.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Yayoi Kusama’s powerful INFINITY-NETS (FINTTOW) hypnotizes the viewer with its glorious web of small marks, each carefully painted with a semi-circle brushstroke, enveloping the viewer in the concept of infinity. The work is an exemplar of Yayoi Kusama’s iconic Infinity Nets series, one of her most visually complex and conceptual body of works. Among her extensive oeuvre, Infinity Nets stand out as particularly important to her development as an artist. In the present work Kusama applies paint in thick white scalloped impasto, giving the surface of the work a three-dimensional, sculptural quality. The rich texture of the dynamic surface allows for the intermittent reflection of light, causing an entrancing visual play between the flat surface of the canvas and the thick swaths of paint. The present work engulfs the viewer in an endless web of obsessive repetition, blurring the lines between the self and the infinite.
While INFINITY-NETS (FINNTOW) employs a restrained monochromatic palette, it paradoxically produces a kaleidoscopic effect. The deliberate precision of each brushstroke generates fractal-like patterns that subtly guide the viewer's eye, revealing new visual narratives within the composition. Even within the repetitive structure of Kusama’s technique, these microcosms emerge, reflecting the artist’s exploration of infinity, obsession, and the tension between order and chaos. The thickly applied layers of paint create carefully calculated patterns which bleed onto the edges of the canvas, uninterrupted in their quest to infinity. The painting wrestles with the concept of infinity, a subject which Kusama explores obsessively and compulsively throughout her oeuvre. While Kusama has worked serially in her practice, her periodic return to the Infinity Nets represents an innate need to explore the purest expression of her artistic practice.
Kusama began her acclaimed Infinity Nets series shortly after arriving in New York City in 1958. Already by 1959, her efforts culminated in her first solo exhibition at the Brata Gallery, an artist-run space in New York City. The exhibition unveiled her enormous Infinity Nets paintings to the public for the first time. The present work, INFINITY-NETS (FINTTOW), is a continuation of this groundbreaking series. Kusama described her Infinity Nets as paintings "without beginning, end, or center. The entire canvas would be occupied by [a] monochromatic net. This endless repetition caused a kind of dizzy, empty, hypnotic feeling" (the artist quoted in Laura Hoptman, Yayoi Kusama, London 2000, p. 103). Kusama constructs her nets with meticulously applied brushstrokes, each following a precise, rhythmic direction that subtly directs the viewer's eye across the canvas. This repetitive motion creates a visual flow that suggests an endless cycle, reflecting the artist’s meditation on perpetual movement, the infinite, and the obsessive nature of her creative process.
From an early age, Kusama found comfort in art in dealing with the emotional turmoil she experienced in her childhood. Kusama was plagued by visions of dots and flashes. "My room, my body, the entire universe was filled with [patterns], my self was eliminated, and I had returned and been reduced to the infinity of eternal time and the absolute of space,” she recalls. “This was not an illusion but reality” (Y. Kusama, quoted in L. Hoptman and U. Kultermann, Yayoi Kusama, New York 2000, p. 36). The Infinity Nets are a clear manifestation of these powerful visions; indeed, the Infinity Nets invite the viewer into the artist’s innermost psyche, allowing us to experience a semblance of the surreal environments which adorn some of her earliest childhood memories.
Kusama describes the process of painting as obsessive. She recounts, "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" (Y. Kusama, trans. Ralph McCarthy, Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama, London 2011, pp. 17-18). Kusama’s necessary compulsion manifests itself in a deeply personal work of art which, in turn, becomes a transformational experience for the viewer.
While INFINITY-NETS (FINNTOW) employs a restrained monochromatic palette, it paradoxically produces a kaleidoscopic effect. The deliberate precision of each brushstroke generates fractal-like patterns that subtly guide the viewer's eye, revealing new visual narratives within the composition. Even within the repetitive structure of Kusama’s technique, these microcosms emerge, reflecting the artist’s exploration of infinity, obsession, and the tension between order and chaos. The thickly applied layers of paint create carefully calculated patterns which bleed onto the edges of the canvas, uninterrupted in their quest to infinity. The painting wrestles with the concept of infinity, a subject which Kusama explores obsessively and compulsively throughout her oeuvre. While Kusama has worked serially in her practice, her periodic return to the Infinity Nets represents an innate need to explore the purest expression of her artistic practice.
Kusama began her acclaimed Infinity Nets series shortly after arriving in New York City in 1958. Already by 1959, her efforts culminated in her first solo exhibition at the Brata Gallery, an artist-run space in New York City. The exhibition unveiled her enormous Infinity Nets paintings to the public for the first time. The present work, INFINITY-NETS (FINTTOW), is a continuation of this groundbreaking series. Kusama described her Infinity Nets as paintings "without beginning, end, or center. The entire canvas would be occupied by [a] monochromatic net. This endless repetition caused a kind of dizzy, empty, hypnotic feeling" (the artist quoted in Laura Hoptman, Yayoi Kusama, London 2000, p. 103). Kusama constructs her nets with meticulously applied brushstrokes, each following a precise, rhythmic direction that subtly directs the viewer's eye across the canvas. This repetitive motion creates a visual flow that suggests an endless cycle, reflecting the artist’s meditation on perpetual movement, the infinite, and the obsessive nature of her creative process.
From an early age, Kusama found comfort in art in dealing with the emotional turmoil she experienced in her childhood. Kusama was plagued by visions of dots and flashes. "My room, my body, the entire universe was filled with [patterns], my self was eliminated, and I had returned and been reduced to the infinity of eternal time and the absolute of space,” she recalls. “This was not an illusion but reality” (Y. Kusama, quoted in L. Hoptman and U. Kultermann, Yayoi Kusama, New York 2000, p. 36). The Infinity Nets are a clear manifestation of these powerful visions; indeed, the Infinity Nets invite the viewer into the artist’s innermost psyche, allowing us to experience a semblance of the surreal environments which adorn some of her earliest childhood memories.
Kusama describes the process of painting as obsessive. She recounts, "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" (Y. Kusama, trans. Ralph McCarthy, Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama, London 2011, pp. 17-18). Kusama’s necessary compulsion manifests itself in a deeply personal work of art which, in turn, becomes a transformational experience for the viewer.