Now they are seeking to destroy whatever beauty, wonder and meaning they can. All of these disciplines were once devoted to increasing the beauty, wonder and meaning of our lives. Sorry, people…the Emperor is painfully naked. Now we have a museum show dedicated to the deconstruction of space and objects themselves. And Jacques Derrida popularized his notions of deconstruction of literature, telling us we could not really grasp the intended meaning of any author but had instead to bring our own meaning to the text, thus theoretically making written communication virtually impossible. Dance followed the same trend, having graceful, superbly trained dancers rolling around on the floor instead of showing us the beauty of movement and the human body. Music was changing in similar ways, culminating in the likes of John Cage and others who produced either total silence or cacophony. “Polka-dots can’t stay alone like the communicative life of people, two or three polka-dots become movement… Polka-dots are a way to infinity.” ( Yayoi Kusama)Ībout 100 years ago, the Armory Show offered the deconstruction of visual art in a widely-viewed exhibit and changed the world of the visual arts for decades. Sara will be speaking at the closing reception/panel discussion for the group exhibition “Nod to Mod” at Dab Art/H Gallery in Ventura, California this Saturday, Februfrom 3-5pm. Proceeds of sales contribute to the production of The Painter’s Keys. 1 and 2, narrated by Dave Genn, are now available for download on Amazon, here. Yayoi Kusama’s “Obliteration Room” continues at the Auckland Art Gallery until April 2, 2018. Alone and obscure in our own studios, obliterating the blank canvas, might we attempt to disappear entirely, replaced only by the day’s creative best? “My life is a dot lost among thousands of other dots.” ( Yayoi Kusama) After a lifetime of art production, Kusama is now, possibly, the most famous living artist on the planet. The patient taking over of spaces and objects with her motifs has been an effort to connect us as collective transformers and parts to-the-billion of a larger whole. PS: “By obliterating one’s individual self, one returns to the infinite universe.” ( Yayoi Kusama)Įsoterica: Eighty-eight-year-old Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama has explored the ideas of disappearance, immersion, camouflage and covering for most of her life. “I, Kusama, am the modern Alice in Wonderland.” (Yayoi Kusama) Could we be driven by the yearning to disappear? While art-making may appear at first to be a maneuver of the ego - an effort to stick out, to shine - perhaps in our own creative obliterations we are, in fact, merely attempting to satisfy a longing to be nobody. While I basked in the perverse pleasure of the obliteration room in Auckland from my spotless white bed in California, I considered my own, lifelong appetite to mark up a blank page. While hyper-individualistic, paintings have the power to go out into the world while preserving the maker’s invisibility - heaven for an introvert with verbal diarrhea. In addition to this mini-epiphany, the now-covered room reminded me of one of the greatest things about painting. With the blankness eradicated, clobbered by time, a quiet nudge emerged: The most dramatic alterations are made with patience and togetherness. Like a new clock, the obliteration room had hauled me through the past and into now. I sensed the passage of time and all the big and little things that have happened since early December. “Every time I have had a problem, I have confronted it with the ax of art.” (Yayoi Kusama)Įven the original dots from day one, carefully placed by visitors in an attempt at personal narrative or design, were now nothing more than characterless drones in a hive of visual effect.
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