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ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT FEBRUARY 22, 2024
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CONNECTING THE DOTS Plants steal the show in Selby Gardens’ exhibition about the fateful correspondence between two female artists. MONICA ROMAN GAGNIER ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR
W
ith “Yayoi Kusama: Letter to Georgia O’Keeffe,” Marie Selby
Botanical Gardens has managed to get the names of two of the 20th century’s most important female artists in the title of its new exhibition. Imagine if Frida Kahlo were part of the show: There might be riots outside the new welcome center at the 15-acre oasis in downtown Sarasota. In the two exhibits I’ve seen at Selby’s “Living Museum,” last year’s tribute to Tiffany’s stained glass and a showcase of Sarasota artist John Pirman, art seemed to dominate the Selby landscape more than it does in the latest show. I confess I was expecting to see more examples of the work of Yayoi Kusama, who is still alive in Japan at age 94, and the iconic female painter Georgia O’Keeffe, who died at age 98 in Santa Fe, near her New Mexico ranch, in 1986. Astonishingly, these giants of the art world knew each other. When Kusama was in her 20s and living in Japan, she wrote a letter to O’Keeffe seeking her advice about how to develop her art career. You can see a big reproduction of the letter, dated Nov. 15, 1955, inside the Selby Museum of Botany & the Arts. Kudos to Selby Gardens President and CEO Jennifer Rominiecki and her team for finding this little-known (at least outside the art world) correspondence and making it a hook for a meditative exhibition. O’Keeffe answered Kusama’s letter and encouraged her to move to New York. The Japanese artist, who features dots in her art and attire, took O’Keeffe’s advice. She moved to New York in 1958 and was part of the city’s pop-art movement, along with Andy Warhol and others, in the 1960s. Like Warhol, Kusama has straddled the line between fine art and commercialism. She recently created a collection of accessories for Paris-
Image courtesy of Chris Lunardi
“Pops of Red” dot the waterfront at Selby Gardens’ exhibition, “Yayoi Kusama: A Letter to Georgia O’Keeffe.”
IF YOU GO
‘YAYOI KUSAMA: A LETTER TO GEORGIA O’KEEFE’ When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. through June 30 Where: Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, 1534 Mound St. Tickets: $25 Info: Visit Selby.org.
based design house Louis Vuitton, an example of which you can see in the Selby Museum. A year ago, Vuitton covered its Champs-Élysées flagship store with colorful polka dots and erected a giant statue of Kusama with a paintbrush in front of the building. Quelle surprise! In comparison to such showmanship, Selby Gardens’ Kusama tribute seems understated. Instead of a shout, it’s a whisper. As one would expect in the latest installment in the Jean and Alfred Goldstein Exhibition Series, the plants are the stars of the show. With playful installations such as plant-filled glass spheres that seem to be floating on water and cacti hanging upside down from the ceiling of the new welcome center, Selby’s horticulturalists are trying to convey one of Kusama’s themes — infinity. One of her most famous works is called “Phalli Field.” It first appeared in New York’s Castellano Gallery in 1965 and resurfaced in 2016 at the Smithsonian Institution’s Hirshhorn Museum in one of several Infinity Mirror Rooms Kusama has created during her career. With “Phalli Field,” Kusama started out trying to fill a room with stuffed fabric sculptures made by hand. She decided to use mirrors to achieve repetition of the objects
Image courtesy of Chris Lunardi
“Enmeshed in Nature” at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens
Monica Gagnier
SEE KUSAMA, PAGE 2
Yayoi Kusama’s “Infinity of Dots” on display in the Museum of Botany & the Arts at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens.