Greenwich Library, in partnership with the Flinn Gallery, is pleased to host art historian Page Knox for a lecture on “The Life and Work of Yayoi Kusama,” presented at Greenwich Library’s Berkley Theater on Tuesday, June 7, at 7 p.m.
Greenwich resident Page Knox is an adjunct professor and core art history lecturer at New York’s Columbia University, the same school where she earned her doctorate in 2012. She works in a variety of capacities at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, giving public gallery talks and lectures in special exhibitions and well as the permanent collection, teaching classes at the museum (and over Zoom during the pandemic), and leading groups for Travel with the Met. She is also a former docent at Greenwich’s Bruce Museum.
Contemporary artist Yayoi Kusama is best known for her sculptures and large-scale installations, but her body of work also includes paintings, video art, performance, poetry, and fashion. Born in Japan in 1929, she moved to New York in 1958 and soon became a staple of the avant-garde and pop-art scenes. Her signature “infinity nets” of polka dots are a recurring theme in her work, one that she has said first came to her in childhood hallucinations.
The life and work of Yayoi Kusama is a unique testament to the healing power of art as well as a study of human resilience. Plagued by a troubled childhood and mental illness, the young artist persevered by using her hallucinations and personal obsessions as inspiration in various disciplines, overcoming traditional, female-effacing Japanese culture and also coming of age in the male-dominated New York art scene.
Before or after the lecture, attendees are invited to the Flinn Gallery on the second floor of the Library to experience Akinori Matsumoto Sound Garden, featuring another Japanese installation artist. Similar to the way Kusama uses color and repetition of dots in her work, Matsumoto uses handmade kinetic objects to compose random shadow and sound patterns, creating an immersive and transportive environment. Like Kusama, his work evokes the beauty of nature and bears a distinctive Japanese sensibility, playfully engaging the senses through an enchanting combination of light, shadow, shape, and sound.
Register for this in-person event using the Library’s online calendar.
