biography of yayoi kusama

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How did Yayoi Kusama become famous?

American sculptor Vinnie Ream (1847-1914) and her bust of Abraham Lincoln on the stand used in the White House while President Lincoln posed for her. Photo taken between 1865 and 1870. Her full sized Lincoln See Asset: 182233

Yayoi Kusama

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BBC Culture - Yayoi Kusama’s extraordinary survival story
The Guardian - Yayoi Kusama: the world's favourite artist?
Art in Context - Yayoi Kusama – Japan’s Troubled Polka Dot Genius
TheArtStory - Biography of Yayoi Kusama
Artnet - Yayoi Kusama
Masterworks Fine Art Gallery - Yayoi Kusama
Yayoi Kusama - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)

When was Yayoi Kusama born?

Yayoi Kusama was born on March 22, 1929, in Matsumoto, Japan.

What is Yayoi Kusama known for?

Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese artist known for her extensive use of polka dots and for her infinity installations. Notable works include Obliteration Room (2002–present) and Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli’s Field (1965/2016), the first of many distinct iterations.

Yayoi Kusama staged several unauthorized performances in New York City during the 1960s that drew the attention of the press, notably Grand Orgy to Awaken the Dead (1969), wherein she painted dots on participants’ naked bodies at a museum. Her career had a revival in the mid-2010s with several exhibitions featuring her Infinity Mirror Rooms.

Where was Yayoi Kusama educated?

By her own account, Kusama began painting as a child. She had little formal training, studying art only briefly (1948–49) at the Kyōto City Specialist School of Arts.

What was Yayoi Kusama’s family like?

Yayoi Kusama was born the youngest daughter of an affluent family. She indicated that her mother was physically and verbally abusive, while her father was a womanizer. Although she had relationships with fellow artists, she never married or had children.

Recent News

Yayoi Kusama (born March 22, 1929, Matsumoto, Japan) is a Japanese artist who is a self-described “obsessional artist,” known for her extensive use of polka dots and for her infinity installations. She employed painting , sculpture , performance art , and installations in a variety of styles, including Pop art and Minimalism .

By her own account, Kusama began painting as a child, at about the time she began experiencing hallucinations that often involved fields of dots. Those hallucinations and the theme of dots would continue to inform her art throughout her career. She had little formal training, studying art only briefly (1948–49) at the Kyōto City Specialist School of Arts. Family conflict and the desire to become an artist drove her to move in 1957 to the United States , where she settled in New York City . Before leaving Japan , she destroyed many of her early paintings.

Tate Modern extension Switch House, London, England. (Tavatnik, museums). Photo dated 2017.

Her early work in New York City included what she called “infinity net” paintings . Those consisted of thousands of tiny marks obsessively repeated across large canvases without regard for the edges of the canvas , as if they continued into infinity . Such works explored the physical and psychological boundaries of painting, with the seemingly endless repetition of the marks creating an almost hypnotic sensation for both the viewer and the artist. Her paintings from that period anticipated the emerging Minimalist movement, but her work soon transitioned to Pop art and performance art . She became a central figure in the New York avant-garde, and her work was exhibited alongside that of such artists as Donald Judd , Claes Oldenburg , and Andy Warhol .

Obsessive repetition continued to be a theme in Kusama’s sculpture and installation art, which she began to exhibit in the early 1960s. The theme of sexual anxiety linked much of that work, in which Kusama covered the surface of objects, such as an armchair in Accumulation No. 1 (1962), with small soft phallic sculptures constructed from white fabric. Installations from that time included Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli’s Field (1965), a mirrored room whose floors were covered with hundreds of stuffed phalli that had been painted with red dots. Mirrors gave her the opportunity to create infinite planes in her installations, and she would continue to use them in later pieces.

Mirroring the times, Kusama’s performance art explored antiwar, antiestablishment, and free-love ideas. Those Happenings often involved public nudity, with the stated intention of disassembling boundaries of identity, sexuality, and the body. In Grand Orgy to Awaken the Dead (1969), Kusama painted dots on participants’ naked bodies in an unauthorized performance in the fountain of the sculpture garden of New York’s Museum of Modern Art . Critics accused her of intense self-promotion, and her work was regularly covered in the press; Grand Orgy appeared on the front page of the New York Daily News .

Kusama moved back to Japan in 1973. From 1977, by her own choice, she lived in a mental hospital. She continued to produce art during that period and also wrote surreal poetry and fiction , including The Hustlers Grotto of Christopher Street (1984) and Between Heaven and Earth (1988). Kusama returned to the international art world in 1989 with shows in New York City and Oxford , England. In 1993 she represented Japan at the Venice Biennale with work that included Mirror Room (Pumpkin) , an installation in which she filled a mirrored room with pumpkin sculptures covered in her signature dots. Between 1998 and 1999 a major retrospective of her works was shown at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art ; the Museum of Modern Art in New York City; the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis , Minnesota; and Tokyo ’s Museum of Contemporary Art.

In 2006 Kusama received the Japan Art Association’s Praemium Imperiale prize for painting. Her work was the subject of major retrospectives throughout the 21st century, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art (2012), New York City; in a traveling exhibition that included the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (2017), Washington, D.C., which attracted record crowds; and at M+ (2022), Hong Kong . The Hirshhorn show featured a sample of Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored Rooms, installations usually comprising a mirrored room with hundreds of coloured lights, and the works soon became some of her most popular pieces. In 2017 she opened a museum dedicated to her work in Tokyo , near her studio and the psychiatric hospital where she lived.

Yayoi Kusama

Japanese-American Painter, Sculptor, Photographer, Installation, Performance, and Conceptual Artist

Summary of Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama's life is a poignant testament to the healing power of art as well as a study in human resilience. Plagued by mental illness as a child, and thoroughly abused by a callous mother, the young artist persevered by using her hallucinations and personal obsessions as fodder for prolific artistic output in various disciplines. This has informed a lifelong commitment to creativity at all costs despite the artist's birth into a traditional, female-effacing Japanese culture and her career's coming of age in the male-dominated New York art scene. Today, Kusama reigns as one of the most unique and famous contemporary female artists, operating from her self-imposed home in a mental hospital.

Accomplishments

When Kusama began to see hallucinations as a child, her way of coping with the bizarre phenomena was to paint what she saw. She says that art became her way to express her mental disease, as most notably is seen in her Infinity Net paintings based on repetitive patterns and her installations in which she creates elaborate environments overrun with polka dots or tiny points of light.
In much the same fashion as Kusama uses art to process hallucinations, she also uses her work to confront personal phobias, especially a fear of sex stemming from a witnessing of her father's womanizing. This reveals itself through her "compulsion" soft sculptures and furniture pieces covered in myriad phallic forms.
Her familiarity with fighting for her life, and her compassion for others involved in causes against injustice, led Kusama to briefly associate with many subcultural movements of her time such as the hippie culture of the 1960s and the feminist movement.
For Kusama, artmaking became an essential survival mechanism. It was her sole tool for making sense of a world in which she dwelt on the periphery of normative experience, and as a result became the very thing that allowed her to assimilate successfully into society.

The Life of Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama’s installation and sculptural works are inspired and informed by her memories of childhood abuse, repression, and trauma, and her ongoing experiences with mental disorder and sexual anxiety.

Important Art by Yayoi Kusama

When Kusama moved to the United States, the first works she exhibited were her watercolors. These works on paper showed the artist breaking free from the traditional Japanese artistic practices she was taught as a child and embracing Western artistic influences, especially in regards to abstraction. The Woman is one of these earlier abstract works. The watercolor depicts a singular biomorphic form with subtle dots in the center floating in a seemingly black abyss. The form is reminiscent of female genitalia with red spikes surrounding it. The overall effect of the work is aggressive and bizarre, showing signs of Kusama's struggles with mental illness and anxiety towards sex. From a very young age, Kusama experienced hallucinations in which a single pattern would engulf everything in her field of vision. As Kusama explains, "one day I was looking at the red flower patterns of the tablecloth on a table, and when I looked up I saw the same pattern covering the ceiling, the windows and the walls, and finally all over the room, my body, and the universe. I felt as if I had begun to self-obliterate, to revolve in the infinity of endless time and the absoluteness of space, and be reduced to nothingness." These themes of self-obliteration and representation of the infinite would become an obsession for Kusama as she attempted to represent what she believed to be her alternate reality. Her use of dots became the manifestation of this effort and has become the defining motif in her work.

Tempera and acrylic on paper - The Blanton Museum (Texas)

Kusama's Infinity Net series marks the beginning of a radical shift in her work from the singular abstract, biomorphic forms she painted during her youth to the more obsessive, repetitive works that would define her career. They also showcase the way she used art to process her mental illness. We can see through her own words, a sense of what these paintings accomplished for the artist: "With just one polka dot, nothing can be achieved. In the universe, there is the sun, the moon, the earth, and hundreds of millions of stars. All of us live in the unfathomable mystery and infinitude of the universe. Pursuing philosophy of the universe through art under such circumstances has led me to what I call stereotypical repetition." No. F is one of Kusama's first works from the celebrated series. From a distance the subtle painting looks delicate and monochromatic, but when viewed up close, the complexities of the canvas's surface become apparent. The bluish-grey underlay is almost completely obscured by small, white semi-circles, which consume the entire canvas and only allow the gray underlay to be visible in the form of tiny dots. The organic arched shapes all curve in the same direction, creating an undulating net that would continue on indefinitely if not for the edge of the canvas. As Kusama explains, "without beginning, end, or center. The entire canvas would be occupied by [a] monochromatic net. This endless repetition caused a kind of dizzy, empty, hypnotic feeling." This hypnotic feeling is furthermore translated to the viewer, as they are invited into the artist's mind. The thick build-up of the top layer of white paint also adds texture to the work, while the repetitive crescent shapes create an optically mesmerizing pattern that is neither random nor systematic, but instead reminiscent of things found in the natural world, such as atoms and cells. Although the obsessive and time-consuming Nets were painstaking to create, they proved therapeutic for the artist. Begun in the late 1950s, the series coincided with Kusama's move from her oppressive homeland to New York, where she found the artistic freedom she needed to expand her art practice. Created when Abstract Expressionism was still the popular contemporary art form and Minimalism was still in its infancy, the Infinity Nets were avant-garde for their time. As a result, the Nets are both expressive and minimal, bridging the two opposing movements. For Kusama personally, her Infinity Nets have become central to her practice, and continue to influence her work.

Oil on canvas - The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Accumulation No.1

Accumulation No.1 is the first in Kusama's iconic Accumulations series, in which she transforms found furniture into sexualized objects. The work consists of a single abandoned armchair painted white and completely covered with soft, stuffed phallic protrusions, while fringe encircles the base of the sculpture. No longer limited by the pictorial plane of the two-dimensional canvas as with Infinity Nets , the stuffed sculpture continues Kusama's repetition compulsion in three-dimensional form. The menacing piece is both aggressive and humorous, and also works to confront Kusama's sexual phobias. As Asia scholar, Alexandra Munroe explains, "her ambition for supremacy over men and over sexuality is relentlessly expressed in her repetitive and aggregate use of the phallus form, which can be interpreted as an aggressive will and fantasy to defy oppressive male power by possessing it symbolically herself." In doing so Kusama also abandons the typically passive role of the female. More than just making a statement against patriarchal authority, these "compulsion furniture" pieces, as she called them, were deeply personal for Kusama as they were her way of coping with her own innate sexual anxieties. "The armchair thickly covered in phalluses was my psychosomatic work done when I had a fear of sexual vision." These anxiety-ridden pieces would become included in a new form of art which art critic and historian, Lucy R. Lippard, called 'Eccentric Abstraction'. "The makers of what I am calling...eccentric abstraction, refuse to eschew imagination and the extension of sensuous experience while they also refuse to sacrifice the solid formal basis demanded of the best in current non-objective art." As a result, Kusama's psychosexual works became a significant precursor to post-Minimalist art.

Sewn stuffed fabric, paint, and chair fringe - The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Sex Obsession Food Obsession Macaroni Infinity Nets & Kusama

In this piece, we see the artist splayed naked on one of her famous soft sculpture furniture pieces laden with phallic accumulations and surrounded with macaroni pasta which forms her familiar, patterns of repetition. By inserting herself into the piece, literally on top of an object that represents a manifestation of her sexual aversion, Kusama attempts to subvert her own discomfort and - in effect - to conquer it. It becomes a visual juxtaposition of her direct confrontation of a lifelong sexual aversion with the recognition of her nude self as an unmistakable, even if unwilling, object of sexual desire. This brave presentation of herself in physical dialogue with her fears positions Kusama as a participant in the burgeoning Feminist art movement of the time and also foreshadows her work in the late 1960s in which she would use her body and the body of others in public performances. Although she is slim and stylish and positioned amongst a groovy psychedelic scene with strong, provocative visual impact, the rendering of her signature polka dots across her skin reminds the viewer that she is most comfortable when allowed to be seen as an intrinsic part of the artwork, and merely one polka dot in the universe of many.

Narcissus Garden

Narcissus Garden was Kusama's first successful experimentation with Performance art. Although officially not invited to represent Japan at the 33 rd Venice Biennale nor given permission to participate by Biennale officials, Kusama nevertheless placed 1,500 plastic silver globes on the lawn near the Italian Pavilion. The twelve-inch in diameter mirrored balls were tightly arranged, creating an infinite reflective field that distorted images of reality on the surface of the balls. As in the original Greek myth in which Narcissus's admiration for his own reflection eventually causes him to drown, the viewer is forced to confront their own vanity when looking at their distorted reflection on the surface of the balls. Kusama also placed two signs at the installation that read: "NARCISSUS GARDEN, KUSAMA" and "YOUR NARCISSIUM FOR SALE". During the opening week of the Biennale the artist acted like a street peddler selling the balls for two dollars, while also distributing flyers with Herbert Read's flattering remarks about her work. While she hawked her wares, Kusama wore a gold kimono blatantly drawing attention to her "otherness" as foreigner, and highlighting the desire for fame that Kusama would seek throughout her life. And while angry Biennale officials immediately put a stop to her panhandling, the installation remained for the duration of the Biennale. As art historian Danielle Shang explains, the work has been "interpreted by many as both Kusama's self-promotion and her protest of the commercialization of art" creating a sense of duality, which is present in all of Kusama's work. Since its creation fifty years ago, Narcissus Garden has been commissioned and re-installed in various settings, however now the balls float on water further referencing the Greek myth.

Plastic silver balls, gold kimono, signs - 33 rd Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy

Anatomic Explosion on Wall Street

Starting in 1967 until her return to Japan, Kusama made fewer art objects and instead began experimenting with the performance art of the moment, "happenings". Her first Anatomic Explosion took place on October 15 th , 1968 opposite the New York Stock Exchange. The work featured nude performers dancing to the rhythm of bongo drums while Kusama, who called herself 'Priestess', painted blue dots on their naked bodies and presided over the event. The performance was in opposition of the Vietnam War and was prefaced by a press release that stated, "The money made with this stock is enabling the war to continue. We protest this cruel, greedy instrument of the war establishment." After 15 minutes the police came, putting an end to the spectacle. To coincide with the happening, Kusama also sent An Open Letter to My Hero, Richard M. Nixon in which she wrote, "Our earth is like one little polka dot, among millions of other celestial bodies, one orb full of hatred and strife amid the peaceful, silent spheres. Let's you and I change all that and make this world a new Garden of Eden.... You can't eradicate violence by using more violence." Growing up in militaristic Japan during the trauma of World War II led Kusama to vehemently oppose war and social injustice. Her absurdly theatrical happenings, which were always overtly political, were an expression of this opposition. For Kusama, nudity represented peace and love and was used to counter the horrors and tragedies of war. And while her happenings were inherently about political and social protest, they were also another outlet for self-promotion. Kusama fully embraced Warhol's idea of the artist as celebrity, claiming, "publicity is critical to my work because it offers the best way of communicating with a large number of people... avant-garde artists should use mass communication as traditional painters use paints and brushes."

Bongo drums, blue paint, four naked dancers - Yayoi Kusama Studio

Pumpkin is one of Kusama's first forays into outdoor sculpture. Made specifically for the Benesse Art Site on Naoshima Island in Japan, the giant, yellow pumpkin sculpture is painted with rows of black dots fanning out from large to small around the gourd. The pumpkin's bulbous, organic form and grand scale gives the work a cartoonish appearance, highlighting how strange the natural world appears in modern culture. Created when she was living in Japan, the work also reflects a shift in Kusama's artistic practice from her earlier aggressive and politically charged works to the more kitsch works that consume her art later in life. This shift can be attributed to the transition in Japanese culture from rigid and militaristic to a full on embrace of the ridiculous and tacky, as seen in the Hello Kitty cuteness of Kawaii culture. Kusama has also described the pumpkin motif as an alter ego, once again emphasizing how her work and identity are intrinsically intertwined. The lifelong obsession with the fruit derives from her youth and her family's nursery. "The first time I ever saw a pumpkin was when I was in elementary school and went with my grandfather to visit a big seed-harvesting ground... It immediately began speaking to me in a most animated manner. It seems that pumpkins do not inspire much respect, but I was enchanted by their charming and winsome form." Kusama has spent her whole life disassembling her identity and liberating the self through her various artistic practices, and the polka-dotted pumpkin is yet another expression of this endeavor.

Acrylic on ceramic - Benesse Art Site, Naoshima Island

Obliteration Room

Obliteration Room starts out as a blank canvas. Set up to resemble the interior of a domestic environment, the walls, ceiling, floor, furniture, and little knick knacks are all painted sterile white. Visitors to the room are handed a sheet of round stickers of various shape and size determined by Kusama, and invited to affix them to any surface in the room. Eventually the pristine room along with the furniture is obliterated by an explosion of colorful dots. As Munroe explains, "Kusama's art is fundamentally about obsession and the need, born of anxiety, to repeat certain acts in an attempt to free herself from that obsession. Since childhood, her art-making has been a private, atavistic ritual, a necessary inducement to repetition that leads to catharsis." In response to the trauma Kusama experienced as a child, the first iteration of the room was created specifically for children and to be an idealization of childhood. In the space, children are encouraged to violate the "look, but don't touch" policy of art museums, which for Kusama represents parental restrictions. The act of placing the dot stickers on a work of art allows the children to indirectly disobey their parents. The interactive installation was the first time Kusama moved away from creating a passive environment to creating an environment in which its realization required participation from visitors.

Furniture, white paint, colored dot stickers - First staged at the Queensland Art Gallery, South Brisbane, Australia

Infinity Mirrored Room- The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away

Kusama began her Infinity Mirror Room series in the 1960s, and so far has created over twenty distinct rooms. They are the culmination of her repetitive paintings, soft sculptures, and installations into an immersive environment. Each Infinity Mirror Room consists of a dark chamber-like space completely lined in mirrors. In the past, Kusama has filled these rooms with pumpkins, phalluses, and lanterns. This particular room consists of small LED lights hung from the ceiling and flickering in a rhythmic pattern creating pulsing electronic polka dots. The lights reflect off the mirrors in the intimate room creating the illusion of endless space. Only one visitor at a time can experience the installation with that singular visitor becoming integral to the work, as his or her body activates the environment once in the room. The quiet, meditative space is a reflection on life and the inevitability of death- subjects that have fascinated Kusama since she was a child. She explains that her work "does battle at the boundary between life and death, questioning what we are and what it means to live and die." By encouraging visitors to contemplate their existence, Kusama's ethereal work emphasizes the interconnectedness we have to each other and the universe. "By using light, their reflection, and so on, I wanted to show the cosmic image beyond the world where we live." Now in her ninth decade and accepting of her own mortality, the work represents more harmonious aspirations by the artist for inner and outer peace, and is seen as a progression from her early work, which sought to fight and disrupt rather than reconcile.

Mirrors, Plexiglas LED lights - Collection of the artist, The Broad Foundation, Los Angeles

Biography of Yayoi Kusama

Childhood/education.

Born in 1929 in Matsumoto, Japan, Kusama grew up as the youngest of four children in an affluent family. However, her childhood was less than idyllic. Her parents were the product of a loveless, arranged marriage. Her absent father, emasculated by the fact that he had to take his wife's surname as a condition of marrying into the wealthy family, spent most of his time away from home womanizing, leaving his angry wife to physically abuse and emotionally torment her youngest child. She would often send her daughter to spy on her father's sexual exploits, the mental trauma of which caused Kusama to have a permanent aversion to sex and the male body.

At the age of ten Kusama began experiencing vivid hallucinations in which flowers would speak to her and patterns in fabric would come to life and consume her. She began to draw these visions as a therapeutic outlet, providing her with solace and control over the anxiety that tormented her. When Kusama was 13 years old she was sent to work in a military factory sewing parachutes for Japan's World War II efforts. Her adolescent years were spent in the darkness of the factory listening to air-raid sirens and the sounds of army planes flying overhead. The horrors of war would have a lasting effect on her, leading Kusama to create numerous anti-war works, and to also value individual and creative freedom. Her experience at the factory also provided her with the utilitarian ability to sew, which would prove useful when she began creating her soft sculptures in the 1960s.

Early Training

Disobeying her mother, who wanted her to simply be an obedient housewife, Kusama studied art in Masumoto and Kyoto. During this time in Japan, there was a movement to reject the influences of Western culture so Kusama was forced to only study Nihonga, which consisted of creating paintings using 1000 years old traditional Japanese techniques and materials. Her artistic talent was apparent at even a young age, and Kusama's work was shown in exhibitions all over Japan.

However, the stifling conservative Japanese culture and her abusive mother proved too much for Kusama, and in 1957 she moved to the United States, settling in New York City in 1958. Before she left, Kusama's mother handed her some money and told her "to never set foot in her house again." In response, Kusama angrily destroyed hundreds of her works.

Mature Period

Once in the United States, Kusama was free to explore her artistic expression that was censored while living in Japan. "For art like mine, [Japan] was too small, too servile, too feudalistic, and too scornful of women. My art needed a more unlimited freedom, and a wider world." With the help of Georgia O'Keeffe , with whom Kusama had started a correspondence and friendship with while still in Japan, she was able to secure exhibitions and some sales, leading to interest in her work right from the start. But there was also a fascination with the foreign artist herself, and she struck up a deep relationship with fellow Minimalist artist, Donald Judd , who admired her work so much that he purchased one of her first Infinity Net paintings. The middle-aged assemblage artist, Joseph Cornell was also infatuated with Kusama, often writing her love letters and sketching her in the nude. Because of her anxieties and fear of sex, both relationships, while very close, were strictly platonic. Cornell shared her sexual aversion and Kusama once remarked that "(Cornell) hated sex. That's why we got along so well." Kusama and Cornell developed such a close bond that when he died in 1972 she began creating collages to both honor his work and cope with his passing.

Kusama’s Ascension of Polkadots on the Trees at the Singapore Biennale 2006.

During this time Kusama worked feverishly, fully embracing the hedonist, free-spirited hippie culture of the 1960s, which also included protesting war, patriarchy, and capitalist society. Combining these themes with her own intimate anxieties, she created art that was deeply personal, but also spoke to the injustices of the times. Critics didn't know what to make of this innovative art, and soon the struggling artist went from obscurity to notoriety. Her fame rivaled that of some of the most famous Pop artists , and Kusama enjoyed the attention. Judd once recalled that while at a friend's house, Kusama grabbed a pregnant cat and sucked one of its nipples in order to draw attention to herself. Yet, this unapologetic and admitted quest for fame might also be seen as an effort to boldly self-validate her existence and to claim her identity in opposition to the obstacles placed upon her by her family's early denial of her career and her battle with mental illness.

Kusama's artistic output during this 15-year period was prolific and diverse, experimenting with various mediums such as drawing, painting, sculpture, performance, fashion, writing, and installation. She would sometimes work up to 50 hours without rest. Eventually the workload coupled with a lack of financial security and Cornell's death took its toll, and in 1973 she moved back to Japan to seek treatment for her mental exhaustion and declining physical health. She began focusing on her surreal writing and avant-garde clothing line. In 1977, after being diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive neurosis, Kusama checked herself in to the Seiwa Mental Hospital and has been living and working there by choice ever since.

Late Period

Yayoi Kusama enjoys the spotlight, and is usually seen in her signature red wig and polka-dot clothing.

When Kusama moved back to Japan in the early 1970s she was all but forgotten by the Western art world. Even in Japan she was mostly known for her violence-soaked writings. That changed in 1993 when she was invited to represent Japan at the 45 th Venice Biennale. The acclaimed installation of one of her Infinity Mirror Rooms containing dotted pumpkins, coupled with the artist's performances alongside the exhibition, renewed the interest and appreciation for her work, along with the interest in the quirky artist herself. Kusama still seeks the limelight and continues to insist on being photographed with her work. Wearing her signature red wig and polka dot garments of her own making, Kusama's personality has become just as infatuating as her art.

In 2008, one of Kusama's Infinity Nets , the same one once owned by Judd, set new art auction price records for a living female artist and led to collaborations with luxury fashion retailers, like Marc Jacobs and Louis Vuitton. The woman, whose art once protested capitalism and materialism, now fully embraces it.

The Legacy of Yayoi Kusama

More important than the impact her diverse work has on the art market is its influence on other artists and movements, which spans generations. Her work inspired Pop artists like Andy Warhol , Feminist artists like Carolee Schneemann , Performance artists like Yoko Ono , and contemporary artists like Damien Hirst . Her far-reaching influence can be attributed to the fact that Kusama has always been a step ahead of her time, with her art being at the forefront of major artistic movements. And yet because her art making is so personal, and both a symptom and cure for her mental illness, it doesn't fit neatly into any of these defined movements. As fellow Pop artist, Claes Oldenburg states, "(Kusama) didn't have the kind of mind that identified with movements. She just went her own way." To this day, she represents herself as a lone wolf most comfortable with being known as independently avant-garde.

Influences and Connections

Useful Resources on Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama: Inventing the Singular Our Pick By Midori Yamamura
Yayoi Kusama By Midori Yamamura
Yayoi Kusama Our Pick By Frances Morris
Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama, 1958-1968 By Lynn Zelevansky and Laura Hoptman
Infinity Nets: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama Our Pick By Yayoi Kusama
Yayoi Kusama: Every Day I Pray for Love By Yayoi Kusama
Yayoi Kusama: I Who Have Arrived in Heaven By Akira Tatehata
Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors By Mika Yoshitake and Alexander Dumbadze
Yayoi Kusama: In Infinity Our Pick By Marie Laurberg and Jo Applin
Yayoi Kusama: A Retrospective Our Pick By Stephanie Rosenthal
Kusama: Cosmic Nature By Mika Yoshitake and Joanna L. Groarke
Yayoi Kusama (Phaidon Contemporary Artist Series) By Laura Hoptman and Udo Kultermann
Kusama's Self Obliteration Film created by Kusama from 1967 when she was experimenting with performance art
Yayoi Kusama- Obsessed with Dots Our Pick Tate Modern's short film, created to coincide with their Kusama retrospective, in which the artist discuss her life and art
Yayoi Kusama Interview: Earth is a Polka Dot Our Pick Interview with Kusama in which she discusses her early struggles and childhood in the context of her Infinity Mirror Rooms
Yayoi Kusama: Let's Fight Together Short interview in which Kusama discusses her fashion, current work, and desire for peace
BBC Newsnight Yayoi Kusama Interview BBC News interview with Kusama that also discuss her work in relation to her Tate Modern retrospective
Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors Our Pick NPR quickly takes the viewer into six of Kusama's Infinity Mirror Rooms
How Yayoi Kusama Made it in America - Sotheby’s Our Pick
Why Yayoi Kusama Matters Now More Than Ever - ARTiculations
An Icon of Modernist Architecture - Covered in Polka Dots By Alexandria Symonds / The New York Times / Sept 1, 2016 / One of the various collaborative projects that Kusama has done in her expansive career
How Yayoi Kusama, the 'Infinity Mirrors' visionary, channels mental illness into art By Anna Fifield / Washington Post / Feb 15, 2017 / Overview the origins of Kusama's work style and aesthetic
The Unstoppable Yayoi Kusama $$ By Darryl Wee / Wall Street Journal / Feb 6, 2017 /
The Art and Politics of Artists’ Personas: The Case of Yayoi Kusama Our Pick By SooJin Lee / Persona Studies / 2015
Ace and Aro Lesbian Art and Theory with Agnes Martin and Yayoi Kusama By Ela Przybyło / Journal of Lesbian Studies / 2021
'The Beautiful Stars at Night': The Glittering Artistic World of Yayoi Kusama Our Pick By David Bell / New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies / December 2010
Yayoi Kusama: The World's Favourite Artist? Our Pick By Tim Adams / The Guardian / September 23, 2018

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Cut Piece (1964)

Cassiopeia 1 (1960)

$Georgia O\'Keeffe: Sky above Clouds, IV (1965)$

Sky above Clouds, IV (1965)

Related artists.

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Content compiled and written by Katelyn Davis

Edited and revised, with Summary and Accomplishments added by Kimberly Nichols

Biography of Yayoi Kusama, Japanese Artist

Art History
Architecture

M.A., History of Art, The Courtauld Institute of Art
B.A. History of Art, Yale University

Yayoi Kusama (born March 22, 1929 in Matsumoto City, Japan) is a contemporary Japanese artist, best known for her Infinity Mirror Rooms, as well as her obsessive use of colorful dots. In addition to being an installation artist, she is a painter, poet, writer, and designer.

Fast Facts: Yayoi Kusama

Known For: Considered one of the most important living Japanese artists and the most successful female artist of all time
Born: March 22, 1929 in Matsumoto, Japan
Education: Kyoto School of Arts and Crafts
Mediums: Sculpture, installation, painting, performance art, fashion
Art Movement: Contemporary, pop art
Selected Works: Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli’s Field (1965), Narcissus Garden (1966), Self Obliteration (1967), Infinity Net (1979), Pumpkin (2010)
Notable Quote: "Every time I have had a problem, I have confronted it with the ax of art."

Early Life

Yayoi Kusama was born in the provincial Matsumoto City, Nagano Prefecture, Japan, to a well to do family of seed merchants, who owned the largest wholesale seed distributor in the region. She was the youngest of four children. Early childhood traumas (such as being made to spy on her father’s extra-marital affairs) cemented in her a deep skepticism of human sexuality and have had lasting impact on her art.

The artist describes early memories of being enveloped by endless flowers in a field on their farm as a young child, as well as hallucinations of dots covering everything around her. These dots, which are now a Kusama signature, have been a consistent motif in her work from a very young age. This feeling of obliteration of the self by repetition of a pattern, in addition to anxiety about sex and male sexuality in particular, are themes that appear throughout her oeuvre.

Kusama began painting when she was ten, though her mother disapproved of the hobby. She did, however, allow her young daughter to go to art school, with the ultimate intention of getting her to marry and live the life of a housewife, not an artist. Kusama, however, refused the many proposals of marriage she received and instead committed herself to the life of a painter.

In 1952, when she was 23 years old, Kusama showed her watercolors in a small gallery space in Matsumoto City, though the show was largely ignored. In the mid-1950s, Kusama discovered the work of American painter Georgia O’Keeffe , and in her enthusiasm for the artist’s work, wrote to the American in New Mexico, sending along a few of her watercolors. O’Keeffe eventually wrote back, encouraging Kusama’s career, though not without cautioning her to the difficulties of the artistic life. With the knowledge that a sympathetic (female) painter was living in the United States, Kusama left for America, but not before burning many paintings in a rage.

The New York Years (1958-1973)

Kusama arrived in New York City in 1958, one of the first post-war Japanese artists to take up residence in New York. As both a woman and a Japanese person, she received little attention for her work, though her output was prolific. It was during this period that she began painting her now iconic “Infinity Nets” series, which took inspiration from the vastness of the ocean, an image that was particularly resplendent to her, as she had grown up in an inland Japanese city. In these works she would obsessively paint small loops onto a monochrome white canvas, covering the entire surface from edge to edge.

Though she enjoyed little attention from the established art world, she was known to be savvy in the ways of the art world, often strategically meeting patrons she knew could help her and even once telling collectors her work was represented by galleries that had never heard of her. Her work was finally shown in 1959 at the Brata Gallery, an artist-run space, and was praised in a review by the minimalist sculptor and critic Donald Judd, who eventually would become friends with Kusama.

In the mid 1960s, Kusama met the surrealist sculptor Joseph Cornell , who immediately became obsessed with her, incessantly calling to speak on the telephone and writing her poems and letters. The two were involved in a romantic relationship for a short period, but Kusama eventually broke it off with him, overwhelmed by his intensity (as well as his close relationship to his mother, with whom he lived), though they maintained contact.

In the 1960s, Kusama underwent psychoanalysis as a way of understanding her past and her difficult relationship to sex, a confusion that probably resulted from an early trauma, and her obsessive fixation on the male phallus, which she incorporated into her art. Her “penis chairs” (and eventually, penis couches, shoes, ironing boards, boats and other commonplace objects), which she called “ accumulations,” were a reflection of this obsessive panic. Though these works did not sell, they did cause a stir, bringing more attention to the artist and her eccentric persona.

Influence on American Art

In 1963, Kusama showed Aggregation: 1000 Boats Show at the Gertrude Stein Gallery, where she exhibited a boat and a set of oars covered in her protrusions, surrounded by wall paper printed with a repeating image of the boat. Though this show was not commercially successful, it did make an impression on many artists of the time.

Kusama’s influence on post-war American art cannot be underestimated. Her use of soft materials may have influenced sculptor Claes Oldenburg, who showed work with Kusama, to begin working with the material, as her working in plush predates his. Andy Warhol, who praised Kusama’s work, covered the walls of his gallery show in a repeated pattern, much the way Kusama did in her One Thousand Boats show. As she began to realize how little credit she received in the face of her influence on far more successful (male) artists, Kusama became increasingly depressed.

This depression was at its worst in 1966, when she showed the groundbreaking Peep Show at Castellane Gallery. Peep Show , an octagonal room constructed of inwardly-facing mirrors into which the viewer could stick her head, was the first immersive art installation of its kind, and a construction the artist has continued to explore to widespread acclaim.

And yet, later that year the artist Lucas Samaras exhibited a similar mirrored work at the far larger Pace Gallery, the similarities of which she could not ignore. Kusama’s deeping depression lead her to attempt suicide by jumping out a window, though her fall was broken, and she survived.

With little luck in the United States, she began showing in Europe in 1966. Not formally invited to the Venice Biennale, Kusama showed Narcissus Garden in front of the Italian Pavilion. Composed of numerous mirrored balls laid on the ground, she invited passers-by to “buy their narcissism,” for two dollars a piece. Though she received attention for her intervention, she was formally asked to leave.

When Kusama returned to New York, her works became more political. She staged a Happening (an organic performance intervention in a space) in MoMA’s Sculpture Garden and conducted many gay weddings, and when America entered the war in Vietnam, Kusama’s Happenings turned to anti-war demonstrations, in many of which she participated naked. The documentation of these protests, which were covered in New York papers, made its way back to Japan, where her hometown community was horrified and her parents deeply embarrassed.

Return to Japan (1973-1989)

Many in New York criticized Kusama as an attention seeker, who would stop at nothing for publicity. Increasingly dejected, she returned to Japan in 1973, where she was forced to start her career over. However, she found that her depression prevented her from painting.

Following another suicide attempt, Kusama decided to check herself into the Seiwa Mental Hospital, where she has lived ever since. There she was able to begin making art again. She embarked on a series of collages, which center on birth and death, with names such as Soul going back to its home (1975).

Long Awaited Success (1989-Present)

In 1989, the Center for International Contemporary Arts in New York staged a retrospective of Kusama’s work, including early watercolors from the 1950s. This would prove to be the beginning of her “rediscovery,” as the international art world began to take note of the artist’s impressive four decades of work.

In 1993, Kusama represented Japan in a solo pavilion at the Venice Biennale, where she finally received the attention she had been seeking, which she has enjoyed ever since. Based on museum admissions, she is the most successful living artist, as well as the most successful female artist of all time. Her work is held in the collections of the world’s largest museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Tate Modern in London, and her Infinity Mirrored Rooms are extremely popular, drawing lines of visitors with hour-long waits.

Other notable works of art include the Obliteration Room (2002), in which visitors are invited to cover an all white room with colorful polka dot stickers, Pumpkin (1994), an oversized pumpkin sculpture located on the Japanese island of Naoshima, and the Anatomic Explosion series (begun 1968), Happenings in which Kusama acts as the “priestess,” painted dots on naked participants in significant locales. (The first Anatomic Explosion was held in Wall Street.)

She is jointly represented by David Zwirner Gallery (New York) and Victoria Miro Gallery (London). Her work can be permanently seen at the Yayoi Kusama Museum, which opened in Tokyo in 2017, as well as in her hometown museum in Matsumoto, Japan.

Kusama has won numerous prizes for her art, including the Asahi Prize (in 2001), the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (in 2003), and 18th Praemium Imperiale award for painting (in 2006).

Kusama, Yayoi. Infinity Net: the Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama . Translated by Ralph F. McCarthy, Tate Publishing, 2018.
Lenz, Heather, director. Kusama: Infinity . Magnolia Pictures, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8mdIB1WxHI.
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Born in Nagano Prefecture.
Avant-garde sculptor, painter and novelist.

Started to paint using polka dots and nets as motifs at around age ten ,and created fantastic paintings in watercolors, pastels and oils.

Went to the United States in 1957. Showed large paintings, soft sculptures, and environmental sculptures using mirrors and electric lights. In the latter 1960s, staged many happenings such as body painting festivals, fashion shows and anti-war demonstrations. Launched media-related activities such as film production and newspaper publication. In 1968, the film “Kusama's Self-Obliteration"which Kusama produced and starred in won a prize at the Fourth International Experimental Film Competition in Belgium and the Second Maryland Film Festival and the second prize at the Ann Arbor Film Festival. Held exhibitions and staged happenings also in various countries in Europe.

Returned to Japan in 1973. While continuing to produce and show art works, Kusama issued a number of novels and anthologies. In 1983, the novel “The Hustlers Grotto of Christopher Street" won the Tenth Literary Award for New Writers from the monthly magazine Yasei Jidai.

In 1986, held solo exhibitions at the Musee Municipal, Dole and the Musee des Beaux-Arts de Calais, France, in 1989, solo exhibitions at the Center for International Contemporary Arts, New York and the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, England. In 1993, participated in the 45th Venice Biennale.

Began to create open-air sculptures in 1994. Produced open-air pieces for the Fukuoka Kenko Center, the Fukuoka Municipal Museum of Art, the Bunka-mura on Benesse Island of Naoshima, Kirishima Open-Air Museum and Matsumoto City Museum of Art, , in front of Matsudai Station, Niigata,TGV's Lille-Europe Station in France, Beverly Gardens Park, Beverly hills, Pyeonghwa Park, Anyang and a mural for the hallway at subway station in Lisbon.

Began to show works mainly at galleries in New York in 1996. A solo show held in New York in the same year won the Best Gallery Show in 1995/96 and the Best Gallery Show in 1996/97 from the International Association of Art Critics in 1996.

From1998 to 1999, a major retrospective of Kusama's works which opened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art traveled to the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Walker Art Center and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo.

In 2000, Kusama won The Education Minister's Art Encouragement Prize and Foreign-Minister's Commendations. Her solo exhibition that started at Le Consortium in France in the same year traveled to Maison de la culture du Japon, Paris, KUNSTHALLEN BRANDTS ÆDEFABRIK, Denmark, Les Abattoirs, Toulouse, KUNSTHALLE Wien, Art Sonje Center, Seoul.

Received the Asahi Prize in 2001, the Medal with Dark Navy Blue Ribbon in 2002, the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Officier), and the Nagano Governor Prize (for the contribution in encouragement of art and culture) in 2003

In 2004, Her solo exhibition “KUSAMATRIX" started at Mori Museum in Tokyo. This exhibition drew visitors totaling 520,000 people. In the same year, another solo exhibition started at The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo In 2005, it traveled to The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto, Matsumoto City Museum of Art.

Received the 2006 National Lifetime Achievement Awards, the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Losette and The Praemium Imperiale -Painting- in 2006.

In 2008, Documentary film : “Yayoi Kusama, I adore myself" released in Japan and also screened at international film festival and museum. Exhibition tour started at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, traveled to Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney in Australia in 2009, City Gallery Wellington in New Zealand. Conferred the honorary citizen of Matsumoto city.

Solo exhibition at Gagosian Gallery NY and LA, Victora Miro Gallery in London and Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea in Milan. Honored as Person of Cultural Merits in Japan 2009.

In 2010, solo exhibition and permanent outdoor sculpture at Towada Art Center in Japan.?Participation to Sydney Biennale and Aichi Triennale. Solo exhibition at Victoria Miro Gallery in London, fiac in Paris.

2011, solo exhibition at Gagosian gallery (Roma), Victoria Miro gallery (London). Europe and North America retrospective tour started at Museo Nacional Centro De Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid traveling to Centre Pompidou

(Paris), TATE MODERN (London) and Whitney Museum (New York). Solo exhibition at Watari Art Museum (Tokyo). In September, participate in the 2011 Chengdu Biennale (China). Programmed solo exhibition at Queensland Art Gallery (Brisbane) in November.

2012, “Eternity of Eternal Eternity", recent works solo national traveling show started at National Museum of Art, Osaka traveled to The Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, Matsumoto City Museum of Art, Nagano, Niigata City Art Museum. In the next year, it travel to Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, Oita Art Museum and Museum of Art, Koch. Solo exhibition at Victoria Miro gallery (London). Shinjuku Honorary Citizen Award. The American Academy Of Arts and Letters Foreign Honorary Membership. Collaborated with Louis Vuitton creative director Marc Jacobs on collaborative collection “LOUIS VUITTON × YAYOI KUSAMA Collection".

2013, “Yayoi Kusama. Obsesión infinita [Infinite Obsession]", South America retrospective tour started at Malba - Fundacacion Constantini. It will travel to Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, Centro Cultutal Banco do Brasil, Brasília, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo and Mexico City. “KUSAMA YAYOI, A Dream I Dreamed", recent works exhibition tour started at Daegu Art Museum, Korea. It will travel to Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai, Seoul Arts Centre, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi.


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Yayoi Kusama

Our earth is only one polka dot among a million stars in the cosmos. Polka dots are a way to infinity. –Yayoi Kusama

Guided by her unique vision and unparalleled creativity, critically acclaimed artist Yayoi Kusama has been breaking new ground for more than six decades. In 1993, she became the first woman to represent Japan at the Venice Biennale, and last year, Time magazine named her one of the world’s most influential people.

Born in 1929, Kusama grew up near her family’s plant nursery in Matsumoto, Japan. At nineteen, following World War II, she went to Kyoto to study the traditional Japanese style of painting known as Nihonga . During this time, she began experimenting with abstraction, but it was not until she arrived in the United States, in 1957, that her career took off. Living in New York from 1958 to 1973, Kusama moved in avant-garde circles with such figures as Andy Warhol and Allan Kaprow while honing her signature dot and net motifs, developing soft sculpture, creating installation-based works, and staging Happenings (performance-based events). She first used mirrors as a multireflective device in Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli’s Field , 1965, transforming the intense repetition that marked some of her earlier works into an immersive experience. Kusama returned to Japan in 1973 but has continued to develop her mirrored installations, and over the years, she has attained cult status, not only as an artist, but as a novelist.

Works on Paper

Kusama’s works on paper first garnered attention in the United States in 1957, when she was the subject of a solo exhibition at Zoë Dusanne Gallery in Seattle. Produced on a small scale in rapid succession while the artist was still living in her hometown of Matsumoto, these drawings consist of abstract forms that evoke orbs, eggs, amoebae, and columns. In Infinity , black watery dots hover in a dense mass reminiscent of cells in a petri dish. In other works, such as Flower QQ2 , the dots may suggest a red light emerging from a distant haze. Hidden Flames, The Island in the Sea No. 1, Inward Vision No. 4 , and Long Island employ decalcomania , a Surrealist technique of blotting the surface of a sheet of paper with wet gouache paint and pressing another sheet against it to spread the pigment around. These early drawings are intimate, organic microcosms that the artist later expanded on in her Infinity Mirror Rooms.

Infinity Nets

Kusama created her Infinity Net paintings during her first years in New York, a time when she faced tremendous financial and emotional hardship. The repetitious motion of inscribing tiny arcs on a solid black background served as a meditation through which she made works “without composition—without beginning, end, or center.” Though stemming from a very personal experience, Kusama’s “interminable nets,” later called Infinity Nets, were remarkably prescient to the formal questions of art in the 1960s. Embodying the painterly qualities and the emphasis on process that are characteristic of Abstract Expressionism, these works also echo the restraint and monochromatic palettes of Minimalism.

Accumulations

Kusama began making the Accumulations or “soft sculptures” in the early 1960s. Through creating countless soft phallic tubers and attaching them to furniture, the artist hoped to conquer her fear of sex and the phallus through a kind of self-therapy. Artworks made from sofas, chairs, step ladders, dressers, and a large table were presented together in Kusama: Driving Image Show , a 1964 installation that functioned as a “total environment.” Blue Spots and Red Stripes , both Accumulations, serve as important precursors to Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli’s Field . In Phalli’s Field , however, the tubers emerge from the floor rather than from panels on the wall and are multiplied ad infinitum by surrounding mirrors.

After focusing on performances for a few years, Kusama returned to making sculptures in the mid-1970s, continuing to use phallic forms. She often coated these works with silver paint, evoking the reflective surfaces of her Infinity Mirror Rooms. The results are less organic than the early Accumulations, their sheen frozen and ethereal. A Snake , is an example of one of these sculptures, and it was included in the monumental exhibition Women’s Work: American Art ’74 , held at the Museum of the Philadelphia Civic Center.

Arm Chair, 1963 Acrylic on chair, shoes ,and sewn and stuffed cloth pouches 38 x 38 x 50 in. (96.52 x 96.52 x 127 cm) Collection of the Akron Art Museum, Gift of Mr. Gordon Locksley and Mr. George Shea

My Eternal Soul

Begun in 2009, My Eternal Soul currently comprises over five hundred works. Kusama has said that through this series, she hopes to trace the “beauty of colors and space in the silence of death’s footsteps and the ‘nothingness’ it promises.” Within these paintings, which embody both the radiance of life and the sublimity of death, motifs from Kusama’s earliest works are often echoed, giving evidence to the singular vision that has driven her over the course of her long career. The effects of color vibration and exuberant patterning, for instance, are reminiscent of Kusama’s works on paper from the 1950s and 1960s. And, like her Infinity Mirror Rooms, which are simultaneously enclosed and expansive, colors and patterns pulsate within the bordered spaces of these canvases. The pattern of peering eyes is consistent with her tendency toward obsessive, endlesslly proliferating images, and the voyeuristic pattern transforms flat color fields into shadowy depths. Other biomorphic forms, some resembling microorganisms, populate Kusama’s strange landscapes, and titles such as Aggregation of Spirits suggest that these paintings may be surrogates for human souls.

Exhibition Catalogue

Yayoi kusama: infinity mirrors.

The first publication to focus on Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms, t his richly illustrated volume includes insightful essays by Mika Yoshitake, Alexander Dumbadze, and Gloria Sutton, as well as an interview with the artist by Melissa Chiu, the Hirshhorn’s director.

Exhibitions

Artist news, selected press.

Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama’s (b. 1929) work has transcended two of the most important art movements of the second half of the twentieth century: pop art and minimalism. Her highly influential career encompasses paintings, performances, room-size presentations, outdoor sculptural installations, literary works, films, fashion, design, and interventions within existing architectural structures, which allude at once to microscopic and macroscopic universes.

Yayoi Kusama: Aspiring to Pumpkin’s Love, the Love in My Heart, 2023

An iconic example of Kusama’s sculpture, embodying the themes and forms at the heart of her practice, this large-scale work demonstrates the most recent evolution of the pumpkin as a sculptural form in the artist’s work.

A sculpture by Yayoi Kusama, titled I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers, dated 2023.

I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers , 2023

Stainless steel and urethane paint

98 x 111 x 106 inches (248.9 x 281.9 x 269.2 cm)

Signed and dated

Aspiring to Pumpkin’s Love, the Love in My Heart , 2023

Bronze and urethane paint

132 x 328 x 163 inches (335.3 x 833.1 x 414 cm)

An installation by Yayoi Kusama, titled Dreaming of Earth’s Sphericity, I Would Offer My Love, dated 2023.

Dreaming of Earth’s Sphericity, I Would Offer My Love , 2023

Wood, stainless steel, aluminum, tile, acrylic, metal, and paint

158 3/4 x 201 1/8 x 201 1/8 inches (403.2 x 510.8 x 510.8 cm)

Dancing Pumpkin , 2020

193 x 306 x 293 inches (490.2 x 777.2 x 744.2 cm)

Installation view, KUSAMA: COSMIC NATURE , New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, New York, 2021

I Want to Fly to the Universe , 2020

Cast aluminum and urethane paint

157 1/2 x 169 1/4 x 140 1/8 inches (400 x 430 x 356 cm)

INFINITY MIRRORED ROOM - DANCING LIGHTS THAT FLEW UP TO THE UNIVERSE , 2019

Mirrored glass, wood, LED lighting system, metal, and acrylic panel

113 5/8 x 163 1/2 x 163 5/8 inches (288.6 x 415.3 x 415.6 cm)

An experiential installation by Yayoi Kusama, comprised of mirrors, wood, LED lighting system, metal, steel balls, and carpeting, titled Infinity Mirrored Room - Let's Survive Forever, dated 2017.

INFINITY MIRRORED ROOM - LET'S SURVIVE FOREVER , 2017

Wood, metal, glass mirrors, LED lighting system, monofilament, stainless steel balls, and carpet

123 x 246 x 245 1/4 inches (312.4 x 624.8 x 622.9 cm)

A sculpture by Yayoi Kusama, titled PUMPKIN, dated 2015.

Stainless steel and red urethane paint

68 3/8 x 71 3/4 x 66 inches (173.7 x 182.2 x 167.6 cm)

46 1/2 x 45 3/4 x 46 3/4 inches (118.1 x 116.2 x 118.7 cm)

I WHO CRY IN THE FLOWERING SEASON

Acrylic on canvas

76 3/8 x 76 3/8 inches (194 x 194 cm)

GIVE ME LOVE

A painting by Yayoi Kusama, titled MY HEART, dated 2015.

63 3/4 x 51 5/16 inches (162 x 130.3 cm)

Explore Exhibitions

Yayoi Kusama: Infinite Accumulation

Liverpool Street Station, London

Yayoi Kusama: Pumpkin

Kensington Gardens, Serpentine Galleries, London

July 9–November 3, 2024

Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now

Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Porto, Portugal

Installation view, Yayoi Kusama, Dreaming of Earth's Sphericity, I Would Offer My Love, 2023, in Yayoi Kusama: I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers, David Zwirner, New York, 2023

Yayoi Kusama: Infinite Love

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)

Celebrating 10 Years of Yayoi Kusama at Art Basel

Installation view of Yayoi Kusama and Dots Obsession, 1996-2011

Yayoi Kusama: You, Me and the Balloons

Factory International, Manchester

Yayoi Kusama, Self Obliteration, 1966–74. M+, Hong Kong

Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain

Yayoi Kusama: I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers

Coming May 2023

Photo of Yayoi Kusama, Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts

Creating Infinity: The Worlds of Louis Vuitton and Yayoi Kusama

January 2023

Installation view of Yayoi Kusama’s artwork, A Message of Love, Directly from My Heart unto the Universe, commissioned by MTA Arts & Design and New York City Transit

Yayoi Kusama's Grand Central Madison Mosaic

New York City

November 2022

Yayoi Kusama: My Soul Blooms Forever

Museum of Islamic Art, Doha

Yayoi Kusama, 2021. Photo by Yusuke Miyazaki

View Artist Website

Download Full CV

Yayoi Kusama ’s (b. 1929) work has transcended two of the most important art movements of the second half of the twentieth century: pop art and minimalism. Her highly influential career spans paintings, performances, room-size presentations, outdoor sculptural installations, literary works, films, fashion, design, and interventions within existing architectural structures, which allude at once to microscopic and macroscopic universes.

Born in Matsumoto, Japan, Kusama has been the subject of both solo and group presentations worldwide. She presented her first solo show in her native Japan in 1952. In the mid-1960s, she established herself in New York as an important avant-garde artist by staging groundbreaking and influential happenings, events, and exhibitions. Her work gained renewed widespread recognition in the late 1980s following a number of international solo exhibitions, including shows at the Center for International Contemporary Arts, New York, and the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, both of which took place in 1989. She represented Japan in 1993 at the 45th Venice Biennale, to much critical acclaim. In 1998, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, co-organized Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama, 1958–1968 , which toured to the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (1998-1999), and Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (1999).

In 2011 to 2012, her work was the subject of a large-scale retrospective that traveled to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Tate Modern, London; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. From 2012 through 2015, three major museum solo presentations of the artist’s work simultaneously traveled to major museums throughout Japan, Asia, and Central and South America. In 2015, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark, organized a comprehensive overview of Kusama’s practice that traveled to Henie-Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden, Norway; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; and Helsinki Art Museum. In 2017-2019, a major survey of the artist’s work, Infinity Mirrors , was presented at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Seattle Art Museum; The Broad, Los Angeles; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. Yayoi Kusama: Life Is the Heart of the Rainbow , which marked the first large-scale exhibition of Kusama’s work presented in Southeast Asia, opened at the National Gallery of Singapore in 2017 and traveled to the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, Australia and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara, Jakarta. In 2019, All About Love Speaks Forever, an exhibition tailor-made specifically for the Fosun Foundation, Shanghai, included more than forty works by the artist.

A comprehensive retrospective of the artist’s work was on view at Gropius Bau, Berlin, in 2021, and traveled to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 2022. KUSAMA: Cosmic Nature was on view at The New York Botanical Garden in 2021. In 2022, several major exhibitions of the artist’s work opened, including Yayoi Kusama: DANCING LIGHTS THAT FLEW UP TO THE UNIVERSE, PHI Foundation for Contemporary Art; Yayoi Kusama: My Soul Blooms Forever, Qatar Museums, Doha; and One with Eternity: Yayoi Kusama in the Hirshhorn Collection, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC. A major retrospective of the artist’s oeuvre, Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now, was on view from 2022 to 2023 at the M+ Museum in Hong Kong, traveled to the Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain in June 2023, and is currently on view at the Serralves Museum, Portugal until September 2024. Also in 2023, Yayoi Kusama - You, Me and the Balloons , was on view at Aviva Studios, Manchester, and the Pérez Art Museum Miami presented the exhibition Yayoi Kusama: LOVE IS CALLING. The solo exhibition Yayoi Kusama: Infinite Love was on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2024.

In 2023, a commissioned mosaic by Kusama, A Message of Love, Directly from My Heart unto the Universe (2022) was unveiled at the new Madison Concourse at Grand Central Station, New York, and will remain on permanent view.

Kusama has been represented by David Zwirner since 2013. The gallery’s inaugural exhibition in 2013 with the artist, titled I Who Have Arrived in Heaven , spanned all three spaces at West 19th Street in New York. Her second gallery solo show, Give Me Love , was held at David Zwirner, New York, in 2015. Subsequent solo shows of the artist’s work at David Zwirner, New York include Festival of Life , concurrently presented with Infinity Nets , in 2017; and EVERY DAY I PRAY FOR LOVE in 2019. In 2021, David Zwirner, Victoria Miro, and Ota Fine Arts jointly presented I WANT YOUR TEARS TO FLOW WITH THE WORDS I WROTE in London, Tokyo, and New York. In 2023 at the gallery’s 19th Street location, the artist’s sixth solo exhibition with David Zwirner, Yayoi Kusama: I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers , was on view.

Yayoi Kusama Museum, a museum dedicated to the artist’s work, opened October 1, 2017, in Tokyo with the inaugural exhibition Creation is a Solitary Pursuit, Love is What Brings You Closer to Art . The museum’s twelfth exhibition devoted to her work, Yayoi Kusama: Portraying the Figurative , is currently on view.

Work by the artist is held in museum collections worldwide, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate, United Kingdom; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among numerous others. Kusama lives and works in Tokyo.

Now Arriving: Yayoi Kusama and Kiki Smith’s Grand Central Madison Mosaics

The New York TImes, announcement by Ted Loos

Yayoi Kusama’s ‘Cosmic Nature’ Dots a Bronx Garden

The New York TImes, feature by Will Heinrich

Kusama Arrives. Is It Worth Your Time to Wait in Line?

The New York TImes, feature by Jason Farago

An explosion of joy — Yayoi Kusama at New York Botanical Garden

Financial Times, by Ariella Budick

Artist Yayoi Kusama adds colorful shapes and patterns to the New York Botanical Garden

The Washington Post

Yayoi Kusama is bringing a new Infinity Mirror Room to NYC this fall

Selected Titles

Yayoi Kusama: The Journal

David Zwirner Books

Yayoi Kusama: Every Day I Pray for Love

Yayoi Kusama: All About My Love

Thames & Hudson

Yayoi Kusama: Festival of Life

Yayoi Kusama: From Here to Infinity

The Museum of Modern Art

Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors

Revised and Expanded Edition

Yayoi Kusama: Give Me Love

Yayoi Kusama: Inventing the Singular

The MIT Press

Yayoi Kusama: Hi Konnichiwa

Kodansha USA

Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: With Artwork by Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama (Book and Journal)

Request More Information

AT THE SMITHSONIAN

Celebrating the eternal legacy of artist yayoi kusama.

An upcoming Hirshhorn collection exhibition will honor the artist’s seven-decade career

Nadine Daher

At first glance, the work of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama is visually dazzling. Her constructed boxed rooms with millions of reflections from strategically placed mirrors astonish all those who enter into them. Her brightly colored pumpkin sculptures loom larger-than-life in exhibitions and on Instagram feeds across the world. Packed with countless miniscule polka dots, her paintings create a sense of endlessness that challenges the borders of her canvas.

As if walking into a hallucination, it’s difficult to make sense of the repetitive motifs and endless spaces that feel so different from daily life. Self-described as the “modern Alice in Wonderland,” Kusama enthralls with these infinite visions; she generously welcomes museumgoers into a visualization of the world as she sees it.

Now 90 years old, Kusama was an active participant in the art world of the 1960s when she arrived in New York City from Kyoto in 1958. Growing up in an abusive household, Kusama, at the age of 10, began experiencing hallucinations. Dots, pumpkins and flashes of light occupied her vision. She later began to recreate these motifs through her art as a form of therapy.

Mental health issues prompted her to return to Tokyo and in 1977, she voluntarily checked herself into a mental institution. Today Kusama still lives in the institution, which is just down the street from her art studio. She travels back and forth between both locations and continues to create her signature pieces.

The idea that everything in our world is obliterated and comprised of infinite dots, from the human cell to the stars that make up the cosmic universe, is the theme of her art. As Kusama describes herself, “with just one polka dot, nothing can be achieved. In the universe, there is the sun, the moon, the earth, and hundreds of millions of stars. All of us live in the unfathomable mystery and infinitude of the universe.”

Attendees of the Hirshhorn’s immensely popular 2017 survey, “ Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors ” exhibiting six of Kusama’s Infinity Rooms, were able to experience this phenomenon for themselves.

It was a highly-anticipated moment in Kusama’s journey as an artist, and visitors responded, queuing up and waiting for hours to enter the museum to experience the otherworldly realms for themselves. The museum reports that nearly 160,000 people experienced the show, bumping its annual visitor record to 475,000.

Kusama channels recent cultural trends and technological advancements through her Infinity Rooms. This has allowed her to become one of the most famous artists of her generation and has kept her art relevant for decades. The spark in popularity of photography in the social media age aligns well with the self-reflection element of the Infinity Rooms.

“The self-envisioning that we see happening through social media today and through other forms of photography,” explains Betsy Johnson, a curator at the Hirshhorn, “is something that was a part of Kusama's practice the whole way through, but it just so happens that today that has become something that is at the forefront of our collective consciousness. It’s just the perfect fusion of cultural currents with something that was always a part of her practice.”

Now, the Hirshhorn announces yet another Kusama exhibition, “ One with Eternity: Kusama in the Hirshhorn Collection,” which opens in April. The show promises a tribute to the artist, rooting her otherworldly art within her life experiences. Kusama’s art is tied to overarching events she was experiencing at the time of their creation.

“She's become bigger than life, people look at artists and they think they're just special or different,” explains Johnson, who is organizing the upcoming exhibition. “One of the really wonderful things about working your way through a person's biography is understanding all of the little steps along the way that created what we see today.”

The objects on display will draw from different parts of her career, helping humanize the artist and deepen viewers’ appreciation of her work. While pumpkins, patterns and polka dots have been Kusama’s signature motifs, the artist has also experimented with other art forms that were influenced by her childhood. Among the five objects on display in this collection are some of her earliest paintings and photographs, as well as her 2016 signature sculpture titled Pumpkin and now held in the museum’s collections.

One piece from the collection, the 1964 Flowers—Overcoat is a gold coat covered with flowers. The sculpture reveals details of Kusama’s early life. “She wasn't always just focused on polka dots; she has this history where her family had acreage and grew plants,” Johnson says of the origin of Kusama’s interest in fashion. “This experience with organic forms is very much a part of her early practice and continues throughout her career.”

The exhibition will introduce the museum’s most recent acquisitions—two Infinity Mirror Rooms. A breakthrough moment in Kusama’s career was when she began constructing these experiential displays in 1965. No bigger than the size of small sheds , the interior of these rooms is lined with mirrored panels that create the illusion of endless repetition. Each room carries a distinct theme, with objects, sculptures, lights or even water reflected onto its mirrored walls.

The artist has constructed about 20 of these rooms, and has continued to release renditions up to this day. The evolution of these rooms demonstrates how her understanding of the immersive environment has shifted throughout the decades. On display at the upcoming exhibition will be Kusama’s first installation, Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli’s Field (Floor Show) (1965/2017) as well as one of her most recent rooms. The title and theme of the new room, newly acquired by the museum, is yet to be announced.

Johnson won’t say much about the museum’s newest Infinity Room acquisition but she did hint that in true Kusama fashion, the room feels otherworldly, seeming to exist outside of space and time.

The Discovery of the Lost Kusama Watercolors

Even at the beginning of her career, Kusama’s desire to understand her hallucinations and mediate her interaction with the world was expressed through her practice. Before transforming her visions into unique renditions of eternal repetition and perceptual experiences, Kusama expressed them through early paintings and works on paper.

The visual elements that Kusama audiences admire took Smithsonian archivist Anna Rimel quite by surprise late last year, when she was going through archived materials at the Joseph Cornell Study Center at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Rimel was conducting a preliminary survey of the Joseph Cornell papers when she found the paintings. Gathered in a worn manila envelope with Cornell’s writing on the outside were four previously undiscovered Kusama watercolors . The paintings were stored with their original receipts and given titles and signed by Kusama herself, making them an exciting discovery for Rimel and the museum staff.

“They're very ethereal looking. The images themselves seem to be emerging out of a murky background, they give off a very oceanic kind of quality,” says Rimel. “They're really visceral, you can't help but react to them when you see them.”

These watercolor works date back to the mid-50s, bordering Kusama’s transition from Japan and into the United States. They were purchased by artist Joseph Cornell, a friend and supporter of Kusama’s art.

Although different from the vibrant nature of her more recent pieces, these watercolor paintings share the cosmological nature Kusama would later expand on with the Infinity Rooms and other pieces. The watercolor paintings have been transferred to the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum .

As this recent discovery indicates, Kusama’s career is continuing to surprise art enthusiasts by offering up new gifts to admire. A tribute to her legacy, the upcoming Hirshhorn exhibition will celebrate the artist whose work has now become a part of the Institution's history.

“The Kusama show was huge for us in so many ways and really helped draw a larger audience, and we really recognize that,” Johnson says. “As a result of that, we really want to continue her legacy in D.C., and in our museum,”

In 1968, in an open letter to then-president Richard Nixon, Kusama wrote , “let’s forget ourselves, dearest Richard, and become one with the absolute, all together in the alltogether.” Loosely derived from these words, Johnson named the exhibition, “One with Eternity” in reference to the museum's effort to ensure that the artist’s legacy, like her art, becomes eternal.

“That's what museums are in the practice of doing—making sure that an artist's legacy lasts for as long as it possibly can,” explains Johnson. “It’s about making sure that this legacy that she has created is sustained into the future.”

Currently, to support the effort to contain the spread of COVID-19, all Smithsonian museums in Washington, D.C. and in New York City, as well as the National Zoo, are temporarily closed. Check listings for updates. The the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden has postponed the opening of “One with Eternity: Kusama in the Hirshhorn Collection ” until later in the year. Free same-day timed passes will be required for this experience and will be distributed daily at the museum throughout the run of the exhibition.

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Nadine Daher | | READ MORE

Nadine Daher is a digital intern at Smithsonian magazine. She is a senior at Northwestern, where she studies journalism and international studies.

Start › Exhibitions › Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama, Kusama with Pumpkin, 2010 © Yayoi Kusama Installation View: Aichi Triennale 2010. Courtesy Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo/ Singapore; Victoria Miro Gallery, London; David Zwirner, New York; and KUSAMA Enterprise

Biography Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama is born, the youngest of four children, in the small provincial city of Matsumoto about 200 km west of Tokyo. Her upbringing is marked by conservative values and the cold relationship between her parents. Kusama starts painting and drawing at an early age.

Despite her parents’ resistance, Kusama begins to study art in Kyoto, where she learns nihonga painting. She participates in more and more traveling exhibitions, both in her local area as well as in cities like Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto. In 1952, Kusama’s first solo exhibition is shown in Matsumoto.

With the help of two psychiatrists who have treated her for her mental disorders, Kusama is admitted to the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. Though it is her great desire to go to Paris, Kusama declines the offer when she gets the chance to have a solo exhibition in Tokyo.

Participates in The International Watercolor Exhibition: 18 th Biennial at the Brooklyn Museum in New York. She writes a letter to the artist Georgia O’Keeffe, asking for advice about starting a career in the US. O’Keeffe writes back and their correspondence continues for several years.

Kusama emigrates to the US. Arriving in Seattle, she has her first American solo exhibition at the Zoe Dusanne Gallery. One year later, she arrives in New York.

Yayoi Kusama with one of her Infinity Net paintings in New York, c. 1961.

Kusama has her first solo show in New York, at the Brata Gallery, where she shows Infinity Nets. The exhibition receives good reviews, also by Donald Judd, who works as a critic before becoming an artist. He becomes a close friend and supporter for many years.

First European exhibition, Monochrome Malerei, at the Städtisches Museum, Leverkusen. The exhibition also features Lucio Fontana, Yves Klein, Piero Manzoni and Mark Rothko.

She gets a studio in the same building as Donald Judd and Eva Hesse. Kusama is struggling to make ends meet and works hard, leading to exhaustion and hallucinations.

Two Accumulation Sculptures are shown at the Green Gallery in New York. Claes Oldenburg and Andy Warhol also have works in the show, which is later designated as one of the first exhibitions of Pop Art. Kusama also shows Infinity Nets in the exhibition Nul at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

Kusama exhibits Aggregation: One Thousand Boats Show at the Gertrude Stein Gallery in New York. Kusama’s first installation.

Kusama’s Driving Image Show at the Richard Castellane Gallery in New York features macaroni-covered objects and Accumulation Sculptures installed in a room with a macaroni-covered floor.

Kusama’s first mirror installation, Infinity Mirror Room – Phalli’s Field is shown at the Richard Castellane Gallery. Kusama moves into a new studio, which she initially shares with the Japanese artist On Kawara. She has her first European solo show and is also shown in the exhibition The Inner and Outer Space at Moderna Museet in Stockholm.

Yayoi Kusama in Narcissus Garden at the Venice Biennial, Italy

She makes her first appearance at the Venice Biennale, with her installation Narcissus Garden.

The hippie and protest movements find a place in Kusama’s performances. Kusama starts organizing public happenings, Body Paint Festivals and Anatomic Explosions in New York. Kusama produces the film Kusama’s Self-Obliteration, which the following year wins awards at several festivals of experimental film the following year. By now, she has gradually moved away from the gallery scene.

Kusama is arrested for obscenity when she organizes a nude happening in Tokyo. She returns to New York after three months in her home country.

Kusama moves back to Japan in 1973. She works in ceramics, watercolours and collage, and writes poetry.

Having been hospitalized several times for recurring panic attacks and hallucinations, Kusama decides to move permanently into the psychiatric hospital that is still her home today. The following year she publishes her first novel, Manhattan Suicide Addict. Up until 999, she publishes 3 short stories and novels as well as a book of poems.

The Fuji Television Gallery in Tokyo exhibits Kusama’s new large paintings and sculptures. A solo show at the Naviglio Gallery in Milan also marks Kusama’s return to the European gallery scene.

The first American retrospective, at the Center for International Contemporary Arts in New York, sparks new interest in her work internationally.

Kusama represents Japan at the Venice Biennale with works spanning her entire career, including a large installation, Mirror Room (Pumpkin).

Kusama has numerous international shows, both of new works and retrospectives. The large exhibition Love Forever; Yayoi Kusama 1958–1968 is shown in Los Angeles, New York, Minneapolis and Tokyo.

A retrospective exhibition of nearly 300 works is shown in Kusama’s hometown of Matsumoto. Kusama collaborates with the Osaka-based creative cooperative graf on a line of furniture and fabric. Kusama’s autobiography, Infinity Net, is published in Japanese.

An extensive exhibition, KUSAMATRIX, opens at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo. Here, among others, the large room installation Dots Obsession is shown.

Starts working on a new series of large canvases in bright colours, My Eternal Soul, deciding to make 100.

A large retrospective exhibition is shown at the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, travelling to the Tate Modern the following year and ending at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

A collaboration with Louis Vuitton, Kusama designs a line of clothing, bags, shoes and accessories.

Kusama is still working on the My Eternal Soul series. Having long since reached her initial goal of 100 paintings: “I want to paint 1000 or 2000 paintings. I want to keep painting even after I die.”.

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Part of UNIQLO Tate Play in partnership with UNIQLO. Please visit the Tate website with an adult

Who is she?

Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese artist who is sometimes called ‘the princess of polka dots'. Although she makes lots of different types of art – paintings, sculptures, performances and installations – she has become known for the one thing they have in common, DOTS!

What's with all the dots?

Yayoi Kusama tells the story of how when she was a little girl she had a hallucination that freaked her out. She was in a field of flowers when they all started talking to her! The heads of flowers were like dots that went on as far as she could see, and she felt as if she was disappearing or as she calls it ‘self-obliterating’ – into this field of endless dots. This weird experience influenced most of her later work.

By adding all-over marks and dots to her paintings, drawings, objects and clothes she feels as if she is making them (and herself) melt into, and become part of, the bigger universe. She said:

‘Our earth is only one polka dot among a million stars in the cosmos. Polka dots are a way to infinity. When we obliterate nature and our bodies with polka dots, we become part of the unity of our environment’.

1965: Infinity Mirror Rooms, Phallis Field, installation view in the exhibition floor show , Richard Castellane Gallery, New York © YAYOI KUSAMA

Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Mirrored Room ® Filled with the Brilliance of Life , 2011 © YAYOI KUSAMA, Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts, Victoria Miro

She also creates environments of dots so that we can experience this feeling of self-obliteration too. She calls these rooms her 'Infinity Rooms', and creates them by installing hundreds of flashing coloured LED lights into mirrored rooms. The pinpricks of light in the dark room reflect endlessly in the mirrors, making you feel like you are in an apparently endless space. The dots surround and engulf you…it's very hard to tell where you end and where the rest of the room begins!

How did she start?

Yayoi was born in Japan in 1929. She loved drawing and painting and although her parents didn't want her to be an artist, she was determined. When her mum tore up her drawings, she made more. When she could not afford to buy art materials, she used mud and old sacks to make art. This is a drawing she made of her mum when she was 10-years-old.

Yayoi Kusama, Untitled 1939 , Pencil on paper, 25 × 22 cm

Eventually Yayoi Kusama persuaded her parents to let her go to art school and study painting.

In the late 1950s she moved to New York as lots of the most exciting art seemed to be happening there. It must have been a bit frightening arriving in a big city with such a different culture from what she knew. But she was determined to conquer New York. She later wrote about her feisty attitude: ‘I would stand up to them all with a single polka dot’.

1965 Lying on the base of My Flower Bed (1962) Photo: Peter Moore © Northwestern University © YAYOI KUSAMA

She had the first of many exhibitions there in 1959. She met and inspired important artists including Donald Judd, Andy Warhol and Joseph Cornell, and her art was a part of exciting art developments such as pop art and minimalism. She was also one of the first artists to experiment with performance and action art.

As well as being an art pioneer, Yayoi Kusama put her creativity into other things including music, design, writing and fashion.

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Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese artist born in Japan, in 1929. The world-famous artist is known for her works that span the art movements of Abstract Expressionism, and a pre-cursor to the emergence of Minimalism, before transforming into Pop Art . She has worked in painting, photography, installation, and performance art.

Repetition, polka dots, phallic symbols, pumpkins, mushrooms, mirrors, and reflective surfaces are all part of her works.

The Spirits of the Pumpkins Descended into the Heavens. 2017. Yayoi Kusama .National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia.

Yayoi Kusama Art Influences

Yayoi Kusama suffered from childhood hallucinations where a pattern would overtake her vision. As a form of dealing with this, she would paint what she saw. Artist Yayoi Kusama explained, “ One day I was looking at the red flower patterns of the tablecloth on the table, and when I looked up, I saw the same pattern covering the ceiling, the windows, and the walls, and finally all over the room, my body, and the universe. I felt as if I had begun to self-obliterate, to revolve in the infinity of endless time and absoluteness of space and be reduced to nothingness.” This was the influence for dots and repetitive patterns in her work.

Personal anxiety is also a theme in the work of Yayoi Kusama, including a fear of sex, which she says is from years of watching her father who was a womanizer. Additionally, she was raised by an unhappy physically and mentally abusive mother, which caused additional trauma. Art became a way of dealing with her mental health.

At the age of 13, Yayoi Kusama worked sewing parachutes for Japan and World War II. Learning how to sew was invaluable, as she used this skill to create her soft sculptures. Moving forward she was always vocally opposed to war. This merged with the 60s hippie movement of anti-war, anti-establishment, and free love.

Yayoi Kusama Early Training

After studying traditional Japanese painting Yayoi Kusama was ready for change. During the time of her art studies, (1948–49) at the Kyōto City Specialist School of Arts, the country of Japan rejected all things Western. Yayoi Kusama was taught the art of Nihonga, using Japanese painting techniques and materials that were based on thousand-year-old traditions. Although Kusama’s art were excellent examples of this, and her works were shown in exhibitions throughout Japan, she wanted the freedom to create her own style and work.

About Japan Yayoi Kusama would later say, “For art like mine, it was too small, too servile, too feudalistic, and too scornful of women. My art needed a more unlimited freedom, and a wider world.”

Yayoi Kusama and A Move to New York

In 1958, she moved to New York, attracted to the post-war art scene. Yayoi Kusama began to work in watercolors and was intrigued initially by Abstract Expressionism. “When I arrived in New York, action painting was the rage…” Yayoi Kusama reflected. “I wanted to be completely detached from that and start a new art movement.” Later she would find her way into the Pop art movement.

Yayoi Kusama worked obsessively on her artwork, in all its various forms. In fact, she would sometimes work for 50 hour stretches, without stopping.

Yayoi Kusama, the Art Scene, and Expansion

Yayoi Kusama had started corresponding with female artist Georgia O’Keefe, before moving to New York. The friendship initially began because Kusama greatly admired O’Keefe’s work. She sought advice by writing, “I’m only on the first step of the long difficult life of being a painter. Will you kindly show me the way?”

O’Keefe corresponded by saying it was difficult to make a living as an artist in her country, but still suggested Yayoi Kusama come over to show her work to as many people as she could. With O’Keefe’s connections, Kusama was able to quickly secure exhibitions and sales of her work.

Minimalist artist Donald Judd purchased Yayoi Kusama very first Infinity Net painting. Years later, in 2008, it set a new auction price record for works by female artists.

Yayoi Kusama also developed a devotionally close, but platonic relationship, with the assemblage artist Joseph Cornell. Upon his death, in 1972, she began working in collage to honor his memory.

During her time living in New York, Yayoi Kusama became a central figure on the New York art scene, working along with other Pop art artists, including Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg.

Yayoi Kusama was a good friend of Andy Warhol. Later, she confessed she thought he had stolen her ideas, pointing out an exhibition in 1963. Kusama had covered a rowboat in phalluses, as part of her Accumulation Series . Yayoi Kusama photographed the sculpture and made a repetitive wallpaper with the image. Warhol made a wallpaper with the repetitive symbol of a cow for a 1966 exhibition.

The Woman (1953)

Yayoi Kusama’s art The Woman is an abstract drawing using pastel, aqueous tempera, and acrylic paint, at the Blanton Museum of Art, at The University of Texas at Austin. In it a lone spiked, red outlined biomorphic object, illuminated with yellow and filled with green flecks, floats in a sea of blackness. The work has an aggressive quality, even though unworldly. This is an example of the artist’s early work.

The Infinity Nets Series

The Infinity Nets Series by Yayoi Kusama are considered some of her most iconic works. Highly detailed, the artist painted minute areas that resemble lace. Kusama first started producing these works between 1958 and 1968.

“My nets grew beyond myself and beyond the canvases I was covering with them…They began to cover the walls, the ceiling, and finally the whole universe. I was always standing at the center of the obsession, over the passionate accretion and repetition inside of me,” said Yayoi Kusama.

No. F is part of Yayoi Kusama’s art Infinity Nets Series . The oil on canvas work, at The Museum of Modern Art, in New York, combines Abstract Expressionism with Minimalism. The work uses an allover painting method. The nongeometric abstract painting also manages to incorporate repetition. From a distance the work appears monochromatic in blue-grey, until the viewer steps closer to observe its complexities of white semi-circles.

Yayoi Kusama explained this work by simply saying it was, “without beginning, end or center. The entire canvas would be occupied by a monochromatic net. The endless repetition caused a dizzy, empty, hypnotic feeling.”

The Infinity Nets Series was not only painted. In Accumulation Nets (No.7), also at The Museum of Modern Art, in New York , gelatin silver photographs of Yayoi Kusama’s art Infinity Nets Series were cut and assembled into a grid pattern. Here, without visible brushstrokes, the work is starker.

Accumulation Series

In this series Yayoi Kusama took everyday objects and sexualized the pieces to turn them into unique pieces of art, starting in the 1960s. Accumulation No. 1 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, was the aptly named first in the series. In this work, artist Yayoi Kusama takes a stuffed chair and embellishes it with numerous stuffed phallic pieces. The result is a new three-dimensional sculpture that confronts fear of sex and the viewers’ sense of wonder. Critics were initially shocked by the work, especially because it was made by a female artist.

Infinity Mirror Room

Yayoi Kusama found filling, stuffing, sewing and sometimes painting her phallic pieces taxing, both physically and mentally, due to the sheer vastness required for her art projects in the Accumulation Series. What if she made these pieces look more plentiful, in a room full of reflective mirrors? The Infinity Mirror Room was born. The interiors may change with each Infinity Mirror Room the artist Yayoi Kusama creates, but they are all based on the same premise—endless repetition.

For Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli’s Field (1965) Kusuma used a mirrored room as a space for hundreds of red dot painted stuffed phalli. The work was first shown at Castellane Gallery, in New York, in 1965.

Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli’s Field (1965) Yayoi Kusuma

The second Infinity Mirror Room the artist Yayoi Kusama created is entitled Infinity Mirrored Room- Love Forever . The room is shaped like a hexagon. Two peep holes allow viewers to see themselves and another reflected in endless mirrors, under lights.

When the room was set up for view, in 1965, the artist disturbed button that said Love Forever. Crafted from wood, mirrors, metal, and lightbulbs, today Infinity Mirrored Room- Love Forever is part of the collection of Ota Fine Arts, in Tokyo.

Meanwhile, the Infinity Mirrored Room- The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away (2013), constructed from metal, wood, plastic, acrylic, rubber, and an LED lighting system, is at The Broad Art Foundation, in Los Angeles. The lights represent the galaxies.

Infinity Mirror Rooms by Yayoi Kusama, in their many forms continue to fascinate viewers.

An Infinity Mirror Room installation by Yayoi Kusama

Narcissus Garden (1966)

Although she hadn’t been invited to participate in the 1966 Venice Biennale, her installation and performance art entitled Narcissus Garden made Yayoi Kusama an international success. Dressed in a gold kimono, she placed 1500 reflected stainless steel balls on the lawn where the art event was taking place. Then, she posted a sign that read, “Your narcissism for sale!”

Those who entered the 1966 Venice Biennale were entranced by Yayoi Kusama’s Narcissus Garden, but eventually she was asked to leave and escorted away by the police.

As a savvy promoter, she was always networking. “Publicity is critical to my work because it offers the best way of communicating with a large number of people… avant-garde artists should use mass communication as traditional painters use paints and brushes.” This would become most notable in her performance art.

Anatomic Explosion (1968)

After Narcissus Garden , Kusama started to develop more performative “happenings”. In 1968, during her Anatomic Explosion , across from the New York Stock Exchange, four naked dancers moved to the beat of bongos. Yayoi Kusama painted the dancers with blue polka dots. The police interrupted the performance within 15 minutes.

Yayoi Kusama said the work was in protest to the Vietnam War. She wrote a to the president in a work called An Open Letter to My Hero, Richard M. Nixon . In it she said earth was like a polka dot among all the other celestials. With his help she wanted to create a peaceful environment. “You can’t eradicate violence with more violence,” she wrote.

The polka dots symbolized the earth. The nakedness was a return to the Garden of Eden. As for the location of the performance across from the New York Stock Exchange, Yayoi Kusama said, “The money made with this stock is enabling the war to continue. We protest this cruel, greedy instrument of the war establishment,”

Grand Orgy to Awaken the Dead (1969)

The New York Daily News posed the question “But Is It Art?” in 1969, after Yayoi Kusama staged a performance happening, Grand Orgy to Awaken the Dead (1969), in the Sculpture Garden, at the Museum of Modern Art, in New York.

The “happening”, unauthorized by the museum, involved naked performers embracing each other and the nude sculptural works of dead artist, arranged as part of the fountain. Onlookers were shocked at what they saw.

Critics interpreted this as a publicity stunt, by artist Yayoi Kusama, who during the event was in attendance, but faced away from the frolic. However, Kusama wanted to make a point that there were too many works by dead artists in the museum and she wanted to draw attention to living artists.

Pumpkin (1994)

Yayoi Kusama started to work with outdoor sculptures, with the work Pumpkin , which she designed for the Benesse Art Site on Naoshima Island, in Japan. Made from acrylic on ceramic, the large yellow pumpkin sculpture is painted with various sized polka-dots black.

Moving Back to Japan

In 1973, Yayoi Kusama moved back to Japan, where she is still creating art, writing poetry and fiction. Then, diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder, she checked herself into a mental institution, where she continues to live.

Yayoi Kusama’s art was almost forgotten, until 1993, when she was asked to represent Japan, in the 45 th Venice Biennale. One of her Infinity Mirror Room series was installed containing dotted pumpkins. It was a raving success!

The Yayoi Kusama Museum

The Yayoi Kusama Museum is one of the most visited Museums in Tokyo, Japan. Located in a polka-dot covered small building, it houses a collection of artist Yayoi Kusama works including paintings, sculptures, installations, and exhibitions. Mini Infinity Mirror Rooms have been constructed in the elevator and bathrooms too.

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b. 1930, Japan

Exhibitions.

Publications

Yayoi Kusama Biography

Sometimes referred to as the 'princess of polka dots', Yayoi Kusama is widely recognised as one of the best-selling female artists of the 21st century. Her hypnotic, dotty dreamworlds have led to a worldwide museum craze—between 2014 and 2019, more than five million people queued for the artist's exhibitions around the world.

Born into a wealthy but allegedly unhappy family in Matsumoto, Japan, in 1929, Kusama felt discouraged from creating art by her mother and father. As a child, art-making became an act of rebellion for her. Her training as an artist began at Kyoto Municipal School of Arts and Crafts, where she studied nihonga —a form of traditional Japanese painting. However, the artist disagreed with the rigid hierarchy of the genre. In hopes of finding success in the United States, she wrote to painter Georgia O'Keeffe (whose address she had found at the American Embassy in Tokyo ) for advice on entering the New York art world. To her surprise, O'Keeffe replied, warning her of the difficulties of working in the city.

In 1958, Yayoi Kusama found the courage to relocate to New York, where she found herself in the thick of the avantgarde movements of the time. Surrounded by Minimalism and Pop art and incorporating elements of both into her work, the artist's critical acclaim is pinned to the 'Infinity Net' series (1958–ongoing) that she began at this time: canvases engulfed by hundreds or thousands of small, colourful loops of paint. In 2014, White No. 28 , which belongs to the series, reached USD7.1 million at Christie's.

'Accumulation'

Yayoi Kusama's artwork has often referred to repetition of form as offering her solace from the traumas she has battled with since her youth. As a young girl, the artist recalls that her mother would ask her to spy on her father and she has referred to the frequently incorporated phallic forms in her work, as seen in her 'Accumulation' series, begun in 1962, as an act of reconciliation with her childhood fears regarding what she might see. 'Accumulation' comprises soft sculptures made of found furniture covered in sewn, white penis forms. Later, the artist would fill entire rooms with these soft forms, such as Compulsion Furniture (Accumulation) (c 1964): a room filled with phallus-covered furniture. The installations that she created in the 1960s were precursors to her best-known infinity rooms of today.

In 1965, mirrors first appeared in Yayoi Kusama's work Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli's Field (1965), in which the floor of a square, mirrored room was covered in a layer of white, stuffed phalluses dotted in red. In recent years, the artist's repetitive dot motifs have spawned a set of infinity mirror-room exhibitions internationally, including Yayoi Kusama: Infinite Obsession , whose worldwide tour reached the biggest global audience for an art exhibition in 2015. In 2017, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC debuted another touring exhibition titled Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirror . Two-hour queueing times did not dampen the enthusiasm of thousands of visitors, who were granted a brief half-minute slot of solitude within the infinity mirror rooms.

Museum and Documentary

A decline in the artist's mental health in the early 1970s saw her return to Japan. In 1977, she checked herself into a psychiatric hospital in Tokyo where she has lived ever since—her studio is located across the road. In 2017, the Yayoi Kusama Museum was founded in Shinjuku Ward and dedicated to her life-long practice, while 2018 marked the release of a Yayoi Kusama documentary, entitled Yayoi Kusama: Infinity . Directed by Heather Lenz, the Yayoi Kusama documentary traces the artist's career, showing her not solely as a product of social media and market success, but an example of perseverance against the odds.

Public Works

Yayoi Kusama's vibrantly-coloured sculptures occupy numerous sites across the world. In August 2021 , her yellow-and-black Pumpkin (1994) was swept away from its spot in Naoshima, Japan, by Typhoon Lupit.

Yayoi Kusama's works have been exhibited internationally, with more recent solo exhibitions including Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirror Rooms , Tate Modern , London (2021); Yayoi Kusama , Gropius Bau, Berlin, organised in collaboration with the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2021); Love is Calling , Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2019); Infinitely Kusama , Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis (2019); Festival of Life and Infinity Nets , David Zwirner , New York (2017); Yayoi Kusama: The obliteration room , Dunedin Public Art Gallery (2016).

Between 2017 and 2019, her solo exhibition Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors travelled to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Seattle Art Museum; The Broad, Los Angeles; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; and High Museum of Art, Atlanta.

John Hurrell | Ocula | 2021

1945 To Now

In The House Of The Trembling Eye

Yayoi Kusama featured artworks

Buds (2) by Yayoi Kusama contemporary artwork painting

Yayoi Kusama current & recent exhibitions

Represented by these Ocula Member Galleries

David Zwirner contemporary art gallery in New York: 19th Street, United States

Yayoi Kusama in Ocula Magazine

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8 Must-See Summer Exhibitions in Europe 2023

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Education

1948-1949 Kyoto Municipal School of Arts and Crafts, Kyoto, Japan

Solo Exhibitions( SELECTED)

Yayoi Kusama, Manabia Fine Arts

Yayoi Kusama, Sculptures and Prints, Manabia Fine Arts

Journey to the Unbounded Universe, S2A

Yayoi Kusama: DANCING LIGHTS THAT FLEW UP TO THE UNIVERSE, Fondation Phi

KUSAMA PUMPKIN, Artree

Yayoi Kusama - Between Heaven and Earth, Galerie Von Vertes

Yayoi Kusama Prints 2011/2012, art&emotion Fine Art Gallery

Kusama: Infinity, David Benrimon Fine Art

Yayoi Kusma: Self-Obliteration in Three Parts, The Missing Plinth

Yayoi Kusama Prints, Multiples and Open Editions, Lougher Contemporary

YAYOI KUSAMA: "THE LONGING FOR MY LOVE ALL BEGAN FROM MY HEART", Ota Fine Arts

Yayoi Kusama, SEIZAN Gallery

Flower Garden: Yayoi Kusama, MAKI

Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors, Seattle Art Museum

The best quality of Yayoi Kusama art works, Yodo Gallery

Yayoi Kusama: In Infinity, Moderna Museet

Yayoi Kusama: Fabulous Naturalist, Shapero Modern

Yayoi Kusama, Victoria Miro

YAYOI KUSAMA, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

Yayoi Kusama - Arrays, Malin Gallery

Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Theory, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art

Yayoi Kusama, SBI artfolio

Yayoi Kusama, Gagosian

Dots Obsession, Rice University Art Gallery

Group Exihibitions(SELECTED)

The Art of Printmaking, Maddox Gallery

ART on PAPER: 1920 to 2020, Stern Pissarro Gallery

The Female Emperor, Alpha 137 Gallery

Art With Text: The Message is the Medium, Alpha 137 Gallery

Art Works $1,000 or less, Alpha 137 Gallery

Art about LOVE, Alpha 137 Gallery

Artists Skates, Plates & Design Objects, Alpha 137 Gallery

In the Mood for Red, Stern Pissarro Gallery

ABSTRACTION: A Global Survey, EHC Fine Art

Printing out The Inner Spirit of Her: Leonora Carrington, Joan Mitchell, Louise Bourgeois, Yayoi Kusama, Chiharu Shiota, Valerie Hammond Group Exhibition, Gallery de Sol

Women's History Month, Lougher Contemporary

Women's History Month, ArtWise

Collecting by Color: Blue, Alpha 137 Gallery

Memorable Prints and Multiples, Alpha 137 Gallery

The Colour Edit, Baldwin Contemporary

Rare Parkett Editions, Carolina Nitsch Contemporary Art

Yayoi Kusama / Niki de Saint Phalle: A new world, Opera Gallery

Modern Muses, Helwaser Gallery

Contemporary and Modern Art Exhibition 《當代潮藝術展》, XUan Art Research Center

Global Contemporary Art Show, One Gallery

RAW Editions : The Christmas Edit IV, RAW Editions

The Holiday Collection: Giftable Objects, Lougher Contemporary

Kusama & Rokkaku, Artree

Perrotin Grand Opening Dubai, Perrotin Secondary Market

Curator Style #LMOReconnects HERE AND BEYOND, Curator Style

Holiday Gift Guide, Alpha 137 Gallery

The world outside the frame - Wandering between sensibility and rationality 框外的世界－感性與理性之間徘徊, XUan Art Research Center

More Light!, CHART

Artist Designed Plates, Alpha 137 Gallery

Fall Selection 2022, EHC Fine Art

A Female Perspective, David Benrimon Fine Art

Skulls and Pumpkins: Yayoi Kusama, Magnus Gjoen and Damien Hirst, Art Republic

Contemporary Magic : A Tarot Deck Art Project - Curated by Stacy Engman, ART CAPSUL

Eat, Sleep, Paint, Repeat, Omer Tiroche Gallery

20th & 21st Century Icons, Opera Gallery

台灣藝壇七十年 - 戰後台灣美術的百花齊放, XUan Art Research Center

Exploring Colour in the Gallery Collection, Stern Pissarro Gallery

Flower Power: Works featuring Flowers and Flora, Alpha 137 Gallery

Seeing Red, Alpha 137 Gallery

Reimaging Sculpture: KAWS, Yayoi Kusama and Otto Schade, Art Republic

FAST FORWARD | The Future Is Equal, Bermudez Projects

Keith Haring to Banksy: The Skateboard Sale, EHC Fine Art

For Keeps: Selected Parkett Editions 1984-2017, David Zwirner

Everything Must Go!, Omer Tiroche Gallery

East meets West, Stern Pissarro Gallery

Worldwide Contemporary Art, 3 White Dots

Paper & Prints, UNAW Gallery

Connect Collectors, Gallery Art Continue

Contemporary Magic : A Tarot Deck Art Project, ART CAPSUL

Star Sellers, ArtWise

ONEOFFS INTERNATIONAL ART FAIR, Gin Huang Gallery

RAW Editions : The Christmas Edit III, RAW Editions

Staff Picks: Steals and Splurges, Alpha 137 Gallery

ART TAICHUNG 2021, Gin Huang Gallery

Christmas Time, Hatchikian Gallery

2021 The Autumn Fair, XUan Art Research Center

Horizontal Intrigue, ArtWise

Pop Up Asia 2, uJung Art Center

Game Changers: Renegade artists defying convention, Hang-Up Gallery

Verão, EHC Fine Art

Modern Pioneers, Galerie Boulakia

Editions and Multiples, Lougher Contemporary

RAW Editions : The Petite Edit, RAW Editions

Ode to Women, Ode to Art

New Arrivals - Spring has Sprung, Lougher Contemporary

End vs And, Artree

Lougher's Autumn Favourites!, Lougher Contemporary

STAYCATION, EHC Fine Art

Collecting by Color: Yellow, Alpha 137 Gallery

From Japan With Love, Upsilon Gallery

BAMA (Busan Annual Market of Art), Art Works Paris Seoul Gallery

Word Play, EHC Fine Art

Summer Exhibition 2020, Edouard Simoens Gallery

That Summer Feeling All Year Round!, Lougher Contemporary

Basel Online: 15 Rooms, David Zwirner

Celebrating the Art of Printmaking, Upsilon Gallery

Blossoms and Awakenings, David Benrimon Fine Art

Post Art Fair, Ota Fine Arts

Lovely Distractions, EHC Fine Art

Spring Works, Victoria Miro

Abstraction and The Natural World, JD Malat Gallery

RAW Editions : The Femme Edit, RAW Editions

ART ON PAPER, Gin Huang Gallery

Herstory - Celebrating Women Artists Part I, ArtWise

Editions from Japan, Lougher Contemporary

COLLECT, HYUNDAI Pangyo Art Museum

Nasty Women, Gavlak

Artworks under £1,000, Art Republic

Prints & Exhibition Ephemera Auction IX, Alpha 137 Gallery

Trick or Treat? Hang-Up's Halloween Picks, Hang-Up Gallery

Celebrating Print Week NYC, Upsilon Gallery

#ArtWiseUP: A Curation of Best Sellers, ArtWise

The hottest new works this Autumn , Art Republic

Alpha 137/Artsy Prints & Exhibition Ephemera VIII, Alpha 137 Gallery

Autumn Show｜Der-horng Art Gallery, Der-Horng Art Gallery

Asian Art under £2,500, Art Republic

Enchanting Enigmas: Yayoi Kusama / Ching-Lung Chen | 點‧線密碼：草間彌生／陳金龍, Asia University Museum of Modern Art

Colors and Figuration, MAKI

Japan Artists Group Show in Malaysia, Hanada Gallery

Double X, Ethan Cohen Gallery

THE POWER OF BLACK AND WHITE AS CONTRAST AND COMPLIMENT, Rosenfeld Gallery LLC

Sculpture, Hang-Up Gallery

#ArtWiseUP: Designer Series — Superstars for High Impact, ArtWise

Bring colour to your life - Jonas Wood, Julian Opie, David Shrigley and Tracey Emin, Art Republic

Take to the streets - David Shrigley, Jonas Wood, Tracey Emin and Andy Warhol in our street art edit, Art Republic

Balance for Better, Hang-Up Gallery

Fondation Louis Vuitton / The Collection: A Vision for Painting, Fondation Louis Vuitton

Private Show #1, A.R.T. Consulting Seoul

Master Drawings, Barbara Mathes Gallery

2019 “Ever-Evolving Worldwide Japanese Artists Right Now 3”, Karuizawa New Art Museum

Language of Flowers《花語花博》, Asia University Museum of Modern Art

Gallery Selections, Barbara Mathes Gallery

Studio Visit: Selected Gifts from Agnes Gund, The Museum of Modern Art

Best of Art Collection Nakano, Art Collection Nakano

Secret Life of a Megaproject, London Transport Museum

Space Shifters, Hayward Gallery

Function to Freedom: Quilts and Abstract Expressions, Sara Kay Gallery

Fleeting Lines, MAKI

Introspection and Exploration: Artistic Generations in Asia, Longmen Art Projects

YOD Gallery at Art Fair Philippines 2017, YOD Gallery

2016 ArtStar Holiday Gift Guide, ArtStar

Masters of Distinction, Opera Gallery

Grand Opening: New York City, Madison Avenue, Opera Gallery

DECLARATION: Louise Bourgeois, Ruth Bernhard, Linda Fleming, Helen Frankenthaler, Ann Hamilton, Jae Ko, Yayoi Kusama, Joan Mitchell, Alice Neel, Shirin Neshat, Judy Pfaff, Lorna Simpson, Mickalene Thomas and Kara Walker, Robischon Gallery

Intimate Curiosity—Invitation to Japanese Collectors of Contemporary Art, Hong Kong Arts Centre

ArtStar Holiday Gift Guide, ArtStar

Holiday Gifts for Kids!, ArtStar

Chrissy's Top Picks, ArtStar

The Inaugural Installation, The Broad

Take an Object, Museum of Modern Art

Light and the Space of the Void, Sandra Gering Inc

Where Are We?, de Sarthe Gallery

New realities in the 20th and 21st Century, Opera Gallery

LittleCollector: Best Investment, ArtStar

The Lightness of Being, de Sarthe Gallery

ZERO - Die internationale Kunstbewegung der 50er und 60er Jahre, Martin Gropius Bau

The Holiday Gift Guide, LittleCollector

Timepieces: Celebrating a Decade, Opera Gallery

Hello Kitty & Friends, LittleCollector

Downtown Art Fair, Booth DT37, Armand Bartos Fine Art

Parallel Views: Italian and Japanese Art from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, Rachofsky Private Collection

Sculptrices, Fondation Villa Datris

Post-Hypnotic, Contemporary Arts Center

Monographs And Catalogues

Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now . Edited by Doryun Chong and Mika Yoshitake. M+, Hong Kong (exh. cat.)

KUSAMA: Cosmic Nature . Edited by Mika Yoshitake. Texts by Barbara Ambrose, Joanna L. Groarke, Alexandra Munroe, and Jenni Sorkin. New York Botanical Garden, New York (exh. cat.)

Midway Between Mystery and Symbol: Yayoi Kusama’s Monochrome . Yayoi Kusama Museum,

Tokyo (exh. cat.) Yayoi Kusama: A Retrospective . Edited by Stephanie Rosenthal. Prestel, Munich (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama: EVERY DAY I PRAY FOR LOVE . David Zwirner Books, New York (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama: HERE, ANOTHER NIGHT COMES FROM TRILLIONS OF LIGHT YEARS AWAY: Eternal Infinity , Yayoi Kusama Foundation, Tokyo (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama: SPIRITS OF AGGREGATION . Interview with the artist by Gordon Brown. Yayoi Kusama Museum, Tokyo (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama: All About My Love . Bijutsu Shuppan-Sha Co. LTD., Japan (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama: THE MOVING MOMENT WHEN I WENT TO THE UNIVERSE . Victoria Miro, London (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama . Text by Jenni Sorkin. David Zwirner Books, New York (exh. cat.)

Traumata: Bourgeois / Kusama. Texts by Jo Applin, Emma Baker, and Juliet Mitchell. S|2, Sotheby’s, London (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama. Interview with the artist by Jud Yalkut. Phaidon, London

Yayoi Kusama: Creation is a Solitary Pursuit, Love is What Brings You Closer to Art. Texts by Yayoi Kusama and Akira Tatehata. Yayoi Kusama Foundation, Tokyo (exh. pub.)

Yayoi Kusama: From Here to Infinity. Text by Sarah Suzuki. Illustrations by Ellen Weinstein. The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors. Edited by Mika Yoshitake. Texts by Melissa Chiu, Alexander Dumbadze, Gloria Sutton, and Miwako Tezuka. Prestel, New York (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama: Life Is the Heart of a Rainbow. Texts by Reuben Keehan and Russell

Storer. National Gallery of Singapore (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama: My Eternal Soul. Texts by Yayoi Kusama, Yusuke Minami, and Akira Tatehata. The National Art Center, Tokyo (exh. cat.)

The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen & Yayoi Kusama: A Fairy Tale of Infinity and Love Forever . Edited by Lærke Jørgensen, Marie Laurberg, and Michael Juul Holm.

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark

Yayoi Kusama . Texts by Martin Coomer et al. Victoria Miro Gallery, London (exh. cat.) Yayoi Kusama: Give Me Love . Texts by Yayoi Kusama and Akira Tatehata. David Zwirner Books, New York (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama: In Infinity. Texts by Jo Applin, Yayoi Kusama, Marie Laurberg, and Stefan

Würrer. Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humleb.k, Denmark (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama: Inventing the Singular. Text by Midori Yamamura. The MIT Press, Cambridge,

Massachusetts

Yayoi Kusama: A Dream I Dreamed. Texts by Yayoi Kusama and Park Sohyeon. Seoul Arts Center (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama: I Who Have Arrived In Heaven. Text by Akira Tatehata. Poem by Yayoi Kusama. David Zwirner, New York (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama: Obsesión infinita/Infinite Obsession. Texts by Philip Larratt-Smith and Frances Morris. Museo Tamayo Arte Contempor.neo, Mexico City (exh. cat.) [Spanish/English edition]

Yayoi Kusama: Obsesión infinita/Infinite Obsession. Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo Mexico City (exh. pub.)

Yayoi Kusama: Pumpkins. Text by Gilda Williams. Victoria Miro, London (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama: A Dream I Dreamed. Texts by Ban Ejung, Yayoi Kusama, Ha Kyehoon, Lee Minjung, and Kang Seyun. Daegu Art Museum, Daegu, Korea (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama: A Dream I Dreamed. Texts by Kim Sunhee and Wang Weiwei. Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama: Locus of the Avant-Garde. Text by Sayaka Sonoda. The Shinano Mainichi Shimbun, Nagano, Japan

Yayoi Kusama: Obsesión infinita/Infinite Obsession. Texts by Philip Larratt-Smith and Frances

Morris. Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA) - Fundaci.n

Costantini, Buenos Aires (exh. cat.) [Spanish/English edition]

Yayoi Kusama: Obsessão infinita/Infinite Obsession. Texts by Philip Larratt-Smith and Frances

Morris. Instituto Tomie Ohtake, S.o Paulo (exh. cat.) [Portuguese/English edition]

Yayoi Kusama: Prints 1979-2013. Text by Yayoi Kusama. Abe Publishing, Tokyo [revised and

expanded edition; originally published in 2011]

Yayoi Kusama: White Infinity Nets. Text by Rachel Taylor. Victoria Miro, London (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama. Edited by Frances Morris. Texts by Jo Applin, Juliet Mitchell, Mignon Nixon, Rachel Taylor, and Midori Yamamura. Tate Publishing, London and Distributed Art Publishers, New York (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama. Edited by Louise Neri and Takaya Goto. Texts by Leslie Camhi, RoseLee

Goldberg, Laura Hoptman, Chris Kraus, Arthur Lubow, Kevin McGarry, Louise Neri,

Akira Tatehata, Alison Wender, and Oliver Zahm. Rizzoli, New York

Yayoi Kusama. Text by Jo Applin. Interview with the artist by Glenn Scott Wright. Victoria Miro, London (exh. cat.) [two volumes]

Yayoi Kusama: Eternity of Eternal Eternity. Texts by Yayoi Kusama, Akira Shibutami, Akira Tatehata, and Masahiro Yasugi. The Asahi Shimbun, Osaka, Japan (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama: Hong Kong Blooms in My Mind. Ota Fine Arts and Sotheby’s, Hong Kong (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirror Room - Phalli’s Field. Text by Jo Applin. Afterall Books, London

We Love Yayoi Kusama. Texts by Naoko Aono, Hisashi Ikai, Takashi Shinkawa, Yukiko

Takahashi, Hideko Kawachi, Reiko Kasai, Takashi Hata, Sayoko Nakahara, and Kiyomi

Yui. Hankyu Communications, Tokyo

Yayoi Kusama. Texts by Chantal B.ret, Laura Hoptman, G.rard Wajcman, Midori Yoshimoto, and Lynn Zelevansky. Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama. Edited by Frances Morris. Texts by Jo Applin, Juliet Mitchell, Mignon Nixon, Rachel Taylor, and Midori Yamamura. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sof.a, TF Editores, Madrid, and Tate Publishing, London (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama’s Body Festival in the 60s. Access, Tokyo (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama: Look Now, See Forever, Queensland Art Gallery, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (exh. cat.) [online]

Yayoi Kusama: Prints 1979-2011. Text by Yayoi Kusama. Abe Publishing, Tokyo [revised and expanded edition; originally published in 2004]

Yayoi Kusama. Edited by Louise Neri. Texts by Louise Neri, Robert Nickas, and Midori

Yamamura. Gagosian Gallery, New York (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama: I Want to Live Forever. Texts by Laura Hoptman, Louise Neri, Robert Nickas, and

Akira Tatehata. Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea (PAC), Milan (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Years. Texts by Diedrich Diederichsen, Franck Gautherot, Seungduk

Kim, Lily van der Stokker, and Midori Yamamura. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen,

Rotterdam; Le Consortium, Dijon, France; Les presses du r.el, Dijon, France (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama. Texts by Jo Applin and Glenn Scott Wright. Victoria Miro, London (exh. cat.)

[second edition published as two-volume catalogue in 2012]

Yayoi Kusama: I Like Myself. Text by Yayoi Kusama. Infas Books, Tokyo

Yayoi Kusama: Metamorfosi/Metamorphosis. Text by Angela Vettese. Interview with the artist by

Milovan Farronato. Galleria Civica di Modena, Modena, Italy (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama: Eternity-Modernity. Text by Yayoi Kusama. The National Museum of Modern

Art, Tokyo (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama: Kusamatrix. Texts by Takashi Azumaya, David Elliott, Yayoi Kusama, and Fumio

Nanjo. Kadokawa Shoten, Tokyo (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama: Prints 1979-2004. Text by Yayoi Kusama. Abe Publishing, Tokyo

Yayoi Kusama: Arbeiten aus den Jahren 1949 bis 2003/Works from the year 1949 to 2003. Text

by Jan Verwoert. Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany and Verlag der Buchhandlung

Walther K.nig, Cologne (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama: Furniture by graf. Texts by Eizo Okada, Noi Sawaragi, Atsushi Tanigawa, and

Rika Yamashita. Interview with the artist by Hideki Toyoshima and Shigeki Hattori.

Seigensha Art Publishing, Kyoto, Japan (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama. Text by Mark Ormond. Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama: Dot paradise in Shangri-La. Texts by Yayoi Kusama, Hiroyuki Miyazono, and

Akira Tatehata. Kirishima Open-Air Museum, Kagoshima, Japan (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama. Texts by Xavier Douroux, Franck Gautherot, Robert Nickas, and Vincent P.coil.

Interview with the artist by Seung-duk Kim. Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (exh. cat.)

[German edition]

Interview with the artist by Seung-duk Kim. Les presses du r.el, Dijon, France (exh. cat.)

[French/English edition]

Yayoi Kusama. Edited by Lisa G. Corrin. Text by Laura Hoptman. Serpentine Gallery, London (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama. Texts by Laura Hoptman, Takuboku Ishikawa, Udo Kultermann, and Yayoi Kusama. Interviews with the artist by Gordon Brown and Akira Tatehata. Phaidon Press, London

Yayoi Kusama: Early Drawings from the Collection of Richard Castellane. Texts by Richard

Castellane and David Moos. Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama (exh. cat.)

Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama, 1958-1968 and In Full Bloom: Yayoi Kusama, Years in Japan.

Texts by Laura Hoptman, Alexandra Munroe, Naoko Seki, Akira Tatehata, and Lynn

Zelevansky. Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (exh. cat.) [two volumes]

Yayoi Kusama: Love Forever. Edited by Thomas Frick. Texts by Laura Hoptman, Julie Joyce,

Kristine C. Kuramitsu, Alexandra Munroe, Akira Tatehata, and Lynn Zelevansky. Los

Angeles County Museum of Art (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama: Now. Interview with the artist by Damien Hirst. Robert Miller Gallery, New York (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama: Obsessional Vision. Text by Judith Russi Kirshner. The Arts Club Chicago (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama: Recent Work and Paintings from the New York Years. Text by Yayoi Kusama.

Baumgartner Galleries, Washington, DC (exh. bro.)

Yayoi Kusama: The 1950s and 1960s. Paula Cooper Gallery, New York (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama: Recent Works. Text by Yayoi Kusama. Robert Miller Gallery, New York (exh. cat.)

Infinity of Space and Light in the 1950s and 1960s: Yayoi Kusama from the Collection of Richard Castellane. Text by Richard Castellane. Picker Art Gallery, Colgate University,

Hamilton, New York (exh. bro.)

Yayoi Kusama: Giappone - XLV Biennale di Venezia/Japanese Pavilion - the 45th Venice

Biennale. Text by Akira Tatehata. The Japan Foundation, Tokyo (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama: Print Works. Texts by Akira Asada, Yusuke Nakahara, Yayoi Kusama, and Ryu Murakami. Abe Publishing, Tokyo

Yayoi Kusama: Between Heaven and Earth. Text by Alexandra Munroe. Fuji Television Gallery, Tokyo (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama: A Retrospective. Text by Alexandra Munroe. Center for International

Contemporary Arts, New York (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama: Soul Burning Flashes. Text by Yayoi Kusama. Fuji Television Gallery, Tokyo (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama. Texts by Toshiaki Minemura, Junichi Nakajima, and Shinichi Nakazawa.

Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, Fukuoka, Japan (exh. cat.)

I nfinity ∞ Explosion. Texts by F.lix Guattari and Toshiaki Minemura. Fuji Television Gallery, Tokyo (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama. Texts by F.lix Guattari, Fran.ois Julien, Yayoi Kusama, Patrick Le Nou.ne, and Pierre Restany. Mus.e de beaux-arts de Calais, Calais, France (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama: Driving Image. Text by Yayoi Kusama. PARCO Shuppan, Tokyo

Yayoi Kusama. Texts by Yūsuke Nakahara and Pierre Restany. Fuji Television Gallery, Tokyo (exh. cat.)

Yayoi Kusama. Text by Masatoshi Tamaki. Galleria d’Arte del Naviglio, Milan (exh.bro.)

Yayoi Kusama. Text by Yayoi Kusama. Gallery Manu, Akita, Japan (exh. bro.)

Yayoi Kusama: Obsession. Texts by Gordon Brown, Udo Kultermann, and Yusuke Nakahara. Fuji Television Gallery, Tokyo (exh. cat.)

Unknown Works by Yayoi Kusama: The Flash That Burns Grass. Text by Yayoi Kusama.

American Center, Tokyo (exh. bro.)

Yayoi Kusama. Text by Hidemoto Takahashi. Toho Gallery, Osaka, Japan (exh. bro.)

Yayoi Kusama. Matsumoto Municipal Hall of Commerce and Industry, Matsumoto, Japan (exh. bro.)

Yayoi Kusama: Collages. Text by Masatoshi Tamaki. Gallery Nikko, Tokyo (exh. bro.)

Yayoi Kusama: Message of Death from Hades. Texts by Yūsuke Nakahara and Yoshito Tokuda. Nishimura Gallery, Tokyo (exh. bro.)

Collections

-21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan -Akron Art Museum, Ohio -Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York -Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio Art -Institute of Chicago

-The Baltimore Museum of Art -Benesse Art Site, Naoshima, Japan -Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas, Austin -The Broad, Los Angeles -Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh -Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris -Centre national des arts plasitques, Puteaux, France -Chiba City Museum of Art, Chiba, Japan -Daegu Art Museum, Daegu, Korea -Des Moines Art Center, Iowa -Detroit Institute of Arts -Fondazione Mudima, Milan -Fukuoka Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan -Grey Art Gallery, New York University Art Collection -Guggenheim Abu Dhabi -Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo -Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, Japan Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC -Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston -The Israel Museum, Jerusalem -Kirishima Open-Air Museum, Kagoshima, Japan -Komagane Kogen Art Museum, Komagane, Japan -Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul -Les Abattoirs, Toulouse, France -Los Angeles County Museum of Art -Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark -Matsumoto City Museum of Art, Matsumoto, Japan -Meguro Museum of Art, Tokyo -Moderna Museet, Stockholm -Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam -The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles -Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo -The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston -The Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura, Japan -The Museum of Modern Art, New York

-The Museum of Modern Art, Toyama, Japan -Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna Nagano Prefectural Shinano Art Museum, Nagano, Japan Nagoya City --Art Museum, Nagoya, Japan -National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC -The National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan -The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan -The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo -Niigata City Art Museum, Niigata, Japan -Oita Art Museum, Oita, Japan -Osaka City Museum of Modern Art, Osaka, Japan -Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona -Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey Queensland Art Gallery, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane