Listen to
Doryun Chong:
Titled Imagery of Human Beings, this painting expresses Kusama’s view of our interconnected existence. Round white dots of various sizes cover a purple field. Most of the dots have tiny tails that are sometimes linked to other white dots. Each dot might resemble a tadpole or a sperm.
If you step back and look again, the composition could be an image of a galaxy. Scanning the work from left to right you can see how the density of the dots varies from panel to panel: the dots on the left are larger and closely spaced. As your eyes roam across the panels, the dots seem to disperse, adding to an impression of movement.
If you think of a single dot as representing one life, this work could be understood as an image of cosmic oneness in which we are all connected. The Buddhist concept of reincarnation informs Kusama’s worldview. Buddhist teaching describes how we have lived and will live countless lives through infinity. This also means we have all been related to everyone else over the course of our many lifetimes. Looking at this painting, you might feel that our lives are just a moment in a longer existence, like a speck of dust in the galaxy.
For Kusama, her dots are charged with spiritual significance and symbolise a spirit of rebirth generated through transformation of energy and constant movement. She has said, ‘Polka-dots can’t stay alone. Like the communicative life of people, two or three and more polka-dots become movement. Our earth is only one polka-dot among a million stars in the cosmos. Polka-dots are a way to infinity.’
Look again at this painting, Imagery of Human Being, with Kusama’s statement in mind. Do you see in the work a representation of cosmic oneness? In the same way all living beings are made up of cells, the whole of humanity is part of one being, and the entire universe is in one single cell.
Narrator:
Imagery of Human Beings is a set of three acrylic paintings on canvas created by Yayoi Kusama in 1987. The paintings are displayed horizontally in a row, with an overall height of 194 centimetres and width of 390.9 centimetres. All three canvases have purple backgrounds and are covered by white dots of various sizes. The dots have curved tails and resemble thousands of sperm cells moving across the canvas.
The painting on the left depicts about two to three thousand densely gathered sperm cells covering almost the entire canvas without overlapping, so each distinct cell is clearly seen. In contrast, most of the sperm cells on the other two paintings are larger and less densely packed. The larger sperm cells are about the size of an adult’s thumb, while the smaller ones are about the tip of a little finger.
Overall, these vibrant paintings illustrate a big pool of enlarged sperm cells moving their tails and swimming in different directions. The smaller sperm cells seem to swim further away, while the larger ones appear to move closer to the audience.