Wellington Proudly Offers Kusama’s No Red ABC
Kusama’s No Red ABC enthralls with a gauzelike web that is at once engulfing and mesmerizing, and the painting’s intricacy of detail beckons us closer. Across the painting’s surface, thick crests of impasto peak and then give way to smooth circlets, rising and falling in rhythmic swells and creating the impression of an endless stream of shifting black molecules. Mirroring the quiet repetition that went into its making, No Red ABC stimulates introspection and transcendence, and lulls its viewers into a meditative state.
Painted in 1960, No Red ABC is an early, important work from Kusama’s groundbreaking show of Infinity Nets, and dates to a formative period in the artist’s career when she first developed the motifs and themes that would come to define her oeuvre. Donald Judd and Frank Stella purchased works from this show. All of Kusama’s work is characterized by neat, persistent production. No Red ABC is strongly concerned with process, demonstrating an obsessional focus on the labor-intensive technique of constructing the painting itself.
Wellington offers No Red ABC for $3.5 million. A similar work from this show sold for $7 million last year. Please click here to see this jaw dropping auction result.
