Yayoi Kusama and 'Self-obliteration' - III

From my own perspective, several points of interest come together in Yayoi Kusama's self-obliteration work:
- at one level there is the Buddhist 無我’(no-self / no-ego) and '空’(emptiness / nothing), which, as IW points out in the first of today's postings, is very much part of Japanese collective consciousness and manifests in the repetitive - the painting on of her polka dots and her Infinity Nets - and which reaches out a hand to the 作為(intention) and 無作為(un-intention) or 'unself-conscious' in traditional Japanese pottery as well as, in my view, to Lee Ufan's 'Relatum' (see February posts).
I want to expand on this aspect further in a subsequent post because it ties in with some of what I said on 21 November 2010 in relation to Piero della Francesca;
- at another level Kusama transcends her Japanese cultural origins, the 'self-obliteration' taking on a Western tone as she 
a) unveils the workings of her mind and takes us into her world of hallucinations and visions;
and
b) reflects/comments on the environment (place and time) in which she lives. This 'self-obliteration' is a product of the 60's Western culture; she lived in the United States from 1957 to 1973.

Her film 'Self-Obliteration' is a good illustration of this; Part I reflecting my first and second points in particular, and Part II progressively moving to my third, culminating in Part III: 

Part I of her film 'Self-Obliteration' (1968)

Part II

Part III  

Yayoi Kusama and 'Self-obliteration' - II

A further perspective on Yayoi Kusama's 'self-obliteration' from Nilesh Patel on The Culture Trip website (http://explore.theculturetrip.com/):

'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, and be reduced to nothingness. As I realized it was actually happening and not just in my imagination, I was frightened. I knew I had to run away lest I should be deprived of my life by the spell of the red flowers. I ran desperately up the stairs. The steps below me began to fall apart and I fell down the stairs straining my ankle’ - Kusama.

... As a child, Kusama was physically abused by her mother, and around that time, another world started to open up for her, a world of visions and hallucinations. In 1939, at the age of 10, she created the drawing, Untitled. This piece shows an image of her mother’s face against a background, all of it covered in polka dots. The polka dots are not only representations of what she saw, but also symbolize the sun, moon, earth and the whole universe, more importantly, the infinity of the universe. At such a young age, it was the start of Kusama’s representation of what she saw in her alternate reality, and was the beginning of what would fill the rest of her life; a life-long exploration into herself, an ongoing obsession with polka dots, and various visual processes of how she could represent her own self-obliteration.

...
Infinity Nets was an expression of infinite time, space and distance, which cannot be calculated. ...

With Kusama, there is no difference between her as an artist and her art, both are intrinsically intertwined; her art is her life. ... She has said, that if she did not have her art, she would have killed herself a long time ago. Kusama has dedicated her whole life to disassembling her identity and freeing the self. In many of her pieces, we can see her in the continual process of obliterating herself. Her polka dots are not only universal signs of the outer world of the earth and stars, but are also signs of the inner world of cells. Her work goes from the inner to the outer and back to the inner, killing the ‘I’ so that we can be set free and unified with the universe.

‘Our earth is only one polka dot among a million stars in the cosmos. Polka dots are a way to infinity. When we obliterate nature and our bodies with polka dot, we become part of the unity of our environment’ - Kusama.

Yayoi Kusama and 'Self-obliteration'

Further comment from IW on 無我 in relation to Yayoi Kusama:

For me it is very interesting that we can find the same Buddhism theme of 無我 (no-self / no-ego) even in her work, 'self-obliteration'. 

She doesn't mention Buddhism ..., but I feel that the base idea is flowing under there in Japanese's collective consciousness.

'Polka dots, the trademark of “Kusama Happening”. Red, green and yellow polka dots can be the circles representing the earth, the sun, or the moon. Their shapes and what they signify do not really matter. I paint polka dots on the bodies of people, and with those polka dots, the people will self-obliterate and return to the nature of the universe.'

An excerpt from “Infinity Nets”, Kusama Yayoi Autobiography

Creativity and Form - The Tao Dance Theatre

A further illustration of creativity brought about by the exploration of form, and (contemporary) form brought about by the exploration of creativity: