Yayoi Kusama

Air Mail Stickers

1962

A pattern of tightly packed, orange and black rectangular shapes creating a textured, wavy surface.

Made a few short years after Yayoi Kusama moved from Japan to the United States, Air Mail Stickers is a collage of the titular stickers, which read “VIA AIR MAIL.” Pasted onto paper in overlapping rows that both allow for readability and suggest the result of a formal, ordering principle, the red, white, and blue stickers produce the effect of accumulation from close-range and total coverage from afar. In this, Air Mail Stickers relates to the “allover” compositions of Kusama’s early abstract paintings, which were comprised of either dense polka-dot fields or infinitely expanding net forms.

On view
Floor 7

Date
1962

Classification
Paintings

Medium
Collaged paper on canvas

Dimensions
Overall: 71 7/8 × 67 7/8in. (182.6 × 172.4 cm)

Accession number
64.34

Credit line
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Mr. Hanford Yang

Rights and reproductions
© Yayoi Kusama

API
artworks/2305

Audio

Yayoi Kusama, Adhesivos de correo aéreo, 1962

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Yayoi Kusama, Adhesivos de correo aéreo, 1962

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Narrador: Adhesivos de correo aéreo tiene la presencia física de un cuadro. Su fondo es un lienzo de casi dos metros cuadrados. Si nos alejamos, parece una abstracción: una cuadrícula temblorosa con líneas verticales de color crema y líneas horizontales rojas y negras que se mueven. Sin embargo, al acercarse, esta interpretación de la obra se convierte en una especie de broma. Como sugiere el título, se trata de un collage cubierto por cientos de pegatinas de correo aéreo. A finales de los años cincuenta y principios de los sesenta, no era raro que los críticos describieran las pinturas abstractas a gran escala como “heroicas”. En comparación, el acto de pegar etiquetas en una superficie puede parecer sencillo, incluso infantil. Hay algo absurdo en repetir insistentemente un gesto tan modesto. Es antihéroico, incluso cómicamente tonto en su repetición —vía correo aéreo, vía correo aéreo—, pero al mismo tiempo es intenso y ambicioso.
Yayoi Kusama nunca formó parte de ningún movimiento artístico. Sin embargo, estuvo a la vanguardia de más de uno. Sus primeras esculturas se exhibieron en una muestra de arte pop. Y con su estructura en forma de cuadrícula y su construcción secuencial, Pegatinas de correo aéreo anticipa el minimalismo.
August 21, 2015
Soyoung Yoon on Air Mail Stickers by Yayoi Kusama

In 99 Objects

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August 21, 2015
Soyoung Yoon on Air Mail Stickers by Yayoi Kusama

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Yayoi Kusama, Air Mail Stickers, 1962

In America Is Hard to See

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Yayoi Kusama, Air Mail Stickers, 1962

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Narrator: Air Mail Stickers has the physical presence of a painting. Its ground is a canvas, almost six feet square. Step back, and it seems like an abstraction—a jittery grid with jumpy cream-colored verticals and wavering red-and-black horizontals. Move closer, though, and this reading of the work becomes a kind of joke. As its title suggests, it’s a collage, covered in hundreds of airmail stickers. In the late fifties and early sixties it was not uncommon for critics to describe large-scale abstract paintings as “heroic.” By comparison, the act of applying stickers to a surface may seem simple, even childish. There’s something topsy-turvy about insistently repeating such a modest gesture. It’s anti-heroic—even comically dumb in its repetition—via air mail, via air mail—yet it’s intense and ambitious at the same time.
Yayoi Kusama was never part of any artistic movement. Yet she was on the forefront of more than one. Her early sculpture was in an exhibition of Pop art. And with its grid-like structure and one-thing-after-another construction, Air Mail Stickers anticipates Minimalism.