The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Yayoi Kusama · an installation: a closed room entered by a single door, its walls and ceiling faced with mirror, its floor a shallow pool of black water crossed by a short raised walkway, hung in the dark with a great number of small coloured LED lights on cords at different heights, which change colour and pulse in a programmed sequence · made in 2013 and first shown at David Zwirner, New York, in the same year · in the collection of The Broad, Los Angeles, on view there since the museum opened in September 2015 · the unit scored is the one room with its parts, the enclosure, the water, the lights and their sequence, the darkness, the walkway and the door; the earlier and later rooms of the series are context
Mode
Installation entered by the body: a mirrored room with a floor of water and a field of programmed light, built to receive the visitor’s reflection as its material
Mythos
The starfield, entered rather than seen from below; Narcissus at his pool; the souls of the dead as the light of distant stars
Phase
Made in 2013, a late room in a series its maker began in 1965; first shown in New York in 2013 and on view in Los Angeles since 2015
Presentation
A closed room of mirror on four walls and the ceiling, black water below, a raised walkway from the door, coloured LED lights on cords in the dark, a short timed visit by one to three people at a time
Register
Awe and dissolution: transport in a field of light that falls away, cool and cosmic rather than warm
Scale
One small room made boundless; one effect, held for a short visit, the same on return
Governing Proposition
A door opens on a small dark room. Its walls and ceiling are mirror, its floor is a shallow pool of black water, and a short walkway leads out over the water into a field of coloured lights that hang on cords at different heights, change colour and fade. The door is shut behind the visitor, and the mirrors and the water repeat the lights, and the visitor, on every side and below, until the room has no wall and no floor and the one body in it is a point among countless points. The wager of the work is that the infinite can be built from a closed box, and that a person placed inside it, rather than shown it, will know their own smallness in the body before the mind finds the trick. Its life has added a second proposition: the room of infinite reflections of the self became the place where the self is photographed.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
Yayoi Kusama, born in Matsumoto in 1929, made the room in 2013, and it was first shown that year at David Zwirner in New York, in the exhibition I Who Have Arrived in Heaven. It is a closed room entered by a single door. Its four walls and its ceiling are faced with mirror. Its floor is a shallow pool of black water, crossed from the door by a short raised walkway. In the dark hang a great number of small coloured LED lights, on cords of different lengths, and they change colour and pulse in a programmed sequence. The visitor walks out onto the walkway, alone or with one or two others, and the door is shut for a short timed visit.
The room has few parts, and each is required. Without the mirrors it is a dark room with strings of lights, and the infinite goes. Without the water the floor is a boundary; with it the field reflected below lets the visitor seem to stand on nothing. Without the darkness the mirrors show their seams and the cords. Without the walkway no one could enter except by entering the work’s floor, and without the door, and the closure that makes the infinite private, the room would be a corridor. What is not required is the particular content of the field: how many lights, at what heights, in what colours and in what order. The series fills the same box with other things.
The making is the precision of an illusion, carried out by fabricators to the maker’s design. The mirrors meet in joins that vanish in the dark; the lights hang at heights that make the field read as depth and not as a ceiling of points; the water is still and black enough to double the field cleanly; the sequence of colour is paced so that the eye does not settle. If any of these failed, the infinite would become a box. As the eyes adjust, the door, the walkway and the cords come back into view, and the trick shows.
Movement II
The door closes and the light falls away. The visitor stands on a narrow path over black water, and the field of points reaches in every direction: ahead, to each side, above, and below, where the water gives it back. The lights change colour and fade, and for a moment there is nothing but the field and the visitor’s own figure, repeated. The response reported across years of visits is closer to transport than to recognition. People speak of the cosmos, of drowning, of a starfield, of the dead.
