SEEING SPOTS

Avant-garde Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s sixty-five-year career is one of mythic proportions. A prominent figure in the post-war New York art scene, her renowned polka dots have not only covered her own artwork for the past sixand-a-half decades, but have also made their way onto everything from Louis Vuitton bags to a bus in her hometown of Matsumoto, Japan. Kusama’s breakthrough came in 1965 when she produced Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli’s Field. In an attempt to create a hallucinatory experience, she lined a small room with mirrored panels that reflected an intense and dizzying repetition of hundreds of red-spotted, white fabric tubes piled on the floor. Over the course of her career, Kusama has gone on to produce more than 20 distinct Infinity Mirror Rooms”. Now, six of these kaleidoscopic spaces featuring polka-dot pumpkins and twinkling LED lights, along with more than 60 of the artist’s key paintings, sculptures and works on paper, have embarked on a tour of five major North American museums. The interactive exhibition examines the artist’s central themes, like the celebration of life and its aftermath, and is a true retrospective of the extraordinary career of the 87-year-old woman behind the dots, and the most significant North American tour of her works in nearly two decades. YAYOI KUSAMA: INFINITY MIRRORS IS CURRENTLY ON DISPLAY AT THE HIRSHHORN MUSEUM AND SCULPTURE GARDEN IN WASHINGTON, DC UNTIL MAY 14 BEFORE TRAVELING TO THE SEATTLE ART MUSEUM (JUNE 30 TO SEPT. 10, 2017), THE BROAD IN LOS ANGELES (OCT. 21, 2017–JAN. 1, 2018), THE ART GALLERY OF ONTARIO IN TORONTO (MARCH 3 TO MAY 27, 2018), THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART (JULY 9–SEPT. 30, 2018), AND THE HIGH MUSEUM OF ART IN ATLANTA (NOV. 18, 2018–FEB. 17, 2019).