Yayoi Kusama
b. 1929, Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, Japan
No. 2. J.B., 1960
Oil and rice florets on canvas
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Gift,Paula Cooper 2012.117
In 1958, Yayoi Kusama arrived in New York from her native Japan and began a series of patterned monochrome paintings she called Infinity Nets. In the series, she covered her canvases with small, arched brushstrokes that accumulate into dense fields of looping forms, at once evoking minute dots and expansive spatial rhythms. Kusama described these marks as an attempt to “predict and measure the infinity of the unbounded universe, from my own position in it.” At the same time, she imbued the works with a pointed psychological content, describing them as realizations of a personal hallucination of being suffocated by nets.
No. 2. J.B. is a rare example that incorporates plant material into the painted surface. Kusama later extended these obsessive and hallucinatory qualities into three-dimensional environments, including the Infinity Mirror Room on view nearby, transforming her intensely private vision into a shared, immersive experience.
