Made it to the Kusama Yayoi exhibition at the Kyoto National Museum of Modern Art the other week. Obsessive, beautiful, strange, delightful. I loved the 60’s film “Kusama’s Self-Obliteration,” in which we see Kusama sticking dots on everything and everyone in sight — a horse, a naked guy, a cat, a pond, a room of nude hippie revelers. Possible to enjoy the show purely on a sensual level — bright colors and pretty textures — but the beauty was emotionally complex. Hundreds of villi/phalli sprang up, transforming household objects into wormy extensions of my own gut. At the same time, made from fabric and stuffing, they begged you to squeeze them like stuffed animals.
A short line formed outside one of the pieces. Every 12-seconds, the attendant would open the door to usher 2 or 3 people out and admit a few others. You stepped into a darkened mirror-lined room (not the one pictured here) hung with dozens of colored lights. For a few breathtaking moments, you entered a vast expanse of stars, or a galaxy of willow-the-wisps, or the endless forest of neurons twinkling gently in your mind.