while i can't claim to really know anything about psychoanalysis (despite the title of this blog) i think that Jen Graves's stance on Kusama--nudity, beings stripped bare of culture, and androgyny--fits my thoughts about Kusama's oeuvre being about pre-mirror-stage jouissance and union with the world/mother.
Happy Mother's Day!
Yayoi Kusama
(photograph from Happening)
The grainy picture—depicting two (or maybe three?) bodies in a pile on the floor, naked except for painted-on polka dots that match the wildly polka-dotted room they're in—was snapped at a Happening in New York by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. She declared it the "first Homosexual Wedding ever to be performed in the United States." This document is nothing like a wedding photograph. The participants lie rather than stand. They are so entangled that you can't even tell whether they're men or women. 'The purpose of this marriage is to bring out into the open what has hitherto been concealed,' [Jeffry] Mitchell reads out loud from the wall label, quoting Kusama.
p.s. A great big shout out to Greg Kucera gallery and all those keeping it real in Pioneer Square with some great art (including art that supports/promotes Hide/Seek in Tacoma). If you were feeling progressive you could call him a great motherlike nurturer of the Seattle art scene.
p.p.s. In even more motherly news, check out the anatomically correct clitoris art (you can buy an owner's manual for a cool $40 donation to the project!) on view nearby at the After Dinner Party, all this month.
take that, bruce nauman
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