"Discovering Yayoi Kusama's Watercolors"

by Anna Rimel, Archivist for the Joseph Cornell Study Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum

(Figure 1) Yayoi Kusama, (from left to right) "Autumn," 1953 (2019.32.1); "Deep Grief," 1954 (2019.32.2); "Fire," circa 1954 (2019.32.3); "Forlorn Spot," 1953 (2019.32.4), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John A. Benton and The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation

Hired as the Archivist for the Joseph Cornell Study Center in 2017, with generous funding from the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, I have been working steadily through hundreds of linear feet of artist Joseph Cornell's two- and three-dimensional source material, family and estate papers, and collected artifacts and ephemera. The collection also includes a collection of over 150 record albums, and a personal library and book collection of over 2500 titles.

In 1978, the Joseph Cornell Study Center was founded with a donation from Joseph Cornell's sister and brother-in-law, Elizabeth Cornell Benton and John A. Benton, to the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM). There were several subsequent donations from his estate, the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, further donations from Elizabeth Cornell and John A. Benton, and transfers from other Smithsonian repositories, which make up the Joseph Cornell Study Center collection today.

Though the project to archivally process the collection is still in progress, and a partial finding aid forthcoming, an exciting discovery has been making its way through the art world. In the process of conducting a preliminary survey of all contents of the collection, four small watercolors[i] by Yayoi Kusama were found still in the original Manila envelope, alongside the receipt for purchase by Joseph Cornell from Kusama for $200 on August 22, 1964. Upon notifying curatorial staff, Melisa Ho, SAAM's curator of 20th-century art, was vocal in getting the delicate watercolors accessioned into SAAM's permanent collections, which previously held no works by Kusama." Rendered in watercolor, ink, pastel, and tempera paint," Melissa Ho explained that these works, created in the mid-fifties, "represent a crucial body of work that bridged Kusama's transition from Japan to the United States."[ii] In a blog post for the museum on December 17, 2019, she continues to write: "They were among the roughly 2,000 works on paper Kusama brought with her when she left Japan in 1957, hoping to sell them to support herself."[iii]

(Figure 2)"Surrealisme" (1932) exhibition announcement.

Joseph Cornell Study Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Joseph Cornell (1903-1972) was an artist known primarily for his assemblage box constructions, who also created two-dimensional collages and avant-garde films. He had two younger sisters, Helen and Elizabeth, who married and lived on Long Island. Joseph lived with his younger brother, Robert, and his mother, Helen, in Queens, New York, from 1921 until their deaths in 1965 and 1966, respectively. He would remain in the same home on Utopia Parkway until his death in 1972. Initially thought to be somewhat reclusive, the artist is now known to have had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances in the art world. His first exhibition was a group show at the Julien Levy Gallery in 1932, "Surréalisme," alongside artists Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, and Pierre Roy, for which Cornell also designed the announcement.[iv]

Cornell met artist Yayoi Kusama in early 1964, introduced by art dealer Gertrude Stein when he expressed a desire to learn to draw and asked Stein to bring him models to sketch. A number of these sketches apparently survive among her papers.[v] After sketching Kusama, they appear to have formed a bond, and continued to meet and correspond.

Other Kusama-related materials, including letters with sentiments like, "You and Me – Birds of a Feather,"[vi] as well as numerous photographs of Kusama, still remain within the Joseph Cornell Study Center collection.

(Figure 3) Letter from Yayoi Kusama to Joseph Cornell, circa 1972.

Joseph Cornell Study Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum.

The collection remains open to researchers, and more information can be found on the Joseph Cornell Study Center website, at https://americanart.si.edu/research/cornell.

 

[Cross-posted in the Society of American Archivists' Museum Archivist: Newsletter of the Museum Archives Section (Winter 2020: Volume 30, Number 1) https://www2.archivists.org/groups/museum-archives-section/newsletter-archives]

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[i] See (Figure 1).

[ii] Melissa Ho, "The Lost Kusamas." Eye Level (blog), Smithsonian American Art Museum, December 17, 2019. https://americanart.si.edu/blog/lost-kusamas.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Deborah Solomon, Utopia Parkway: The Life and Work of Joseph Cornell (New York: Other Press, 1997), 87.; See (Figure 2).

[v] Deborah Solomon, Utopia Parkway: The Life and Work of Joseph Cornell (New York: Other Press, 1997), 380-381.

[vi] See (Figure 3).