Hoptman, Laura - Akira Tatehata - Kultermann, Udo : Yayoi Kusama

Survey by Laura Hoptman, Interview by Akira Tatehata, Focus by Udo Kultermann, Artist's Choice by Ishikawa Takuboki, Writings by Yayoi Kusamay
A comprehensive overview of the visionary work of the Japanese artist.This is a monograph on the extraordinary 40 year career of Japanese sculptor and performance artist Yayoi Kusama, recently the subject of a major retrospective at New York's Museum of Modern Art, which toured the United States and Japan through 1999. In January-March 2000 the Serpentine Gallery, London will be presenting a large solo exhibition devoted to Kusama's work. Internationally noted for her soft sculptures an psychedelic installations, Kusama explores themes of love, infinity and obsession throughout her work, from her net-like pattern paintings begun in 1959, to her Pop-inspired love happenings in the 1960s, to installations in which every surface has been compulsively covered in polka-dots, mirrors or stuffed phallus-like protrusions. A visionary whose work is unique in the panorama of post-war art, Yayoi Kusama is known not only as an artist but also as a fashion-designer, poet and novelist - all documented in this comprehensive monograph.
120 colour illustrations, 30 black and white illustrations.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S): Laura Hoptman was co-curator of Yayoi Kusama's travelling 1998-9 retrospective exhibition 'Love Forever' and Assistant Curator in the Department of Drawing at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. An American art historian, Hoptman is one of the world's foremost experts on the work of Yayoi Kusama. Akira Tatehata, a Japanese art critic and poet, is Professor at Tama Art University and Lecturer at Tokyo University. Tatehata was the Japanese commissioner for the Venice Biennale in 1993, the year Yayoi Kusama represented her country. He has known the artist and followed her work closely for many years. Udo Kultermann is a German-born art historian and critic. Also a noted Professor of Architecture at the Washington University, Saint Louis (1986-94), Kultermann's books include The New Sculpture (1967) and The New Painting (1969). He curated Kusama's first presentation of her work in Germany, in 1996.