Kusama-Vuitton collaboration a chance to dwell on artists' partnerships with luxury producers
If you have walked past one of the city's Louis Vuitton shops in the past week, you could not have missed the window displays of optical illusions, dotty decorations and possibly a life-sized wax figurine of the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama.
The luxury French fashion house has collaborated with Kusama over the years, and she is the subject of a retrospective currently on display at New York's Whitney Museum of American Art.
Louis Vuitton invited a select few to Sotheby's Hong Kong Gallery in Admiralty last Thursday to listen to a talk by Fumio Nanjo, director of Tokyo's Mori Art Museum. The veteran critic discussed partnerships between artists and luxury products, as demonstrated by Kusama and Louis Vuitton, and Kusama's work with installations, painting and the performing arts.
Nanjo, a former commissioner of the Japan pavilion at the Venice Biennale and member of the 2005 biennale judging panel, shared some personal photos documenting Kusama and her work.
The talk was attended by locally based artists including Simon Birch, Stanley Wong Ping-pui (aka anothermountainman) and Alan Chan Yau-kin. Socialite guests, including Mira Yeh Leung Mei-lan, went dotty over the display of polka-dot shoes and bags.
