Earlier: Is Woke Really Past Its Peak? Not At The Portland Art Museum!
From the New York Times art news section:
Yayoi Kusama Apologizes for Past Racist Remarks
Revelations from the artist’s autobiography threaten to cloud her new show at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
By Robin Pogrebin
Oct. 17, 2023The popular Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, whose “Infinity Mirror Rooms” have brought lines around the block for one blockbuster exhibition after another, has apologized for racist comments in her 2002 autobiography that drew renewed attention as her new show opened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
I’d never heard of her before, but her stuff kind of looks like Sid and Marty Krofft’s H.R. Pufnstuf Visits Alice in Wonderland.
“I deeply regret using hurtful and offensive language in my book,” Kusama, who is 94, said in a statement to The San Francisco Chronicle last week. “My message has always been one of love, hope, compassion and respect for all people. My lifelong intention has been to lift up humanity through my art. I apologize for the pain I have caused.”
Kusama’s apology, which came the day before her show, “Yayoi Kusama: Infinite Love,” opened at the museum, referred to passages from her 2002 autobiography, “Infinity Net,” in which she described Black people as “primitive, hyper-sexualized beings.”
The website Hyperallergic surfaced those comments in June. Last week a Chronicle critic denounced the museum’s decision to proceed with the show.
In the book’s original Japanese edition, Kusama also called her New York neighborhood [Greenwich Village in 1957-1972] a “slum” where real estate prices were “falling by $5 a day” because of “Black people shooting each other out front, and homeless people sleeping there.” Those sentences were removed from a later English translation.
Kusama, who was born in 1929 in Matsumoto, Japan, began painting from hallucinations she experienced as a young girl. She has spoken openly about her struggles with her psychiatric condition but continues to paint.
Since 1977 she has lived in a mental hospital in Japan that lets her leave each day to work in her studio. She views her titanic career as art therapy.
The controversy over Kusama’s comments is the latest example of an institution forced to grapple with the problematic personal history of a prominent artistic figure. And the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has been forced to reckon with what employees have called structural inequities around race.
Its longest-serving curator, Gary Garrels, resigned in 2020 soon after a post quoted him saying, “Don’t worry, we will definitely continue to collect white artists.” And its previous director, Neal Benezra, apologized to employees after removing critical comments from an Instagram post following the murder of George Floyd.
Perhaps peak Wokeness mania is over, but it still grinds forward in America’s institutions.
