The Hustler’s Grotto of Christopher Street, 1998
Book, 21.5 x 13.8 cm, 164 p, language: English, publisher: Berkeley, California: Wandering Mind Books, ISBN: 0-9653304-2-7.
©M HKA
Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. B 2024/846).
Literary sinopsis
The Hustler’s Grotto of Christopher Street (Kuristofa Danshokutsu) is a masterpiece depicting a world filled with drugs and gay sex. Won Tenth Literary Award for New Writers, Yasei Jidai magazine. Kusama's characters -most obviously Henry in The Hustler’s Grotto of Christopher Street- are Pop-like reductions, stereotypical caricatures of the African American male, the junkie, the homosexual hustler. Like all her subjects both animate and inanimate, her characters are highly eroticized and therefore not "realistic;" like all Pop artists, she forgoes realism in favor of stylization. She is less concerned with drawing out her characters than using them as conduits of an excessive phantasmagoria.
- Alexandra Munroe
Authorship: Artist Author.
Creative Strategy: No Link to Artworks.
Genre: Erotic/Pornographic.
Publishing: Publishing House.
Theme: Art World, Death, Drugs, Homosexuality, Sex, Violence.
Media
>
>
Artist
> Yayoi Kusama.
Exhibitions & Ensembles
> Exhibition: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE ARTWORK BECOMES A NOVEL?. M HKA, Antwerp, 07 December 2012 - 21 April 2013.
> Exhibition: THE BOOK LOVERS - A Project about Artist Novels. The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York, 25 January 2013 - 09 March 2013.
> Exhibition: Book Lovers 4.0 (Pop-up Bookstore). De Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam, 28 January 2014 - 02 February 2014.
> Exhibition: The Preparation of the Novel (Book Lovers 5.0). Fabra i Coats - Centre d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Barcelona, 18 July 2014 - 05 September 2014.
> Ensemble: The Artist's Novel.