This is the room’s purpose and its summit, and it is one summit. The effect is of one kind and held for a short visit; its height depends on the darkness and the shut door; and it is the same at the second visit as at the first, because the room is built to give it every time. Where the works that stand highest on this desk rise across a whole surface and on every return, this rises once and holds. That is its height and its limit together.
The form is the knowledge. A painting of a starfield shows the stars; a projection surrounds the viewer with them; only a closed mirrored room with a floor of water puts the body inside a field with no wall and no floor, and then shows that body to itself, reduced to a point. What the room knows is bodily: the loss of the boundary, the fall of the floor. Everything in it obeys one law, that each thing is repeated into a field until it is a point among points, and the law holds from the smallest diode to the visitor’s body. Only the door breaks it, and the door is where the work begins and ends.
Movement III
A pool of water and walls of mirror give back the self, and the self is lost in them. The room is Narcissus’s pool built at full size, and its maker had named Narcissus before, in Narcissus Garden at Venice in 1966. The visitor sees their own body multiplied to the vanishing point, at the scale of a light, one reflection among thousands. Kusama has long described the dissolution of the self in a field of repeated marks; here it is not described but undergone.
The room was built to receive the visitor’s reflection, and its decade answered with an act it did not plan and could not refuse: the photograph. The visitor enters a room of infinite reflections of the self and spends much of the visit photographing the self. The image that has circulated in millions is a picture of lights and a person, and what the room knows is gone from it. The room invites the act and exposes it, and it shows at the same time that its knowledge cannot be carried by an image. That is the clearest disclosure it makes beyond its own effect.
The title adds a third structure. It calls the lights souls and sets them millions of light years away, and the light that arrives from such a distance is the light of stars that may already be gone. Lights hung over dark water can also take the shape of lanterns floated for the dead; that is a reading the room allows, not one its maker is recorded as giving. The souls rest on the title more than on the room. What the room itself builds is the starfield, entered rather than seen from below, and the pool.
Movement IV
In 1965, at the Castellane Gallery in New York, Kusama showed Infinity Mirror Room: Phalli’s Field: a floor of stuffed, spotted forms enclosed by mirrors, in which a painting’s repetition became a space the body entered. The rooms of 1966, the Peep Show or Endless Love Show and Love Forever, followed. Mirrored rooms by others, Lucas Samaras’s of 1966 among them, belong to the same years. That was the series’ turn, and the work scored here is not that room.
The rooms of light over water came later: Fireflies on the Water (2002, Whitney Museum of American Art) and Aftermath of Obliteration of Eternity (2009). By 2013 the form was forty-eight years old and its version in light and water eleven. This room departs from them in degree: a denser and more coloured field, a programmed change of light, a cooler register, cosmic rather than the soft points of 2002. The stake was small. The maker was established, the form proven, and the gallery among the strongest in New York.
The room refines its maker’s own path, and the work is scored as that refinement. The many rooms that followed it are context too. Whether the room in Los Angeles is the only fabrication of this work is not established, and the room held by The Broad is the object scored. Its necessity, its form and its inner law are its own; its departure and much of its reach belong to the series, and are discounted where they are counted at all.
Movement V
The queues began at David Zwirner in 2013, and in September 2015 the room went on view at The Broad, Los Angeles, when the museum opened. They made it the emblem of the immersive room and of the photograph taken there, of the timed and booked visit to a single work, of museums turning to rooms built to be entered and shared, and of a commercial field of light rooms that followed. The reach is large, and it is discounted twice: much of it belongs to the series and to its maker, and much of it went into museum practice and entertainment rather than into what artists made next.
In thirteen years the room has drawn real questions: whether it is a sublime or the pattern of the spectacle that copied it; whether the photograph completes its argument about the self or cancels it; how far its maker’s illness should govern its reading; whether the series is one work in many rooms. Most of them return to the series, the maker and the queue rather than to this room, and the room, met again, gives what it gave. Its survival is a matter of upkeep: the diodes, their drivers and the water are perishable and replaced, and the room that can be shown is a room kept running, though its plan, a mirrored box, water, and points of light in darkness, survives a change of diode.
