Butler's Cinema Scene

Yayoi Kusama

“KUSAMA: INFINITY” My rating: B 

76 minutes | No MPAA rating

At 89 Yayoi Kunama is the world’s the most successful living artist.

So we are told in “Kusama: Infinity,” Heather Lenz’s fact-filled, provocative and intriguing documentary.

Not bad for a woman who fought most of her life to gain equal footing with her male counterparts and who remains largely unknown to most Americans.

Born to a philandering father and a domineering mother who operated a huge garden seed company in their native Japan, Kusama showed an independent streak early on, defying her parents by studying art, corresponding with the legendary Georgia O’Keefe (then about the only living woman artist with a worldwide reputation) and, shortly after WWII, emigrating to New York City where she quite literally banged on gallery doors seeking recognition.

She took to wearing kimonos in public to draw attention…and in fact throughout her career has been seen as something of a publicity whore. Blowback from her unstoppable promoting led to her being more or less banned from most commercial galleries for a decade or more.

Old photos show her as an attractive woman — though not beautiful –with a terrific sense of style.

One of Kusama’s infinity rooms

She had a chaste affair with oddball American artist Joseph Cornell — a true mama’s boy — and appears always to have been terrified of sex…quite possibly because of early exposure to her father’s womanizing.

Her art reputation rests in large part on her “infinity net” paintings…canvasses that seem to depict thousands of tiny stars. Up close they may resemble a reptile’s scaly skin. (To this day she prefers polka-dotted clothing.)

But she’s done so much more. She’s designed furniture (her “banana chair” was covered in soft penis-like protruberences). She was a pioneer of performance art, presiding over gay weddings four decades before they were legal and using nude figures and body paint to protest the Viet Nam war. She developed mirror installations that seemed to place viewers inside an infinity of twinkling stars.

The film draws on psychologists, fellow artists and gallery owners.  Kusama provides some narration — in Japanese — and cuts a spectacular figure as an octogenarian.  Think Edna Mode, the runty costume designer of “The Incredibles,” only with a bright red pageboy wig.

Throughout one is left in amazement at Kusama’s unstoppable creativity. “I come up with new ideas,” she says, “and my canvas cannot keep up with me.”

At times this has led to psychological issues. But even then she triumphs. As one observer notes, “She’s used her trauma to enormously productive ends.”

The doc thoroughly examines its subject’s creativity.  Precisely who Kusama is as a person, though, remains a mystery.

| Robert W. Butler