Jump to content

Draft:Narcissus Garden

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Background

[edit]
Narcissus Garden installed at Inhotim in Brumadinho, Brazil.[1]
Artist: Yayoi Kusama
Year of first exhibition: 1966
Medium: polished, reflective, stainless steel spheres
Dimensions (one sphere): 12 inches in diameter
Location of first appearance: 33rd Venice Biennale
Location of image: Brumadinho, Brazil

The Narcissus Garden is an immersive, site-specific installation created by Yayoi Kusama.[2] The work comprises of 1,500 highly polished mirrored orbs, each 12 inches in diameter, which were laid on the ground for their first appearance in 1966 during the 33rd Venice Biennale — an exhibition of international contemporary art hosted annually in Venice, Italy.[3][4] Kusama installed her work near a pavilion without invitation or permission.[5][4] Kusama wore a golden kimono and stood among the orbs,[4][6] under a sign that read "Your Narcissism for Sale,"[7] selling the orbs for 1200 Italian lira, or 2 USD each.[8] Kusama was expelled from the Venice Biennale for displaying her "radical idea".[4] After that, she decided to open Narcissus Garden in other areas of the world to expose society of their narcissism.[2]

Narcissus Garden installed at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, located in Tel Aviv, Israel from November 2021 - April 2022.[9]

Yayoi's Early Life

[edit]
Wax model of Yayoi Kusama, used for Louis Vuitton in 2012[10]

Name: Yayoi Kusama (草間 彌生)
Born: 22 March 1929 in Matsumoto, Nagano
Nationality: Japanese
Known for: paintings, sculptures, performance art, installations
Affiliated movements: Pop art, Minimalism, Abstract expressionism, Institutional critique.
Website: http://www.yayoi-kusama.jp

Yayoi Kusama was born in 1929 as the youngest daughter of a family from Matsumoto in central Japan.[11] Kusama's family was unsupportive of her passion for art ever since she expressed it at 10 years old.[12]

Kusama went to Kamakura City after World War II ended to continue her artistic studies but grew sick of the conventional approach that her teachers took and judged her art as "not passable".[13] In 1957, Kusama left Japan and moved to New York, where she created most of her important works.[14][15]

Kusama publicly discuses her mental health and how it intersects with her art. She told Grady Turner at BOMB Magazine how she experienced psychological issues since her first time painting at the age of ten, often seeing hallucinations that only she was able to see alongside obsessional images that plagued her.[16] Jody B. Cutler discusses in Narcissus, Narcosis, Neurosis: The Visions of Yayoi Kusama how Kusama would see the flower patterns of a tablecloth expand into the room.[17] In Kusama's autobiography Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama, she claims that she would see everyday objects speak to her, stating that "One day, [she] suddenly looked up to find that each and every violet had its own individual, human-like facial expression".[18] Kusama expresses that her works are results of coping with psychological challenges.[13][16][12]

Artistic Style

Yayoi Kusama is well known for her extensive use of polka dots in paintings, sculptures, performance art, and installations in art styles of pop art, minimalism, abstract expressionism, and institutional critique.[14][12] She began designing her own clothes and was the founder of Kusama Enterprises[12] in the late 1960s, which were inspired by her paintings.[11] Her work is presented alongside artists such as Donald Judd, Andy Warhol, William de Kooning,[13] and Jackson Pollock.[16]

Conceptual Art

[edit]

Conceptual art is a form of art where the concept behind the work holds more significance than the finished art object itself.[19] It emerged as an art movement in the 1950s, with Marcel Duchamp's Fountain cited as one of the first conceptual artworks.[20] It continued through the mid 1970s when it started to become international, becoming popular in European, North American, and South American countries.[21]

The Narcissus Garden is inspired by the Greco-Roman myth in Ovid's Metamorphoses called Echo and Narcissus,[6] Book III lines 350-500.[22] In the myth, Narcissus was a beautiful young man who was loved by all, but there was no one whom Narcissus would return affection for.[23] Ovid described Echo as a nymph who had a peculiar way of talking, where she would repeat the last spoken words by others and could not start a conversation nor fail to answer other people (line 360).[22] One day, Echo spotted Narcissus and immediately fell in love, so she followed him through the woods. Narcissus rejected Echo and she ran away deep into the forest where she remained forever hidden.[23] Her bones became the rocks and her voice was heard in valleys and caves.[23]

Caravaggio, Narcissus, 1597 - 1599, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Palazzo Barberini, Rome, Italy.
Narcissus (plant), common name daffodil, looking downwards towards the water as Narcissus did in Echo and Narcissus.

