Visitors to Kusama's spectacular 'Infinity Mirrored Room' at Crystal Bridges get a very finite time inside

Although the Infinity Mirrored Room -- My Heart Is Dancing Into the Universe by Yayoi Kusama that opened to the public Oct. 2 at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is a spectacular vision of the infinite, the amount of time you are allowed to spend looking at this colorful installation of mirrors, lanterns and polka dots is very, very finite.

Viewers experience the room by walking through a 20-by-20-foot installation in the museum's reorganized contemporary art gallery. According to museum rules, viewers are allowed only one minute to take in (and take selfies in) Infinity Mirrored Room -- My Heart Is Dancing Into the Universe, which was created by Kusama in 2018.

Why would you place a time limit on the viewing of such an extraordinary and visually complex work of art?

Curator Alejo Benedetti explains that "the reality is that these rooms often have very long lines of folks who want to come and experience it." It's the desire of the museum "to be able to accommodate folks, to be able to [have them] go in it and come back out," Benedetti says. "I know this will sound like me trying to make lemonade out of lemons here, but I think there's also something really significant about being able to go into the space knowing that it's not something that you're going to be in for a long, luxurious amount of time, it's a moment."

According to Benedetti, "It's an exciting opportunity to go into a space that you have never experienced before, and [feel] the ephemerality of that experience and the fleetingness of that experience."

Benedetti also notes that, after getting a ticket and visiting the room once, museumgoers may then go back to the front desk, get another ticket, and visit the room again.

Jori Finkel has written an article for The Art News paper about time limits placed on Kusama's rooms in other exhibitions. From her perspective "I think that any time limit to see any artwork is bound to feel arbitrary and restrictive to some visitors, and certainly, that's true when the time limit is measured in seconds and not minutes. I personally don't want to be told to do anything in 30 or 60 seconds. It turns the museumgoing experience into a sort of game show competition. How fast can I see this, get something out of this, photograph this?"

It's also an issue because "Kusama's 'Infinity Mirror Rooms' specifically are designed to pull the perceptual rug from under you in a way, where any hint of a horizon line dissolves into the depths of the mirrored reflections. You need some time to experience that."

"I think five minutes would be a reasonable time limit for a single 'Infinity Mirror' installation, knowing many people would leave earlier," Finkel says.

Kusama helped devise the time limits for her rooms in some other museums and galleries, although that is not the case at Crystal Bridges.

Benedetti says that the installation is new to this museum and they're learning as they go. It's certainly possible, he says, that the time limit could be adjusted down the road. "We'll see how things go," Benedetti offers. Changing the time limit at some later date "isn't off the table."

Kusama, 90, is considered to be the best-selling living female artist. The museum also owns a sculpture by the artist, Flowers That Bloom Now, which resides in the North Forest area of the museum grounds.

A precursor to her "Infinity Rooms" was the "Infinity Net" series she painted in New York in the 1960s. At that time the artist said, "I often suffered episodes of severe neurosis. I would cover a canvas with nets, then continue painting them on a table, on the floor, and finally on my own body. As I repeated the process over and over again, the nets began to expand to infinity," she writes in her biography, Infinity Net.

Kusama's work is inextricably linked to her ongoing mental issues. She has said that she fights "pain, anxiety and fear every day, and the only method I have found that relieves my illness is to keep creating art." This is an essential component of her work and defines virtually everything she creates.

In 1962 she first exhibited her soft sculptures. Kusama wrote that she was able to "shed my painter's skin and metamorphose into an environmental sculptor." She described the artwork as "an armchair and an eight-legged sofa painted white and completely covered with phallus-shaped protuberances of stuffed cloth," and notes that "People assume that I must be mad about sex ... but that's a complete misunderstanding. It's quite the opposite -- I make the objects because they horrify me."

In 1965 Kusama produced her very first "Infinity Mirrored Room," and her fascination with the infinite has lasted from her early works to the room acquired by Crystal Bridges.

By 1973 she had returned to Japan, where she soon had a nervous breakdown. "In Tokyo, my vision started to flicker and I began having hallucinations," she stated in her biography.

In 1977, Kusama voluntarily entered a mental hospital in Shinjuku, Japan, where she has lived ever since. She still makes her artwork in a nearby studio and returns to the hospital at night. She creates sculptures, polka-dot covered canvases, and, of course, the amazing Infinity Mirrored Rooms, which are some of the most prized artworks in the world today.

The new room is an extremely impressive acquisition by Crystal Bridges. "This is not just an artwork you look at," says curator Benedetti, "this is an artwork you experience."

It is an immersive experience.

It's worth any art lovers' time explore this museum's ever-expanding collection of art. The Contemporary Art section has been reorganized to accommodate the new room, and the new design is excellent.

While there, guests should definitely take a minute to walk through Infinity Mirrored Room -- My Heart Is Dancing Into the Universe. But remember, that's all you get: one minute.

Style on 10/13/2019