Stephanie Rosenthal on Yayoi Kusama

The Great Women Artists

Katy Hessel

Arts

4.8 • 944 Ratings

🗓️ 20 April 2021

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In episode 61 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the esteemed curator and Director of Berlin's Gropius Bau, Dr Stephanie Rosenthal on the legendary artist, YAYOI KUSAMA!!!! [This episode is brought to you by Alighieri jewellery: www.alighieri.co.uk | use the code TGWA at checkout for 10% off!] And WOW is this an incredible insight to the iconic Japanese artist, who works across film to painting, performance, sculpture to installation, drawing and collage, to her famous Infinity Mirror Rooms, who is about to be the subject of a MAJOR exhibition at Gropius Bau (curated by Stephanie!!). Info here: https://www.berlinerfestspiele.de/en/berliner-festspiele/programm/bfs-gesamtprogramm/programmdetail_299677.html Born in Matsumoto City, Japan in 1929, to parents who ran a plant factory, the young Kusama studied painting in Kyoto. Establishing herself in the Japanese art scene from her early twenties, it was after a brief correspondence with none other than GEORGIA O'KEEFFE in the 50s, that she abandoned her native country. She arrived in NYC in 1958, with a suitcase of drawings and one aspiration: “To grab everything that went on in the city and become a star”. Formidably ambitious, with “mountains of creative energy stored inside myself”, she succeeded. Situating herself amongst the cultural New York avant-garde elite, Kusama immediately began to make paintings evocative of the American style, as seen in her Infinity Net series. However, she went one step further with her microscopic, miniscule, repetitive and monochromatically coloured gestures that bridged both the emotive and visible brush mark of Abstract Expressionism and technical precision of Minimalism. She went on to create thousands of soft sculptures of in which phallic protrusions covered household objects. Kusama also pushed forward ways of working with performance, installation and underground films... however was often copied by her male contemporaries! In 1973, she moved back to Japan, however in 1993, she returned to the spotlight when representing Japan at the Venice Biennale where she showcased all-encompassing mirror rooms. Re-catapulted to stardom in the western art world, Kusama today remains (arguably) the most famous female artist on the planet: between 2013–2018 she drew in FIVE MILLION visitors alone! LISTEN NOW + ENJOY!!! FURTHER LINKS! Stephanie's exhibition: https://www.berlinerfestspiele.de/en/berliner-festspiele/programm/bfs-gesamtprogramm/programmdetail_299677.html https://www.victoria-miro.com/artists/31-yayoi-kusama/ For those in NYC! https://www.nybg.org/event/kusama/ ...and in LONDON THIS SUMMER! https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/yayoi-kusama-infinity-mirror-roomsWhitney Museum collection! https://whitney.org/exhibitions/yayoi-kusama#exhibition-artworks https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/yayoi-kusama-8094/introduction-yayoi-kusama https://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/yayoi-kusama Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel Sound editing by Winnie Simon Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner Music by Ben Wetherfield https://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome back to the Great Woman Artist podcast. I hope you are all doing well at this time.
0:06.2	I am so delighted to say that today we will be speaking with the director of Gropius Bough in Berlin,
0:11.7	Dr. Stephanie Rosenthal, on the groundbreaking Yo-Yo-Kasama. But before we start, I am so excited
0:17.6	to reintroduce our sponsor for this series, the brilliant Allegieri
0:21.2	Jewelry, a collection inspired by Dante Elegieri's Divine Comedy, with each piece corresponding
0:26.7	to one of the poets, 100 poems. You can visit their wonderful work at www.aligieri.com.com.
0:34.0	And just for our listeners, they are offering a 10% discount across all products with the code,
0:39.5	TGWA at checkout.
0:42.1	Each week, their founder, Rosh Matani, will be giving us an insight into Alighieri,
0:46.3	and I hope you enjoy this episode.
0:50.7	Hello, Great Women Artist listeners, it's Rosh from Aligieri Jewelry. I wanted to let you know before
0:56.4	word gets out tomorrow that Alligieri will be opening up the doors of its pop-up, Alligieri Old Town,
1:02.7	an old school Italian piazza in the heart of central London from the 5th to the 9th of May.
1:09.2	We'll have lots to show you from a new bridal store to a nail bar
1:13.3	and a chain bar. Make sure you sign up for our newsletter to be the first to book.
1:22.8	Hello everyone and welcome to The Great Women Artist podcast with me, Katie Hessel. Some of you might know me
1:29.9	from The Great Women Artists, an Instagram account I set up in October 2015, which celebrates female
1:35.4	artists on a daily basis, ranging from young graduates to old masters. Well, in a similar
1:41.6	fashion to the Instagram, this podcast is all about celebrating female
1:45.7	artists from a variety of backgrounds and histories.
1:49.2	And I am so excited to be interviewing artists on their career or artists, writers, curators,
1:54.6	or general art lovers on the women artist who means most of them.
	...

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