版 2005年新版）
こちらの作品の見積り請求、在庫確認はこちらから
※お問合せには、必ず「件名」「お名前」「連絡先（住所）」を明記してください。
ときの忘れものの通常業務は平日の火曜～土曜日です。日曜、月曜、祝日はお問い合わせには返信できませんので、予めご了承ください。
コメント