YAYOI KUSAMA
It’s finally the weekend. It’s time to kick back, relax, and maybe let the world move around you. There’s no better way to introduce a little calm and wonder today than to take a look at the work of Yayoi Kusama. The Japanese artist and writer has worked with just about every medium, but lately her focus has been colorful, cool, and fascinating work revolving around space and patterns. Kusama has moved from polka dots to fireflies in her latest installation, and the results are mesmerizing.
Earlier this year we dropped the news of Louis Vuitton’s upcoming collaboration with Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. With LV artistic director Marc Jacob’s knack for brilliantly successful collabs paired with Kusama’s awe-inspiring dots motif—we expect the resulting products to be a major hit. As new details are revealed and the collection’s debut nears, turns out our predictions were, well, spot on!
Following the Kusama retrospectives in renowned museums—the Pompidou Center in Paris, the Tate Modern in London—the artist’s work will appear at New York’s Whitney Museum in July coinciding with the collaboration’s debut. July 10th is slated for the first wave of Kusama-fied Louis Vuitton products to be released. Soon after, the brand’s 461 stores will be stocking the merchandise, which will include clothing and accessories from trench coats to silk pajamas, pendants to wristwatches. Following in October will be the launch of Vuitton signature monogrammed leather goods decorated with Kusama’s tentacle-like ‘nerve’ motif. “It’s really charming. It has the essence of the spirit of her work,” Jacobs said of the collaboration, describing Vuitton’s monogram and Kusama’s spots as “both timeless and endless.”
We’ve spotted a very bright summer in our futures! Louis Vuitton is adding a new name to their revered roster of collaborators. Joining past favorites Stephen Sprouse and Takashi Murakami is Yayoi Kusama. In what may have been the most enlightening and entertaining design collaboration yet, the 82-year-old Japanese artist is working with artistic director Marc Jacobs on a wide range of LV products including "leather goods, ready-to-wear, accessories, shoes, watches and jewelry," according to WWD.
Known for her colorful and energetic polka dot installations, Kusama is another perfect pick from the contemporary art community Jacobs continues to tap for breakout designs. Marc Jacobs and Yayoi Kusama have more in common then you might think. We saw their shared passions in the clip below from 2007 documentary, Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton, when Jacobs visits Kusama in Japan.
Let’s be honest, some of us are still recovering from New Year’s Eve and Christmas. The time has come to get rid of decorations and clean up the mess from the New Year’s party. Things may look a little like a disaster. Not all messes look terrible or come with after party shame, though. Creating a controlled mess is artist Yayoi Kusama. It began as a perfectly white room, housing perfectly white furniture, until she handed a museum’s smallest visitors an unlimited supply of stickers.
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