L.A. bed for Yayoi Kusama’s ‘Tulips’
There’s a Yayoi Kusama installation in town — again.
The Marciano Art Foundation has acquired the installation “With All My Love for the Tulips, I Pray Forever” (2011) by the Japanese artist who drew fans by the thousands last year to her show at the Broad museum. The immersive artwork, featuring three fiberglass-reinforced plastic potted tulip sculptures in a stark white environment that’s plastered with red dots, opened Thursday. It’s the first time the artwork has been displayed on the West Coast.
“With All My Love for the Tulips, I Pray Forever” first went on view at David Zwirner in New York in 2017 as part of the gallery’s “Festival of Life” exhibition. Maurice Maricano, whose Wilshire Boulevard art museum owns multiple paintings and sculptures by the 89-year-old artist, fell in love with it there.
At the Broad in downtown L.A., the Kusama Infinity Mirror Room titled “The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away” (2013) remains one of the most popular artworks. When the museum put tickets on sale last September for its survey of Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms, it caused an online frenzy. About 50,000 tickets sold out in less than an hour. The excitement was partly due to the fact that the rooms — popular selfie backdrops — had rarely been on view.
“We’re not sure what to expect,” Marciano Deputy Director Jamie G. Manné said. “We do anticipate lines.” To mitigate crowds, the museum plans to let only 15 to 20 people at a time into the new installation.
The Marciano Art Foundation owns Kusama works dating to the early 1980s, including the artist’s infinity net paintings and tulip sculptures.
The version of “With All My Love for the Tulips, I Pray Forever” at the Marciano is more expansive than what appeared at David Zwirner. It takes over an entire third-floor gallery that’s more than 1,700 square feet.
With its repetitive shapes, and with the ceiling, floor and walls plastered with dots, the installation’s flattened visual effect can be delightfully dizzying. The work’s palette and spotted tulip planters are reminiscent of Kusama’s first Infinity Mirror Room, “Phalli’s Field,” finished in 1965.