Almost a half-century after Yayoi Kusama debuted her landmark installation Infinity Mirror Room--Phallis Field (1965) in New York; the work remains challenging and unclassifiable. Shifting between the Pop-like and the Surreal; the Minimal and the metaphorical; the figurative and the abstract; the psychotic and the erotic; with references to "free love" and psychedelia; it seemed to embody all that the 1960s was about; while at the same time denying the prevailing aesthetics of its time. The installation itself was a room lined with mirrored panels and carpeted with several hundred brightly polka-dotted soft fabric protrusions into which the visitor was completely absorbed. Kusama simply called it "a sublime; miraculous field of phalluses." A precursor of performance-based feminist art practice; media pranksterism; and "Occupy" movements; Kusama (born in 1929) was once as well known as her admirers--Andy Warhol; Donald Judd; and Joseph Cornell. In this first monograph on an epoch-defining work; Jo Applin looks at the installation in detail and places it in the context of subsequent art practice and theory as well as Kusamas own (as she called it) "obsessional art." Applin also discusses Kusamas relationship to her contemporaries; particularly those working with environments; abstract-erotic sculpture; and mirrors; and those grappling with such issues as abstraction; eroticism; sexuality; and softness. The work of Lee Lozano; Claes Oldenburg; Louise Bourgeois; and Eva Hesse is seen anew when considered in relation to Yayoi Kusamas.
#3377975 in eBooks 2009-11-23 2009-11-23File Name: B009M9BFCW
Review
0 of 4 people found the following review helpful. Can Any1 Ever Be the Enemy?By Jeffery MingoPicture: Illinois. the early 90s. a public high school. In an honors English class. we were discussing PC. One student asked. "But are we headed to a day when only thin. Christian. non-disabled. non-bald. straight. white men can be the enemies in literature or film?" I usually didnt care for this girl and her conservative thinking. but that comment has stuck with me for 20 years. I think about it when analyzing this book.The author here posits that in many films. white men and Black men only get along with they have an Asian other to treat as the enemy. In another chapter. it said many Blaxploitation films had Asian and Black male characters united against a racist. white character. I appreciate the authors concern about demonizing the other. However. I think it does go a bit too far. I think it concludes with saying post-911. Arab or other brown-skinned men are forced to be the enemy. However. that allegation was made in many 1980s flicks. (The book "Off-White" may touch upon it.) You will wonder. "Well. who can be the bad guy if soooo many groups are excluded for reasons of sensitivity?"In one chapter. "The Matrix" is discussed. The author says Keanu Reeves plays a white man in it. However. I think the "Mixed-Race Hollywood" anthology said he was purposely chosen as a Eurasian man and it is his multiraciality that plays into the movies success with so many audiences. The author says there were no Asians in the first "Matrix" and I thought. "Well. what about that Black character that had epicanthic eyelids!?!" I really think the authors reading of "The Matrix" may offend some mixed-raced Asians.This book had so much potential when I read the summary and saw the table of contents. However. I dont find myself raving about it even close to how I thought it would.
