San Francisco Frontiers - 'A celebration': Amsterdam museum unveils Kusama show weeks after death

The exhibition at Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum features dozens of ceramics, etchings, and drawings from Kusama, one of the world's best-known artists, as well as her trademark polka dot pumpkins.

Around 50 of the pieces have never been displayed before, said curator Leontine Coelewij, who pulled together works from several museums in Japan, including in Tokyo and Kusama's birthplace Matsumoto.

"I think the show will be a highlight for people who do not know the work of Kusama, but also people who've seen her work on several occasions," Coelewij told AFP in an interview during a press preview on Wednesday.

"I think there will be many surprises," added the 62-year-old curator.

The centrepiece of the exhibition is a huge "infinity room" with black walls covered by yellow polka dots, featuring mirrors that give visitors the disorienting impression the dots are never-ending.

Kusama died aged 97 in August, after a career spanning 70 years that saw her work exhibited around the world.

She channelled hallucinations and well-documented battles with mental illness into vibrant art that inevitably featured polka dots -- how she saw the world.

"What I think is very characteristic of Kusama is that for her making art and drawing what went on in her mind, was a way to deal with the difficult issues she had," said Coelewij.

"Art can be like a healing power. And that has been so in her early years, but also continued all through the years," added the curator.

- 'Marvellous tribute' -

After studying art in Japan, Kusama moved to the United States in the late 1950s, becoming a leading figure in New York's avant-garde scene.

On her return to Japan in the 1970s, she checked herself into a Tokyo psychiatric hospital, where she lived and worked right up to her death.

News of her death came as the Amsterdam exhibition was being installed.

"We were very sad when we heard the news... On the other hand, we could say that this exhibition is a great celebration of her work, a tribute to a wonderful life and a wonderful body of work," said Coelewij.

Curators decided not to make any changes to the exhibition, as they had worked with Kusama on the composition. "This is how she wanted the show to be."

But Coelewij said she felt a weighty responsibility to put on an exhibit that has come to mark what she called a "full stop" on Kusama's career.

"This is the end with her passing, and there will be no more new works," she said.

"So we can take a step back and look at her work and see this as a marvellous tribute to what she has done through the years, more than 70 years of making art."

G.Miller--SFF