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Lot Essay
A striking example of Yayoi Kusama’s pioneering practice, Untitled (Child Mannequin), 1966, formed part of the artist’s ground-breaking installation, exhibited at Driving Image Show at the Galeria d’Arte del Naviglio, Milan and Galerei M. E. Theln, Essen. Kusama presents a standard clothing store mannequin, completely in pink and layered over with one of her signature green Infinity Nets. Kusama’s well-known and meticulous application of psychedelic colour ensures that the object is completely transformed. In the installation, the present work stood alongside many female mannequins in a domestic setting, in which all the figures and surrounding objects – a television set, kitchen chairs and a table set for tea and high-heeled shoes – were uniformly and repetitively covered in Kusama’s signature nets to create a surreal, dream-like world. Untitled (Child Mannequin) has been shown at major retrospectives of the artist’s work, including exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art in New York and Los Angeles in 1998 and the Serpentine Gallery, London in 2000.
Kusama’s recognisable polka-dots are rooted in her turbulent past. As a child, Kusama experienced hallucinatory visions, in which flowers and animals spoke to her and everything she looked at appeared to be covered in polka dots. This became a vital part of her aesthetic as Kusama attempted to give a visual dimension to the thoughts that overwhelmed her, and the dots were first used to great success in her Infinity Nets paintings in 1950s, examples of which covered the walls of Driving Image Show. The presence of the child is poignant in relation to her early experiences, perhaps paralleling her struggle to navigate this all-colourful world that surrounded her, and ultimately threatened to overwhelm her physical and emotional sense of self. The repetitive imagery stands as something of a memento-mori, an autobiographical relic, in all her work, including pieces in which she photographed herself with her unclothed body, hair and shoes all covered in dots. Finding solace in artistic production, she commented that Driving Image arose from ‘a deep, driving compulsion to realize in visible form the repetitive image inside of me’ (Y. Kusama, quoted in U. Kultermann, ‘Driving Image, Essen, 1966’ in L. Hoptman, A. Tatehata & U. Kultermann (eds.), Yayoi Kusama, London 2000, p. 86).
Kusama’s recognisable polka-dots are rooted in her turbulent past. As a child, Kusama experienced hallucinatory visions, in which flowers and animals spoke to her and everything she looked at appeared to be covered in polka dots. This became a vital part of her aesthetic as Kusama attempted to give a visual dimension to the thoughts that overwhelmed her, and the dots were first used to great success in her Infinity Nets paintings in 1950s, examples of which covered the walls of Driving Image Show. The presence of the child is poignant in relation to her early experiences, perhaps paralleling her struggle to navigate this all-colourful world that surrounded her, and ultimately threatened to overwhelm her physical and emotional sense of self. The repetitive imagery stands as something of a memento-mori, an autobiographical relic, in all her work, including pieces in which she photographed herself with her unclothed body, hair and shoes all covered in dots. Finding solace in artistic production, she commented that Driving Image arose from ‘a deep, driving compulsion to realize in visible form the repetitive image inside of me’ (Y. Kusama, quoted in U. Kultermann, ‘Driving Image, Essen, 1966’ in L. Hoptman, A. Tatehata & U. Kultermann (eds.), Yayoi Kusama, London 2000, p. 86).