Places built for the body to enter the boundless stand above it on this desk, The Rothko Chapel and Spiral Jetty among them, first acts that have lasted five and six decades. This room holds consciousness, the night sky, the dead by its title, perception and the self as an image, and nothing else: no other person but a reflection, no family, no labour, no state, no history. What it does, it does completely. The door shuts, the floor falls away into the water, and the one living body in the room becomes a point of light among millions, for as long as the visit lasts.
Act III · The Twelve
Judged on the parts, which are few. Take away the mirrors and there is a dark room with strings of lights; the infinite goes. Take away the water and the floor becomes a boundary: the reflection below, which lets the visitor seem to stand on nothing, is what turns a lit box into a field. Take away the darkness and the mirrors show their seams and the cords. Take away the walkway and no one can enter without entering the work’s floor; take away the door, and the closure that makes the infinite private, and the room becomes a corridor. Each part is required. What gives is the content of the field: the number of lights, their heights, their colours and their sequence are one choice among many, and the series fills the same box with lanterns, pumpkins and dots.
Score: 7.8 / 10
What the room brings into the open can be stated. The self is a point among countless points: the visitor sees their own body multiplied to the vanishing point, at the scale of a light, one reflection among thousands, and the maker’s account of obliterating the self is enacted rather than told. The infinite is a construction: the boundless is made of mirrors in a small room, and the room shows its trick at the door. And, unplanned and lasting, it exposes a condition of its decade, the visitor who enters a room of infinite reflections of the self and spends the visit photographing the self. What holds the axis below the gate is that the strongest disclosure is of a state, dissolution and awe, and the meanings are few and had been stated by the series before 2013.
Score: 7.4 / 10
The work’s purpose and its strongest axis. The door closes, the light falls away, and the visitor stands on a narrow path over black water in a field of points that reaches in every direction, below as well as around; the lights change colour and fade, and for a moment nothing is left but the field and one’s own repeated figure. The response reported across years of visits is closer to transport than to recognition: people speak of the cosmos, of drowning, of a starfield, of the dead. The height is real. What holds the axis is frequency and range: one effect, of one kind, held for a short visit; a known trick whose height depends on the darkness and the closed door; and a summit the same at the second visit as at the first. One summit, sustained.
Score: 8.2 / 10
More built than evoked. The starfield is made by the object: lights in darkness on every side and below make the room a night sky, and the visitor stands in it, not under it. Narcissus is built at full size: a pool of water and walls of mirror give back the self, and the self is lost in it, and the maker had named Narcissus before, at Venice in 1966. The third structure, the souls of the dead, is carried by the title, which calls the lights souls and sets them at light years, the light of stars that may be gone. The particular stays particular: a box, a walkway, coloured diodes. What holds the axis well below the gate is that the third structure rests on the title more than on the room, and that the room’s pattern is one image, the infinite field, not a story of what happens in it.
Score: 7.6 / 10
The unit is the room of 2013, and its inheritance is chiefly its maker’s own. The series turned in 1965, when Infinity Mirror Room: Phalli’s Field enclosed a floor of stuffed, spotted forms in mirrors and made a painting’s repetition into a space the body entered; that turn is context, and is not scored here. By 2013 the form was forty-eight years old, and its version in LED light over water eleven years old, from Fireflies on the Water (2002) and Aftermath of Obliteration of Eternity (2009). This room departs in degree: a denser and more coloured field, a programmed change of light, a cooler and more cosmic register. Mirrored rooms by others, Lucas Samaras’s of 1966 among them, lie in the wider field. The stake was small, the maker established and the form proven. A wager on a proven path is not a swerve; this refines one.