One day, Narcissus was hunting and bent down for a drink. When he saw his reflection, he fell in love with what he saw; himself. Indulged in love, Narcissus remained besides the water and wasted his life away.[23] Echo returned to see this and mourned. Narcissus died and when the nymphs went to grab his body for the funeral, he had turned into a flower, particularly a daffodil, which interestingly holds the scientific name for its genus called Narcissus,[23] part of the Amaryllidaceae and Narcissaceae plant families.[24]

Narcissus turned into a daffodil because it is a beautiful flower, just as he was, but is poisonous. Daffodils are often found on the edge of ponds or rivers looking down into the waters. As they wither and die, they droop closer to the water with their bowed head, appearing to look towards the ground near their roots.[25] The ancient myth reflects that the flower was an incarnation of the man himself — symbolic of themes of self-obsession as described in Metamorphoses.[25]

Technical and Aesthetic Approach

[edit]

The hundreds of identical and reflective spheres create a sense of infinity. When asked about her artwork, Kusama says, "I work with the principal themes of infinity, self-image, and compulsive repetition in objects and forms, such as the steel spheres of Narcissus Garden."[8] Kusama talks about the concept of self-obliteration, which is the idea of becoming conjoined with the surroundings, crossing the line of Self.[6] To share this feeling, Kusama creates works that invite visitors to lose themselves in infinite repetition.[15]

Each orb symbolizes an interconnected universe.[6] The reflective mirrored steel material offers infinite existence as it expands the surrounding environment for the viewer.[6] Each reflection invites the viewer to reflect on what they see: architecture, the sky, other viewers, and nearby objects.[6] The orbs of Narcissus Garden symbolize the pond that Narcissus fell in love with himself in, while each visitor that passes plays the role as Narcissus.[6][23][22] Momentary Assistant Curator Kaitlin Maestas suggests that this immersive affection with self causes the viewer to feel more connected with the world, just as Narcissus felt in Echo and Narcissus.[6]

Public Engagement

The installation invites viewers to interact with the orbs. On Medium, a viewer reported her personal experience to the Valley Gallery in Naoshima Island, where she was able to see the orbs drifting on a pond and scattered across the field.[8] She emphasized how her reflection appeared fragmented and distorted when she looked into the orb.[8]

Reflections being shown through the reflective orbs of Narcissus Garden. This particular photo was snapshotted by a viewer at the National Gallery of Victoria, located in Melbourne, Australia.[26]

Another viewer describes the installation when he viewed it at the Rockaways on Hyperallergic, an online arts magazine.[5] He described it to have a playful quality, as if a child had scattered giant sized marbles throughout a room.[5]

Narcissus Garden showing its reflective properties, capturing all that is in the atmosphere and reflecting it back to the viewer.

Global Exhibitions

[edit]

Each iteration of the installation takes on its own distinct character in where it gets displayed.[6] Narcissus Garden has been commissioned and re-installed in various art fairs, parks, venues, and institutions around the world in locations both indoors and outdoors, on land and on water.[6] Some major events it has been apart of include the 2001 Triennial of Contemporary Art at Yokohama, Japan, the 2004 Whitney Biennial at Central Park, New York City, the 2018 MoMA PS1, Rockaway! festival presented at Fort Tilden, New York, and in a pond in Inhotim Museum, Brazil.[4] The recreation of this work makes a challenging comment on art commercialism. Kusama's intention of her work was to show that art's value is not tied with money or status, but to its emotional and conceptual power, hence why she sold her orbs for a cheap price in 1966.[27] She made her work available so buyers would not have to search high and low, making her objects available at an auction, art fair, or selling her items at a secondary market ran by art galleries.[28]

