Infinity Nets [A.BB], 2004
Acrylic on canvas
116.8×91.4 cm (46×36 inches)
Signed, titled and dated ‘Infinity Nets Yayoi Kusama 2004 A.BB’ (on the reverse)

 

Provenance
Anthony Meier Fine Arts, San Francisco
Acquired from the above by the present owner

 

Christie’s New-York: 15 November 2018
USD 792,500

Source: Christie’s
Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929) (christies.com)

 

Veiled in a delicate lattice of small loops and curls, Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Nets [A.BB] enthralls with its brilliant yellow and poetic splendor. Swoops and coils blanket the canvas in a gauzelike web that is at once engulfing and mesmerizing, and the painting’s intricacy of detail beckons us closer. Across the painting’s surface, thick crests of impasto peak and then give way to smooth circlets, rising and falling in rhythmic swells and creating the impression of lace floating in calming ocean waves. Mirroring the quiet repetition that went into its making, Infinity Nets [A.BB] stimulates introspection and transcendence and lulls its viewers into a meditative state.

With scalloped curves that spread across the canvas in rippling arcs, Infinity Nets [A.BB] is emblematic of Yayoi Kusama’s iconic Infinity Nets paintings, and as a part of her psychological and “feminine”-coded practice it foreshadows many of the developments that would follow shortly thereafter in feminist, performance and post-Minimalist art. Although Kusama returned to Japan after spending 10 years in New York and has remained there since, her time in New York was one of the most defining periods in her career, which, while brief, saw her create a highly influential body of work that would change the course of art forever.