Van Gogh, together with his brother Theo, participated in the craze of collecting cheap ukiyo-e prints. To quote The Guardian: “The artistic relationship between the European avant garde and Japan in the 19th century is one such cross-cultural flow. There’s plenty of evidence that the (mostly French) artists who laid the foundations of modernism were obsessed with the images of Hokusai, Hiroshige, Utagawa Kuniyoshi and other masters who took popular, brightly coloured woodblock printmaking to a zenith of sophistication in 18th and early 19th-century Japan.” We can find evidence of this very easily, as you can see Van Gogh's ukiyo-e collection portrayed in many of his artworks, that do not necessarily have anything to do with Japan. The walls of his studio were covered by an assortment of oriental prints. A good example is his incredibly famous “Self-Portrait with a Bandaged Ear” from 1889, painted two years after he recreated Hiroshige’s garden scenery. Behind the artist...
The "Infinity Mirrored Rooms" are a series of works by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. They are immersive artworks incorporating the viewer and all sorts of artistic additions taken from Kusama’s incredible imagination. Her recent piece, ‘Infinity Mirrored Room - Filled with the Brilliance of Life’, shown here at the Tate Modern in London, features a dark room with hundreds of twinkling LEDs, reflected in a shallow pool of water, with the walls and ceiling covered in mirrors. The galaxy-like lights are reflected in the room of mirrors. As a result, the viewer is transported into an otherworldly space that seems to go on endlessly. This work is incredibly immersive. The viewer travels through the space by following integrated walkways, they may shift and change position and view of the work in order to better see it and understand it. In contrast to the typical experience of viewing art in a gallery, Kusama’s work escapes the canvas, taking overseemingly huge amounts of sp...