Kusama: Cosmic Nature

For Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929), an artist whose vision is intrinsically entwined with the natural world, a garden is, in so many ways, the perfect venue to display her work. Five essays explore that vision through drawings, paintings, sculptures, and installations on view recently at the New York Botanical Garden. There’s some overlap in the essays on Kusama’s early life: her family’s seed business, her childhood memories, the onset of her hallucinations, and her early drawings and training, all of which have informed her art for more than seven decades. Kusama’s years in New York and her activism are covered briefly here, but the book’s focus is on her understanding of the natural order as “a vibrating web of interconnected phenomenon” and the embodiment of that idea in her biomorphic references, polka dots, and “Infinity” series. There are stunning color reproductions and photographs of the numerous works and installations cited in the book, including Kusama’s towering Dancing Pumpkin and the thousand-plus floating orbs of her mesmerizing Narcissus Garden.