Tag: self awareness

It’s important to note, when looking at abstract art, that this kind of work is often depicting something that words are ill-equipped to express. In being human, by definition, there will be things we understand but cannot describe, things we know but cannot teach, and things we do that we cannot explain with words alone.

This is why words and things-we-can-immediately-make-sense-of are not appropriate. They are only one layer of a profoundly complex experience; this experience is often abstract. It is in each of these instances, between the lines, that art acts as a vestibule for otherwise inexpressible meaning. When looking, then, we must accept that words and coherent forms are just two of myriad ways to express meaning in a way that is valuable – and they won’t always be fit for purpose.

The Spirits of the Pumpkins Descended into the Heavens (2017) by Yayoi Kusama is something to be understood, known, and experienced; it is not something to be described, taught, or explained. It is something to be felt.

Dots consume the artist and her work – a truly recurrent motif.

They’re a symbol of a life distilled into a singular, obsessive, and repeated form – something is being expressed that perhaps words or sense cannot clarify, something is being reflected beyond our physical appearance alone. In our own worlds, they could be our habits. The invisible actions we involuntarily carry out without checking ourselves, but yet the very things that make us who we are. Whether destructive or not, here, the outcome of the habit is irrelevant. It could be excessive exercise, substance abuse, artistic expression (the last made Yayoi Kusama the richest living female artist, so they’re clearly not all bad). But, the repeated question dotted, perennially, within these behaviours is: what drives our habits?

It is this that often cannot be expressed in words, because it is unconscious.

Each dot serves as a reminder of how beholden we can become to the hands of unconscious habit; were you to stand in the artwork, placing yourself before the mirror, you might feel a little overwhelmed – surrounded by swarming polka dots in a sea of yellow. Such confusion demands you see what lies at the centre of this bewildering experience – you. As we remain unconscious of our habits, so we continue to choose to be at the mercy of them.

Here the artist appears to continually need to purge herself of whatever is causing them, plastering them everywhere and turning what could be suffering, when kept unknown, into something creative, something striking. Her polka dot pumpkins have quite a soothing message, however. While it’s true the repeated unconscious suffering that we undergo is somewhat ever-present – acknowledging it, for now, is enough. It is enough to sit with it, so long as we are observing. For you, that could mean any number of things, such is the beauty of abstract art, it can become what you make of it; so why not use it as a mirror for more than just our physical reflection?

Kusama’s art is an abstract reflection of the patterns that exist within us too. Try to count the dots – and fail (or get bored) – and then map such a pattern onto a behaviour or habit you have. What action or through have you done or had this repeatedly? Something that occurs over and over – too many times to count.

In this meditative space, it is not quite as simple as something like regularly brushing your teeth (a healthy habit). It goes beyond the physical and visible: these are the hidden habits like preoccupying yourself with what you want to say, instead of listening to someone completely, or lying in bed for a little too long each morning because the burden of getting up appears heavier than the light-but-toxic touch of distraction on social media. Perhaps it’s even a pattern only evident over a longer, life-sized period, one where you sabotage relationships because of past childhood trauma – you can’t face the prospect of abandonment/ betrayal/ something entirely unique to you. These things are inexorably tied to what we see in the mirror, though we rarely make an effort to visualise and acknowledge them. Instead, by subtly displaying them on the walls, floor, and ceiling, this abstract work calls for you to feel them.

But, this art is also kind. In its repetitiveness, it is not chastising the viewer into excavating pain from their past, but is encouraging them to notice themselves, beyond their basic humanoid form. It would be more beneficial to see it as merely noticing the patterns that exist within us all – specifically those hidden habits, which we otherwise ignore by virtue of them being invisible – for these are the habits that exist in the cycle of feeling-thought-action repeated time and time again.

Here is an opportunity to notice what’s going on. We can intercept our feelings before they make us think, we can stop the thought before it makes us act, and we can assess our actions before they cement the feeling more deeply.

Of course, this has all been expressed, somewhat paradoxically, though words, so will likely fall short of what such abstract expression is truly exploring. Finding out what it means is, therefore, down to you and what you feel when you next look in the mirror.