Score: 7.0 / 10
Would a different form change what the work knows? Almost wholly. Its knowledge is bodily and spatial: that the self is placed inside the infinite, not shown it. A painting of a starfield shows; a projection surrounds; only a closed mirrored room with a floor of water puts the body in a field with no wall and no floor and then shows the body to itself, reduced to a point. The water, the mirrors, the darkness and the door are the instrument. The photograph is the proof by failure: the image of the room circulated by millions is a picture of lights and a person, and what the room knows, the loss of the boundary and the fall of the floor, is gone from it. Held below the top because the form is the series’ form, and this room’s field changes the register more than the knowledge.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Evidence over promise: thirteen years, so the axis can only partly be forecast. The questions the room has drawn are real. Is it a sublime, or the pattern of the spectacle that copied it? Does the photograph every visitor takes complete its argument about the self, or cancel it? How far does its maker’s illness, and her account of obliterating the self, govern how it is read? Is the series one work in many rooms, or many works? But the return is mostly to the series, to the maker and to the queue, not to this room; and the room, met again, gives the same effect, which it is built to give in a short visit. The well so far is the discourse of the 2010s on art, crowds and images, and whether that lasts is not yet shown.
Score: 6.9 / 10
The field is international installation art of the 2010s and the museums that show it. Intrinsic force is modest for the unit: the reorganisation, a painting made into a space of repetition that the body enters, belongs to the series and to 1965, and this room perfects a version of it rather than reorganising anything. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the queues at David Zwirner in 2013 and at The Broad from 2015 made the room the emblem of the immersive room and of the photograph taken in it; of the timed, booked visit to a single work; of the museum’s turn toward rooms built to be entered and shared; and of a commercial field of immersive light rooms that followed. Much of that reach belongs to the series and its maker, and much of it went into museum practice and entertainment rather than into what artists made next. Credited, and discounted for both.
Score: 7.7 / 10
Weighed on form, then presence, then fabric, at thirteen years. Form: whole and legible; the room is shown as made, and nothing of its defining plan is known to have changed. Presence: wide and continuous since 2015, in a museum built to hold it, among the most visited single works in its city; presence earns little, and fame is not proof. Fabric: charged. The work depends on a lighting technology and its control; the diodes, the drivers and the water are perishable and must be replaced, and the room that can still be shown is a room kept running. A surface fixed to a technology is a charge, and electric light of this kind is one, though the plan survives a change of diode as a fresco does not survive a change of plaster. Presence and fabric cancel, and the figure stands at the foot of what its span allows.
Score: 8.0 / 10
The fabrication by others to the maker’s design is credited to the work. The command is exact where it matters. The mirrors meet in joins that vanish in the dark; the lights hang at heights that make the field read as depth, not as a ceiling of points; the water is still and black enough to double the field cleanly; the colour sequence is paced so that the eye does not settle. The making is load-bearing, for if any of these fail the infinite becomes a box. What holds the axis: the means are few and standard to the form, the mirrored enclosure is a known device with a long history in optics and entertainment, and the command is the precision of a well-run illusion rather than one that shows on every surface; the door, the walkway and the cords, visible as the eyes adjust, show the trick.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the visitor’s body, the one large and living thing in the room, and a single diode, the smallest and most mechanical. They obey one law: everything in the room is repeated into a field until it is a point among points. The lights are multiplied by the mirrors; the field is doubled by the water; the body is multiplied and reduced to the scale of the lights; the change of colour, sweeping through the field, treats every point alike. The title obeys it too, the souls counted in millions and set at light years. Nothing in the room breaks the law, and the door, the one place where it is broken, is where the visitor enters and leaves the work. Held where it is because narrowness is not coherence: the law governs one room and one effect, and the range between its farthest elements is small.
