“Polka dots can’t stay alone, like the communicative life of people. Two and three and more polka dots become movement. Our earth is only one polka dot among the million stars in the cosmos. Polka dots are a way to infinity.”
Yayoi Kusama – Obsessed with Polka Dots | Tate
Y ayoi Kusama’s Door to the Universe from 1995 beautifully encapsulates the artist’s iconic and uniquely obsessive language. The present work was painted at the height of Kusama’s newfound critical and public acclaim, created just two years after her groundbreaking exhibition at the Japanese pavilion of the 1993 Venice Biennale. Painted with a highly measured combination of white and gray, Door to the Universe pulsates with organic, meticulously applied constellation of small circles and curvaceous shapes. The circular shapes, which could be seen as an evolution of the artist’s signature motif – the polka dot – covers the entire canvas, injecting a feeling of movement into the composition. Kusama’s works, originate from a deeply personal and intimate place; at her arrival in New York in 1957 the artist encountered a tough, competitive city. Having been blighted by hallucinations since she was a child, Kusama used art making to channel and work through psychological hardship exacerbated by tough living conditions and an entirely alien environment: “Unable to sleep, I would get out of bed and paint. There was no other way to endure the cold and the hunger so I pushed myself on to ever more intense work […] I often suffered episodes of severe neurosis. I would cover a canvas with nets, then continue painting them on the table, on the floor, and finally on my own body. As I repeated this process over and over again, the nets began to expand to infinity. I forgot about myself as they enveloped me, clinging to my arms and legs and clothes and filling the entire room” (Yayoi Kusama, trans. Ralph McCarthy, Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama, London 2011, pp. 17-18, and p. 20).
The present work was created in Kusama’s native Japan, where she has lived and worked since the 1970s. Trained classically in Nihonga technique, the artist’s early work is inhabited by cell like structures, flowers and other shapes reminiscent of living organisms. Over t.mes Kusama would refine these shapes, as shown by the rhythmic amalgamation of dots in the present work. Moreover, Kusama is fascinated by the idea of the universe and what lies within it. Indeed, the work’s title Door to the Universe, can be interpreted as a meditation on the nature of existence. As the artist would put it: “My desire was to predict and measure the infinity of the unbounded universe, from my own position in it, with dots – an accumulation of particles forming the negative spaces in the net. How deep was the mystery? Did infinite infinities exist beyond our universe? In exploring these questions I wanted to examine the single dot that was my own life. One polka dot: a single particle among millions” (Ibid. p. 23).
Extensively considered Japan's greatest living artist today, Kusama reveals her singular vision through various forms and media, exploring dot-like patterns in sculptures, paintings, happenings and films. A striking test.mes nt to the alluring and disorienting spatial complexity that has defined Kusama’s work for decades, Door to the Universe is an archetypal example from one of the most influential artists working today.