[edit]

http://www.yayoi-kusama.jp

  1. ^ "Pulsar Imagens".
  2. ^ a b "Yayoi Kusama: Narcissus Garden". Laumeier Sculpture Park.
  3. ^ "Yayoi Kusama". The Glass House.
  4. ^ a b c d e Weisberg, Noa (17 April 2019). "Made for Reflection: Yayoi Kusama's Narcissus Garden". DailyArt Magazine.
  5. ^ a b c Volk, Gregory (14 July 2018). "Yayoi Kusama's Mesmerizing, Meditative Garden". Hyperallergic.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j "Yayoi Kusama's Narcissus Garden Makes A New Home at the Momentary". The Momentary. 6 August 2020.
  7. ^ "Whitney Biennial 2004 - Narcissus Garden". Public Art Fund.
  8. ^ a b c d Mitra, Manali (17 September 2024). "Walking Through Yayoi Kusama's Narcissus Garden". Medium.
  9. ^ "Yayoi Kusama at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art". 22 March 2022.
  10. ^ "A Wax Statue of Yayoi Kusama @ Louis Vuitton in New York Autre Magazine". 12 July 2012.
  11. ^ a b "An Introduction to Yayoi Kusama". Tate.
  12. ^ a b c d "Yayoi Kusama | MoMA". The Museum of Modern Art.
  13. ^ a b c "True Superhero Yayoi Kusama: Art inspired by mental illness". spyscape.com.
  14. ^ a b Cole, Rachel (18 March 2025). "Yayoi Kusama | Biography, Art, Infinity Mirrored Room, Pumpkin, & Facts | Britannica". www.britannica.com.
  15. ^ a b "Yayoi Kusama: In Infinity at Moderna Museet Stockholm". Victoria Miro.
  16. ^ a b c "BOMB Magazine | Yayoi Kusama by Grady T. Turner". BOMB Magazine.
  17. ^ Hirsh, Jennie (2011). Contemporary art and classical myth. Farnham, Surrey ; Burlington, VT: Ashgate. p. 87. ISBN 9780754669746.
  18. ^ Kusama, Yayoi; McCarthy, Ralph F. (2011). Infinity net: the autobiography of Yayoi Kusama. Chicago London: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0226464985.
  19. ^ Jecu, Marta (2 January 2025). "Exploring the Role of Conceptual Art for the New Museology – Conceptual Art as Method in Revisiting Objects, Their Display, and Heritage Institutions". Heritage & Society. 18 (1): 57–81. doi:10.1080/2159032X.2024.2327012. ISSN 2159-032X.
  20. ^ Buchloh, Benjamin H. D. (1990). "Conceptual Art 1962-1969: From the Aesthetic of Administration to the Critique of Institutions". October. 55: 105–143. doi:10.2307/778941. ISSN 0162-2870. JSTOR 778941.
  21. ^ "Conceptual art". Tate.
  22. ^ a b c Robyn (26 November 2023). "Ovid's Metamorphoses: Echo and Narcissus". My French Quest.
  23. ^ a b c d e f "Metamorphoses Project: Tracing Mythology through Time and Place". www.cornellcollege.edu.
  24. ^ Hanks, R. Gordon (2002). Narcissus and daffodil: the genus narcissus. London ; New York, NY: Taylor & Francis. pp. 19–29. ISBN 0415273447.
  25. ^ a b "The Myth Behind the Flower: Narcissus – Chelsea Flowers". chelseaflowers.co.uk. 16 December 2019.
  26. ^ ""Narcissus Garden" - Yayoi Kusama artwork at the National Gallery of Victoria". January 2025.
  27. ^ James, Abbie (May 2020). "INTERVENTIONS IN VENICE: ART AND POLITICS AT THE BIENNALE". The University of Arizona. Tucson, Arizona: The University of Arizona. p. 10.
  28. ^ Woodham, Doug (2017). "Experiencing Art is (Almost) Free". Art Collecting Today: Market Insights for Everyone Passionate about Art. New York: Skyhorse Publishing Company, Incorporated. ISBN 9781621535744.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Narcissus_Garden&oldid=1294727341"