Celebrity Life

Emblazoned by the acclaimed artist’s signature polka dots and flowers, this bubbly makes a great party enhancer.

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A 81-year-old art enthusiast gifts Singapore a statue, Kei-Chan, by Yayoi Kusama.

The post Avid Art Collector Gifts A Yayoi Kusama Sculpture To Singapore appeared first on LUXUO.

What do the two most famous women of Japanese modern art and vintage French champagne have in common? A good deal, according to Veuve Clicquot, the grand French champagne maison that this year teamed with the nonagenerian artist Yayoi Kusama for its limited-edition La Grande Dame 2012.

Despite living 150 years apart, both Madame Clicquot and Kusama share many traits, including a rebelious streak. Clicquot was a 27-year-old widow when she took over the business after her husband died in 1805. Kusama left from Japan to conquer New York’s 1960s art scene at age 28, and was a pioneer in immersive artistic experiences, such as her famed "Infinity
Rooms" that allow viewers' bodies and minds to become integral parts of the work.

This isn’t the first time the two women meet. Back in 2006, for a charity auction in Tokyo, Yayoi Kusama reinterpreted an original portrait of Madame Clicquot with her now-iconic polka dots pattern. Today, the dialogue continues between the House and the artist with the new collaboration titled “My Heart That Blooms in The Darkness of The Night”, in which the artist and Veuve Clicquot’s creative universes mix together in a daring and optimistic collaboration.

To celebrate the partnership, Kusama has penned down a poem also titled "My Heart That Blooms in the Darkness of the Night”.

My Heart That Blooms
in the Darkness of the Night

From all my heart,

the life of flowers flew away.

My everlasting affection for the flowers,

flew off beyond the universe

to show its vitality,

to gaze at the extremes of life.

– Yayoi Kusama

© Yayoi Kusama

The post Yayoi Kusama Collaborates With Veuve Clicquot to Spread a Message of Hope and Optimism appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

The Champagne house has engaged the Japanese artist to design the label, and create a sculpture for the release of its 2012 grand cuvee.

The post Veuve Clicquot collaborates with Yayoi Kusama on the 2012 La Grande Dame. appeared first on The Peak Magazine.

The Champagne house has engaged the Japanese artist to design the label, and create a sculpture for the release of its 2012 grand cuvee.

For more stories like this, visit www.thepeakmagazine.com.sg.

The famed two auction houses are set to host a collaborative sale in Hong Kong this November.

For the first time, Phillips and Poly Auction will be joining hands to offer collectors and art enthusiasts an opportunity to view collections that feature the very best of 20^th century and contemporary art.

Partnering with China’s leading auction house Poly is a monumental step for Phillips. “As Asia continues to rise as an important art market region, this mutually beneficial partnership will enable Phillips to establish a broader foothold across Greater China, whilst offering Poly our global reach and commitment to expanding our presence further in this important market,” explains Edward Dolman, CEO of Phillips. 

Relatively new on the auction scene since its opening of its Asian headquarters in Hong Kong in 2015, Phillips has already gained increasing presence and popularity on this side of the world. This joint venture with Poly will be Phillips’ ninth auction series in Hong Kong. Expected to follow suit from its previous eight auctions, the sales in November is estimated to see record breaking results as well. 

In the November auction, guests and collectors can expect to see paintings, sculptures and other forms of media represented by both internationally acclaimed artists in the Evening Sale and emerging talents for the Day Sale at JW Marriott, Hong Kong. 

Notable Contemporary Artworks Auctioned by Phillips 

[gallery ids="209745,209746,209747,209749,209748"]

Notable Contemporary Artworks Auctioned by Poly Auction 

[gallery ids="209753,209752,209754,209751,209750"]

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Yayoi Kusama, one of the world’s top selling female artists and most popular exhibitors made famous by her polka dot motifs, can rightly be called the matriarch of Pop Art.

Born in 1929 in Matsumoto, Japan, Yayoi Kusama was the youngest of four children in a wealthy but troubled family. Her father was a womaniser, her mother was cold and distant.

As a young child, Kusama was sent to learn Nihongo, or traditional Japanese painting, and surviving sketches from that time show clearly a talent well beyond her years. Kusama already knew that she wanted to be an artist, but found the traditional master-pupil regimen stifling. But her mother wouldn’t entertain the idea, instead telling Kusama that she was destined to be a dutiful wife to a wealthy husband. The mother frequently confiscated Kusama’s inks and canvases, which probably contributed to her obsessive creative drive.

[caption id="attachment_209248" align="alignnone" width="1078"] Kusama kicks back in a serpentine setting.[/caption]

Kusama’s burning desire to paint continued, and in the late 1940s and early 1950s she looked abroad, impressed by the new generation of American painters. She greatly admired Georgia O’Keeffe, with whom she corresponded for advice. O’Keeffe, who was more than 40 years Kusama’s senior, warned her that artists in America had “a hard time making a living”. Still, she advised Kusama to move to the United States and show her work to as many people as she could.

In her mid-20s, Kusama left to seek fame and freedom in New York, where she lived from 1958 to 1975. She would later acknowledge that “America was really the country that raised me”. Kusama has said that without her art she would have committed suicide a long time ago. Her “Infinity Net” dot paintings, which first won her critical acclaim in New York, originate from visual hallucinations that she claims have haunted her since childhood and became the overwhelming power in her life.

"One day I was looking at the red flower patterns of the tablecloth on a table, and when I looked up I saw the same pattern covering the ceiling, the windows and the walls, and finally all over the room, my body and the universe. I felt as if I had begun to self-obliterate, to revolve in the infinity of endless time and the absoluteness of space.”

[caption id="attachment_209251" align="alignnone" width="957"] A dot room, which started off stark white. Exhibition attendees were given booklets of different sized and coloured dot stamps to place wherever they liked.[/caption]

In 1977, two years after returning from overseas, she booked into a psychiatric asylum in Tokyo where she has lived on a voluntary basis ever since. However, she maintains a large and very productive studio across the road from the institution and describes her work as “art medicine”.

She views her recent paintings as diary entries. Whenever she is overcome with a nightmarish hallucination, Kusama sits down at a canvas and begins to document the vision, completing the work in one sitting. These are always completed on the same size canvas and create a visual log of her obsessive thoughts. Despite their bright colours, the works have titles such as The Far End of my Sorrow and All About Joy, reflecting a troubled soul.

Kusama’s output is prolific. According to Christie's, she was the world’s highest-selling living female artist with her Infinity Net paintings being the most sought-after. Her touring retrospective, Infinite Obsession, attracted the largest global audience of 2015.

[caption id="attachment_209249" align="alignnone" width="960"] Kusama's Infinity pumpkins.[/caption]

She is business-savvy and prolific Kusama’s CV reads like a roll call of creative industries; she founded an erotic newspaper entitled Kusama’s Orgy, has published eight novels, several books of poetry, designed a bus and has produced films – including one with British musician Peter Gabriel.

During her time in US and back in Japan, Kusama has never identified as belonging to any artistic movement, always describing her style simply as “Kusama art” despite her connections to major avant-garde artists. Still, Kusama often tells of how she craved fame when she arrived in New York. As a woman forging a career in a country that harboured post-war resentment towards Japan, it took dogged determination to get the attention she craved.

Sources: Christies, BBC, New York Times

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