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Lot Essay
The delicate veil of painted swoops and swirls that sweep across the surface of Red Nets, No. 19 are an early example of Yayoi Kusama's iconic Infinity Net paintings that helped to launch her career as one of the leading artists of the Post-War period. Given directly to the present owner by the artist, Red Nets, No. 19 comprises of a series of short, red scalloped brush stokes that are repeated almost ad infinitum across the surface of the canvas, resulting in a near hypnotic effect as we are pulled into the folds of the composition. Stuart Preston, writing about Kusuma's first major exhibition of her Infinity Nets paintings at New York's Stephen Radich Gallery in 1961, noted that, "The patience that has gone into the confection of [the paintings'] texture is astonishing and the concentrated pattern titillates the eye" (S. Preston, quoted in F. Morris (ed.), Yayoi Kusama, exh. cat., Tate Modern, London, 2012, p.53).
Against a dark background, Kusama would begin applying the painted loops in the top left corner of the canvas. Working very close to the surface, she would apply the brushstrokes without any sense of formal composition. The patterns produced often only revealed themselves after she stood back from the painting. Because she worked so intently, the integrity of the individual loops would change over time as her brushes ran dry of paint, allowing the darker under layer to reveal itself through the thinner layers of red paint placed on top. This results in a surface which is rich in both visual and textural variety, and a surface in which the artist's technical skill and physical and mental stamina are very much on display.
Currently the subject of a major retrospective at New York's Whitney Museum of American Art, Yayoi Kusama became a pivotal figure in the period that was bookended by Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. Although she spent just over a decade in New York before returning to her native Japan, her work (and her Infinity Net paintings in particular) encompassed many of the movements that were emerging in the rapidly changing New York art world. Her art rises above arbitrary categorization and provides tranquility and a new perspective that transcended the cacophony of excited art world voices which epitomized that period of New York art. As Donald Judd (then known as an influential critic rather than a sculptor) said, "[her work] transcends the question of whether [the art] is Oriental or American. Although it is something of both, certainly of such Americans as Rothko, Still and Newman, it is not at all a synthesis and is thoroughly independent" (D. Judd as quoted by L. Zelevansky, 'Driving Image: Yayoi Kusama in New York,' Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama, 1958-1968, Los Angeles, 1998, p. 12).
Against a dark background, Kusama would begin applying the painted loops in the top left corner of the canvas. Working very close to the surface, she would apply the brushstrokes without any sense of formal composition. The patterns produced often only revealed themselves after she stood back from the painting. Because she worked so intently, the integrity of the individual loops would change over time as her brushes ran dry of paint, allowing the darker under layer to reveal itself through the thinner layers of red paint placed on top. This results in a surface which is rich in both visual and textural variety, and a surface in which the artist's technical skill and physical and mental stamina are very much on display.
Currently the subject of a major retrospective at New York's Whitney Museum of American Art, Yayoi Kusama became a pivotal figure in the period that was bookended by Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. Although she spent just over a decade in New York before returning to her native Japan, her work (and her Infinity Net paintings in particular) encompassed many of the movements that were emerging in the rapidly changing New York art world. Her art rises above arbitrary categorization and provides tranquility and a new perspective that transcended the cacophony of excited art world voices which epitomized that period of New York art. As Donald Judd (then known as an influential critic rather than a sculptor) said, "[her work] transcends the question of whether [the art] is Oriental or American. Although it is something of both, certainly of such Americans as Rothko, Still and Newman, it is not at all a synthesis and is thoroughly independent" (D. Judd as quoted by L. Zelevansky, 'Driving Image: Yayoi Kusama in New York,' Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama, 1958-1968, Los Angeles, 1998, p. 12).