Butterfly 1988

Curator: Let's focus now on Yayoi Kusama’s “Butterfly,” a painting from 1988 executed in acrylic. What catches your eye first? Editor: Definitely the vibrating redness. It's like a pulsating field that threatens to engulf this very organized, polka-dotted butterfly. It's making me slightly uneasy, if I'm honest. Curator: Interesting you say that. Kusama, of course, famously uses repetition—specifically dots—to represent both connection and obliteration, a kind of self-effacement. Notice how the dots make up not just the butterfly, but the entire ground, binding the subject and setting together in a… maybe not always harmonious… way. Editor: Yes! And how interesting that she used acrylic for this. By '88, acrylic was hardly the avant-garde material. I'm wondering what kind of off-the-shelf, industrial paint she was drawn to. It lends a certain manufactured feel that is then subverted by her very hand-done touch. Curator: Exactly. There is something very democratic, I feel, about using a widely accessible, readily available material to portray these quite intensely personal, even phobia-driven visions. Butterflies often flutter into my awareness at transitional points, and it’s neat to imagine this symbol so radically repeated. What is the impact of this combination, for you? Editor: For me, it cheapens the sublime – in the best way possible! It undermines this high-art reading of something like "butterfly" while demanding a kind of slow, painstaking, repetitive labor to bring it into being. I bet Kusama worked through a ton of brushes. Curator: Absolutely, a huge consideration when she worked through these techniques. The tension is so beautiful, that push and pull, as a butterfly does on the wing. Editor: The way labor manifests in consumerism... Curator: Exactly! Material consumption! Yes, that's definitely it, how consumption and life combine! Thank you for so generously pointing that out!