Score: 8.0 / 10
The orders held are few, and held in one gesture. Consciousness: a self seen from outside, multiplied and dissolved. The natural order at its widest: the night sky and the cosmos, made in a room. The dead, by the title: souls, and the light of stars that may be gone. Perception: the room is an instrument of how the eye takes space. And the self as an image among images, the order its decade added. They are integrated, since one effect touches all of them at once. What holds the axis lowest of the twelve is what is absent: no other person except as a reflection, no family, no labour, no state, no history, and no sacred order beyond the title’s souls. The low mark describes the form, one room and one effect, and sits a little above a single object because the room holds the viewer and the cosmos as well as itself.
Score: 6.4 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
7.6 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier III · Major
Strongest Dimensions
The Sublime and The Living Form at 8.2, then The Imperishable and The Inner Law at 8.0. A room whose purpose is a single summit, the field of points that opens on every side and below as the door shuts, and which reaches it; a form that is the instrument of its knowledge, putting the body inside the infinite rather than showing it, so that the photograph proves by failure what the room knows; a plan whole and on view since 2015, its presence wide and its fabric a technology kept running; and one law, everything repeated into a field until it is a point among points, obeyed from the smallest diode to the visitor’s body.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 6.4: consciousness, the night sky, the dead, perception and the self as an image, held in one gesture, with no other person, no family, no labour, no state and no history. Next above it, The Bottomless Well at 6.9: thirteen years of questions that return to the series, the maker and the queue more than to this room, which gives the same effect on return. Then The Swerve at 7.0: a refinement of its maker’s own form of 1965, made on a proven path at small stake. And The Unconcealment at 7.4: a disclosure whose strongest content is a state, dissolution and awe, with meanings the series had stated before.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.8 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 8.2, The Made at 7.6, The Inner Law at 8.0, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on all five: The Imperishable at 8.0 falls half a point short of the bar of 8.5, Pressure on Tradition at 7.7 eight tenths short, The Archetypal Deep at 7.6 nine tenths, The Unconcealment at 7.4 a point and a tenth, and The Swerve at 7.0 a point and a half. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Bottomless Well at 6.9, The Swerve at 7.0 and The Unconcealment at 7.4, each below 7.5; The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 6.4. Three of the five summit conditions are met: the Necessity Cap, the Coherence Floor and the Megethos Floor. The twelve sum to 90.8, an average of 7.57 that displays 7.6: the work stands where its aggregate places it, in the band of Tier III, four tenths short of the 8.0 at which Tier IV begins and well short of the 9.0 the summit requires. What holds it below Tier IV is a late refinement of an inherited form, a disclosure more of a state than of a meaning, a well not yet shown to be deep, and a reach that belongs as much to the series as to the room.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of the room in its plan and effect, and of its place in the series, from wide description, photographs, film and the critical record, not from standing in it; where a judgment turns on what only a visit would show, it is held more loosely. The work scored is one installation, Infinity Mirrored Room: The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away, made by Yayoi Kusama in 2013, first shown at David Zwirner, New York, in I Who Have Arrived in Heaven in 2013, and in the collection of The Broad, Los Angeles, on view there since the museum opened in September 2015. It is scored as one work with its parts: the mirrored enclosure, the water, the lights and their sequence, the darkness, the walkway and the door. The visitor’s reflected body is not a part, but the room is built to receive it. The room stands whole as made; the diodes, the water and the mirror panels are replaced as they must be, and that upkeep is weighed on survival and on no other axis. Whether the room is unique or one of more than one fabrication is not established, and the room held by The Broad is the object. The rest of the Infinity Mirror Room series, from Phalli’s Field of 1965 to Fireflies on the Water of 2002, Aftermath of Obliteration of Eternity of 2009 and the many rooms after 2013, together with Narcissus Garden of 1966, the maker’s account of her hallucinations since childhood, and the queues and photographs that followed the room, is context and evidence of reach, and is not scored. No words are quoted but the titles. Facts that could not be verified are not given, among them the catalogued materials and dimensions of the room, the length of the timed visit, the number of lights, the length and order of the lighting sequence, the date of acquisition, the fabricators, and the conservation record.