Existing comment:
Accumulations
Kusama began making the Accumulations or "soft sculptures" in the early 1960s. Through creating countless soft phallic tubers and attaching them to furniture, the artist hoped to conquer her fear of sex and the phallus through a kind of self-therapy. Artworks made from sofas, chairs, step ladders, dressers, and a large table were presented together in Kusama: Driving Image Show, a 1964 installation that functioned as a "total environment." Blue Spots and Red Stripes, both Accumulations, serve as important precursors to Infinity Mirror Room -- Phalli's Field. In Phalli's Field, however, the tubers emerge from the floor rather than from panels on the wall and are multiplied ad infinitum by surrounding mirrors.
After focusing on performances for a few years, Kusama returned to making sculptures in the mid-1970s, continuing to use phallic forms. She often coated these works with silver paint, evoking the reflective surfaces of her Infinity Mirror Rooms. The results are less organic than the early Accumulations, their sheen frozen and ethereal. A Snake, is an example of one of these sculptures, and it was included in the monumental exhibition Women's Work: American Art '74, held at the Museum of the Philadelphia Civic Center. |