“There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.” This quote by an obscure American pianist, composer, author, comedian and actor Oscar Levant could have been made by Yayoi Kusama. Now 94 and living already since the 1970s in a mental health facility, Kusama was breaking all the conventions at an early age. Her art is populated by her obsession for phalluses and her hallucinations showing dense fields of (polka) dots. She spent 5 years in The Netherlands between 1965 and 1970 and the Stedelijk Museum in Schiedam gives an account of this productive time for her. That was the time of the sexual liberation, of protests and of happenings. Her activities, happenings and mode shows, were often fixed on camera by friends like Harrie Verstappen, Theo van Houts or Cor Stutvoet, and the museum shows some of the photographs, together with the pieces of art she created during those events, sculptures, paintings, clothes and installations. Why Schiedam? The reason for the exhibition there specifically is the controversial performance that Kusama delivered in the chapel of the Stedelijk Museum in 1967, in which she painted the naked body of the well-known Dutch artist Jan Schoonhoven with dots. I have seen a much larger exhibit by Kusama in Singapore but this one, in the classical environment of the chapel built in 1787, gets a special spot because of the steep contrast with the work of Kusama and allows a further reflection on the concept of sanity-insanity.
