Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Nets (26) takes the net structure in its simplest and most direct form — blue lines on white, no dots, no secondary pattern, nothing but the irregular polygons covering the sheet from edge to edge in a single unbroken field. The blue lines vary slightly in weight and the cells they describe differ in size and shape — some compressed and angular, others more open and rounded — but the variation is absorbed into the overall evenness of the surface rather than creating any sense of image or focus. The eye moves across the image without settling, the pattern offering no point of entry and no point of rest, the white ground holding the same visual weight as the blue lines drawn across it.

Kusama began the net paintings in New York at the end of the 1950s, arriving from Japan in 1957 with little money and no established reputation, and finding her way into a downtown art scene that was at once producing Abstract Expressionism, early Minimalism, and the beginnings of Pop. Her nets sat outside all three — too process-driven for Pop, too emotionally rooted for Minimalism, too systematic for the gestural painters. Donald Judd, who was one of the first critics to write seriously about her work, recognised something in the all-over structure that connected to his own thinking about non-relational image, though Kusama's motivations were entirely different from his.

For more information or to buy Infinity Nets (26) by Yayoi Kusama, contact our specialists using the enquiry button above.