Kusama and Vuitton legend in Milan
di Andira Vitale
The eternity light of Louis Vuitton and Yayoi Kusama, born from the combination of iconic art and legendary luxury, reflects on Italy and the world through Milan. The world falls on those who want it with love. Colourful… As you wish…
The meeting of art and fashion continues for brands that have discovered the healing and therapeutic power of art. One of the most striking examples of this was the collaboration between Louis Vuitton and iconic contemporary artist Yayoi Kusama. Louis Vuitton is redesigning its stores on the occasion of the long-awaited second collaboration with the famous Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama with its polka dot motif.
Louis Vuitton is redesigning its stores on the occasion of the second and long-awaited collaboration with Yayoi Kusama, the Japanese artist famous for the polka dot motif. And it is celebrating the partnership with Yayoi Kusama in flagship stores around the world, from the pop-up in Milan to the gigantic billboard in Shinjuku, up to the artist’s animatronics in the 5th Avenue shop in New York. The collection is available in all Louis Vuitton stores from January 6, while the second drop of the line will arrive next March 31.
The heart of the collection points to stories!
Painted Dots
The motif is the heart of the collection; It comes to life through the direct engraving of the brushstroke of Kusama’s hand through embossed print on leather covered with a screen printing technique. You can see these iconic points in the collection of many ready-to-wear, leather, accessories, and perfume bottles.
Infinity Dots
Kusama’s best-known motif, which has also been used in many architectural installations, finds its place in most of the pieces in the collection.
Metal Dots
Inspired by Kusama’s show “Narcissus Garden” at the 33rd Venice Biennale in 1966, the motif is placed on products, embroidered on leather goods, and decorated with silver spheres of different sizes. The silver spheres in the collection are combined with biker jackets and leather mini-dresses, reviving the futuristic vibe of the 1960s.
Psychedelic flowers
During Kusama’s artistic life, flowers were another area of particular interest, apart from dots. As a result, another dazzling motif was designed in the collaboration collection, inspired by the artist’s 1993 paintings.
The luxury fashion house’s idea of working with artists started in the 1980s and was embodied in Marc Jacobs’s creative period at the brand. The brand’s classic and iconic decorations have been redesigned to create an impressive number of art-like products. During this period, Marc Jacobs created a new equation in the house: tradition and classic combined with kitsch and punk rebelliousness. Thus, the depth of the brand became even more meaningful. Another genius designer, Nicolas Ghesquière, who became the house’s creative director after Jacobs, continued this vision. He took the long-standing relationship that started in 2012 with Japanese Yayoi Kusama, one of the most important avant-garde artists, to another dimension by combining it with today’s trends.
The collaboration, which includes ready-to-wear bags, shoes, suitcases, accessories and perfumes, will be released in two separate versions. The first batch comprises Kusama’s “Painted Dots”, “Metal Dots”, “Infinity Dots”, and “Psychedelic Flower” collections. Kusama personally supervised the application of each point to each piece, paying particular attention to every detail with his usual artistic precision and meticulousness.
For the first and most important collaboration of 2023, marketing activities will continue with augmented reality and XR game, display windows, anamorphic billboards and pop-up stores.
A temple of art in Milan
Not just shopping but also an opportunity to discover and immerse yourself in thought-out art installations. Would you like to explore another world by exploring specially designed art installations filled with colourful and repeating polka dots? So it’s an opportunity to immerse yourself in them. This is how the new Louis Vuitton store in Milan presents itself. It has opened in the spaces of the former Garage Traversi – an architecture whose construction dates back to 1939 to a design by Giuseppe De Min – via Bagutta, a few steps from Piazza San Babila. The new headquarters were inaugurated on 6 January to coincide with the ongoing renovation works in the historic headquarters of Palazzo Taverna (where Vuitton will return in two years) and the launch of the new collection that the brand has designed in collaboration with Yayoi Kusama: remotely ten years later, Louis Vuitton and the famous Japanese artist are back to work together, with a series of initiatives – also chatted and discussed – that span the entire planet, from the 3D advertising campaign broadcast on a giant screen in Tokyo to the “robot version by the artist painting in the window of the Louis Vuitton store on New York’s Fifth Avenue.
The spaces of the former garage have thus been adapted to the new commercial exhibition destination while maintaining the original architectural structure both inside and out, “through the use of a system of curved walls that leave the monumental fan-shaped beams in reinforced concrete”, as explained in a note from the company, for a stylistic result that definitely does not go unnoticed: the typical motifs of Yayoi Kusama’s art dominate the shop windows, among the “dots” of different dimensions and colors and the colorful pumpkins; precisely with the latter as a subject, and three large sculptures created by Studio Kusama were installed in Piazza San Babila.
“Infinity Dots” and “Metal Balls” are the protagonists of the new Louis Vuitton collection, thus reinterpreting the iconic motifs of the brand distinguished by the “LV” monogram: “an innovative screen-printing technique”, explains a note from the company, “reproduces Kusama’s brushstrokes, resulting in an extraordinarily realistic hand-painted 3D effect. Applied by hand, one by one, the half metal spheres of various sizes enliven a selection of pieces from the collection with a surprising silver mirror effect”. And the “Kusama” world reinterpreted by Louis Vuitton does not end here: the brand’s website, through a QR Code, it is possible to “see the world through Kusama’s eyes” with Instagram filters inspired by her iconic themes. And then, in Milan, there are the things in the public space near the shop: Piazza San Babila is full of sculptures by the artist, and then, the last gem, a florist all in dots-Kusama which makes a fine show from another side of the road.
The coloured pumpkins in Piazza San Babila
On the morning of January 13, 2023, Piazza San Babila became the theatre of the imagination of Yayoi Kusama with three giant polka-dot pumpkins. The pumpkin has been the artist’s alter ego since 1946, as part of the work in a travelling exhibition in his hometown, Matsumoto. I am determined to create a Kusama world no one has ever seen. The glass resin sculptures dwell on the mounds of the square, which Louis Vuitton has restored. Throughout the year, the Maison is committed to the redevelopment and care of the greenery of the Piazza through a technical collaboration with the Municipality of Milan. Even the flower kiosk of Giovanni Borgonovo, adjacent to via Bagutta, has been dressed in coloured polka dots that replicate Kusama’s brushstroke – and perhaps right here, at Giovanni’s florist, you can touch the true Milanese heart of Piazza San Babila.
Between optical walls and colourful pumpkins, the shop at number 101 on Champs-Élysée avenue. A gigantic sculpture by Yayoi Kusama embraces the building of the flagship store in Paris.
The entire structure, with a refined art deco style, is decorated with the multicolour polka dots of the Japanese artist, intent on drawing her signature motif on the facade of the building. However, on the ground floor instead, giant metal balloons soar towards the sky, and other spherical details embellish the windows of the Champs-Élysées shop.
Princess of Polka Dots Yayoi Kusama
Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese contemporary artist called the “princess of polka dots”. She was interested in many different types of art, such as painting, sculpture, installation, painting, performance, video, fashion, poetry, cinema, literature… There seems to be almost no discipline that it does not produce. Psychological and sexual references that bear traces of her own life are frequently encountered in her works. Minimalism, surrealism, abstract expressionism, art brut (amateur art), and pop art… She had the opportunity to catch many trends in her long art life.
But her life is best summed up by the phrase, “Geography is your destiny”. The traumatic life in Japan after the nuclear bombs dropped on hundreds of thousands of civilians by the USA significantly impacted Kusama. Influenced by the hallucinations she had seen since age 10, she became an essential part of the art world with the polka dots, motifs and flowers she painted in developing her art. With the effects of World War II, Kusama has been performing her art with great passion since she was ten years old. Although she received Classical Japanese Official education in her country and her people vomited great anger towards the USA during this period, she decided to go to the USA due to environmental factors and family problems. It is known that many artists, such as Kusama, moved to New York, the new centre of art, as a result of the great destruction of the Second World War and the ongoing nuclear effects. The avant-garde atmosphere in New York in the 1960s also affected Kusama. Using minimalism, pop art, abstract expressionism and feminist art movements, she integrated her art into other disciplines such as fashion, music and architectural design. Through her artistic actions, Kusama reflected on her illness and her country’s troubles, constantly seeking a way out.
She applied the polka dot and dot patterns frequently used in her works in every discipline. She continued to experience what she saw and thought in hallucinations on her paintings, walls and, later on, various objects.
In 1957, when she was 28 years old, Kusama moved to the USA, where he lived in modest conditions by painting for months in a single room without going out much. The New York years helped shape his pictorial character. The stylistic forms he used during this period consisted of obsessive repetitions of dots, nets and grid forms, shapes and objects, line or wave motifs, and pumpkin, phallic or sphere forms. The intense use of bright, flat, sometimes shimmering or metallic colours drew attention. The multitude of mirrors, metal surfaces and colourful motifs are also noticed. In his later installations, it is seen that the abundance of mirrors, space and everyday objects reflected in the mirrors create a remarkable
The reason for Kusama’s success is her distinctive persistent motif of “obsessive-compulsive” repetition. This artistic technique describes the order-disorder tension that also shapes Kusama’s life. Its obsessive repetitions reflect compulsive and hallucinatory experiences that manifest as uncontrollable neurotic, obsessive, self-preoccupied behaviours. According to Kusama, relapses have a self-healing aspect. Obsessive repetitions serve to isolate her from the world. In the context of Buddhism, repetition is; It represents a break from the real world. It also means an aesthetic break. Almost all of her visual works have polka dots that go on forever. When asked why let’s read the Tate Modern’s response: “Our Earth is just a speckled spot among a million stars in the universe. The Polka dot is a road to infinity. When we destroy nature and our body with polka dots, we become a part of the integrity of our environment.”
Let’s get closer to Kusama’s mind to understand better these poetically expressed profound words. Yayoi Kusama has had severe mental health problems since she was about ten years old. She begins to paint to deal with the hallucinations she saw as a child. The polka dot figure enters her life in those days and never comes out again.
45 years living in a mental hospital
Kusama’s art is a product of mental health problems; at least, that’s how it started. She must have reconciled with his nightmares and her self-expressive illnesses in the early years of his life; since 1977, she has voluntarily lived in the Seiwa Mental Hospital in Tokyo. During the day, she works in her workshop across from the hospital.
Maybe she is still like the “10-year-old girl who, in her hallucinations, finds herself in the middle of an endless field of flowers and starts making art by drawing those circles”…
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