The Spotted Seppuku: Commodifying Suicide with Yayoi Kusama. Issue 2 (4th March 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Stapleton, Erin K
• Is Part Of: Third text. Volume 36:Issue 2(2022)
• Page Start: 145
• Page End: 160
• Publication Date: 2022-03-04
• Subjects: Erin K Stapleton -- Yayoi Kusama -- Seppuku -- commodity culture -- self-obliteration -- gender -- race -- performance art -- Pierre Klossowski -- Georges Bataille -- Friedrich Nietzsche; Art and society -- Periodicals; Art -- Developing countries -- 20th century -- Periodicals; Developing countries -- Intellectual life -- Periodicals; 700.91724
• DOI: 10.1080/09528822.2022.2050623
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0952-8822

Abstract

Abstract: Yayoi Kusama, the self-proclaimed 'international avant-garde artist' has enjoyed global commercial success in the most recent decades of her lengthy career. In this article, I address this by taking her body of work as whole, with the message of self-destruction, sifted through the branding of 'obliteration' and 'accumulation' which I term the 'Kusama-Seppuku'. Drawing on analyses of Kusama's visual and literary work alongside Pierre Klossowski, Georges Bataille and Friedrich Nietzsche and the simulacra that permeate each, I argue that Kusama has created a body of work that expresses a desire to disengage from any illusion of cohesive identity through modes of obsessive, repetitious acts, processes and accumulations designed to allow an experience of a return 'to the infinite universe' (Yayoi Kusama (quoted by Alma Reyes), 'Art of Eternity at the Yayoi Kusama Museum, Tokyo' in Taiken Japan (Explore Japan) online publication, 21 Oct 2017: https://taiken.co/single/art-of-eternity-at-the-yayoi-kusama-museum-tokyo/ ). Each iteration of her work expresses a gesture that constitutes a part of the Kusama-Seppuku, a lifelong performance of suicide, exhaustively commodified.