The Easel

1st September 2026

A Tribute to Yayoi Kusama

Julien Delagrange | Art Institute of Chicago | 28th September 2026

After a traumatic childhood, Kusama found that art helped with her mental health issues. Moving to the US in 1957, she created her famous art forms – phallic-shaped soft sculptures, infinity mirror rooms, pumpkin sculptures and fields of dots. Returning to Japan in 1973 she was seen as an embarrassment, but a later career revival brought huge fame. Her themes of infinity and self-obliteration reflected a desire to be “dissolved into the pattern.” Said she, “I am just another dot in the world.” Images are here.

How Japan Turned Department Stores Into Dreamworlds

Nozomi Naoi | The Reader | 20th September 2026

Tokyo’s department stores are grand institutions, monuments to “beauty and abundance”. It turns out that they have also been agents for cultural change. Part of this was through their early adoption of  20th century technologies like lifts and lighting. More important was their use of posters for advertising. Lithography facilitated inventive poster designs and made posters hugely popular, an “art world sensation”. Essentially, they were addressing “a difficult question: what did modern life look like?”

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