Label TextYayoi Kusama’s work occupies an unusual position within the art world. She has maintained that the primary theme of her work, an endless repetition of form and shape, is not a creative choice but a necessary act used to control the symptoms of a mental disorder. As a child, Kusama was plagued with visual hallucinations of patterns covering entire rooms and overtaking her. She began using art to combat this, obsessively repeating minute patterns and forms to create a reality she could control. In the early 1960s, she began a series of “Compulsion Furniture,” of which Suitcase is one. Ladders, chairs, shoes and other everyday objects were covered in stuffed, phallic forms. This process not only fulfills the artist’s obsessive-compulsive drive, but can be seen as a way of defying male-dominance by appropriating a sexually and politically charged symbol.
Exhibition History"Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama, 1958 - 1968," organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Japan Foundation and The Museum of Modern Art, (circulated to: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, Mar. 8 - June 8, 1998; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, July 9 - Sept. 22, 1998; The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Dec. 19, 1998 - Mar. 7, 1999; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Apr. 29 - July 4, 1999)
"Art of the 60's," Selections from the Collection of Hanford Yang, The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Sept. 29 - Dec. 22, 1968
Published References"Art of the 60's," The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, 1968, exh. cat. no.45
DES MOINES ART CENTER: SELECTED PAINTINGS, SCULPTURES AND WORKS ON PAPER, Des Moines Art Center, 1985, ref. p.136
Helen Molesworth "Part Object Part Part Sculpture", Wexner Center for the Arts and The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005, pgs.169 (color ill.), 276
Exhibition History"Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama, 1958 - 1968," organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Japan Foundation and The Museum of Modern Art, (circulated to: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, Mar. 8 - June 8, 1998; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, July 9 - Sept. 22, 1998; The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Dec. 19, 1998 - Mar. 7, 1999; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Apr. 29 - July 4, 1999)
"Art of the 60's," Selections from the Collection of Hanford Yang, The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Sept. 29 - Dec. 22, 1968
Published References"Art of the 60's," The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, 1968, exh. cat. no.45
DES MOINES ART CENTER: SELECTED PAINTINGS, SCULPTURES AND WORKS ON PAPER, Des Moines Art Center, 1985, ref. p.136
Helen Molesworth "Part Object Part Part Sculpture", Wexner Center for the Arts and The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005, pgs.169 (color ill.), 276
DimensionsOverall: 39 × 32 × 20 in. (99.1 × 81.3 × 50.8 cm)
Accession Number 1971.7
Classificationssculpture
Copyright© Yayoi Kusama
Inscriptionsdated and signed: 1963 | Kusama (on a fungus-like stuffed white form hanging down under open top of suitcase)
ProvenanceArtist. Hanford Yang, New York; Des Moines Art Center [gift of the previous, 1971]
