The magic of infinity – Yayoi Kusama breaks records

An exhibition by artist Yayoi Kusama has become the most successful exhibition ever held at Cologne's Ludwig Museum. More than 450 visitors have passed through the museum's galleries to see works by the eccentric 97-year-old Japanese artist.

Yellow dots and tentacles, an infinity room of mirrors that endlessly reflects its colorful contents – these are just some of the characteristic elements of Yayoi Kusama's art.

All of these were part of the exhibition at the Ludwig Museum in Cologne.

The exhibition has broken all records, becoming the most visited in the museum's history. On recent nights, the museum stayed open until the early hours of the morning, as visitors waited in line around the block to see the works of the 97-year-old Japanese artist once again.

"For the Ludwig Museum, this has been the most successful exhibition. Our museum is celebrating its 50th anniversary and the Kusama exhibition attracted nearly 470 visitors. They came, enjoyed it, recommended it to their friends and shared their experiences on Instagram. Even on the closing night of the exhibition, until two in the morning, we welcomed several thousand visitors," said Rita Kersting, deputy director of the Ludwig Museum.

The previous record belonged to the Edward Hopper exhibition, organized in 2004–2005, which attracted about 380 visitors.

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The exhibition includes 300 works by Kusama, ranging from her childhood drawings to her most recent installations.

"Kusama brings a very unique artistic perspective. The exhibition is both entertaining and moving, and that is very rare. It is an experience that entertains but also moves you," added Kersting.

Yayoi Kusama is one of the most renowned contemporary artists, specializing in pop art, optical illusions, and minimalist techniques. Born in Japan in 1929, she grew up among pumpkins on her family farm. She spent most of her childhood in the family greenhouse and nursery in Matsumoto, in rural pre-World War II Japan. This seemingly peaceful landscape became the backdrop to her mental turmoil and a source of inspiration for her artistic creativity. Her mother was physically and emotionally abusive, and Kusama has described experiencing frequent visual and auditory hallucinations from a young age. She has lived with mental health challenges throughout her life, which led her to voluntarily commit to a psychiatric hospital. Her art, as well as her obsession with repetition and endless spaces, have become a way of coping with the anxiety she lives with every day.

The Ludwig Museum is considered one of the most important European institutions of modern and contemporary art, thanks to its rich collection, which includes important works of pop art, German expressionism, and photography.

"We are extremely happy. This is our most successful exhibition to date, with nearly 470 visitors. It is both entertaining and touching, a combination that you don't often find in artistic approaches. Moreover, it presents a female perspective," Kersting declared.

In 1966, Kusama became the center of attention at the Venice Biennale when she began selling 1.500 mirrored spheres for her installation, “Narcissus Garden.” The exhibition, titled “Yayoi Kusama,” accompanies this famous installation with footage from the artist’s 1985 performance, “Flower of Basara.” After the death of her close friend, the artist Joseph Cornell, Kusama returned to Japan in 1973. Four years later, she returned to New York. She initially gained more recognition as a writer than as a visual artist. In 1987, the Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art organized her first retrospective, and two years later the Center for International Contemporary Arts in New York opened her second.

In 1993, Kusama represented Japan at the Venice Biennale with her pumpkin-themed Infinity Room, which was a huge success and catapulted her to international fame. Since then, art institutions have competed to mount ever larger exhibitions of the artist.

Just two years ago, the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia proudly announced that it was mounting one of Kusama’s largest exhibitions to date, with 10 infinity rooms—the largest number ever assembled in one place. However, the Ludwig Museum’s retrospective includes another 100 works, as well as a new infinity room. It is the details between these works that prove that Kusama herself remains the greatest spectacle.

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Yayoi Kusama was open at the Ludwig Museum in Cologne until August 2, and will now move to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, where it will open in mid-September.

Taken from “Associated Press” & “Artnet News”