#ngv

Essence d’Herbier

House of Dior

Spring/Summer 2017

Blue and red day dress, ca. 1895, French.

By Jean-Philippe Worth.

National Gallery of Victoria.

Lost | Frederick McCUBBIN 1886, oil on canvas

Dante running from the Three Beasts | William BLAKE 1827, pen, ink & watercolour over pencil & black chalk

The rabbiters | Russell DRYSDALE 1947, oil on canvas

Endormies | Rupert BUNNY 1904, oil on canvas

Collins St, 5p.m. | John BRACK 1955, oil on canvas

Dancing Pumpkin | Yayoi KUSAMA 2020, bronze sculpture

Esmeralda on the pedestal | Natalya HUGHES 2023, synthetic polymer paint on polyester

Untitled | LEE Bul 2003, polyurethane, enamel paint, stainless steel

Reflection Model (Itsukushima) | Takahiro IWASAKI 2013–14, Japanese cypress wood, bass wood, wire

Traditional hunting | David Namirlmirl MANGIRU 1952, earth pigments on Stringybark (Eucalyptus sp.)

Trilogy of the desert: Mirage | Salvador DALÍ 1946, oil on canvas

Untitled | Robert KLIPPEL 1955, collage of printed illustrations, gouache & pencil

So yesterday after I'd attended my business lunch in the city I headed to the National Gallery of Victoria for the Yayoi Kusama exhibition.

She's now 95 and was born the same year as my parents, which means she grew up during WW2 and the postwar occupation of Japan, and then in the 1960s relocated to New York at a time the arts scene was exploding with new ideas and ways of seeing.

One of the pieces (not seen here) is a large canvas of 'via Air Mail' stickers, and it struck me how perhaps a large portion of its meaning is lost on people now because communication is so instantaneous. We no longer wait 2-3 weeks for a letter from overseas, that comes on gossamer paper because carriers were so concerned about the weight of even a letter. if you grew up in a post internet generation the weight of expectation that letters often had may be lost on you, and tbh for me now that analogue existence is little more than a distant memory.

What really struck me about this exhibition though was that while on the surface the brightly coloured polka dotted pieces suggest a light hearted whimsy, fun and a degree of carefree-ness, read a little about Yayoi Kusama and the opposite appears to be true. Take for instance the second picture and those spiky sculptures, they are titled after her adolescence. And then there is the knowledge that she voluntarily has lived in a psychiatric facility since the 1970s and returning to Japan from the US.

I couldn't help but think as I wandered through the most Instagrammable exhibition I have ever seen, how much maybe people were missing of this. There is a joyfulness to a lot of the pieces but there are also dark undertones, such as her desire for 'self obliteration' that perhaps has a tendency to go unacknowledged as people (and I'm guilty of this too) mediate so much of this exhibition through their phone screens.

The Kusama retrospective is definitely a psychaedelic trip, but it also illustrates a degree of struggle with the idea that we ourselves are nothing more significant than one of the polka dots in her artwork. There is awe and wonder to be had at this exhibition and if you get a chance to see it when it tours (Melbourne has been lucky enough to be the first time this exhibit has been put together), then it's well worth attending. Just do make some time to acknowlege the other aspects of her life's work too.

Pin-up model Bettie Page (American, Apr. 22, 1923 - Dec. 11, 2008). Photo by Bunny (Linnea Eleanor) Yeager (American, March 13, 1929 - May 25, 2014).

Saint Jerome, 1530s/1540s. In the manner of Joos van Cleve (Netherlandish, 1485/1490 – 1540/1541).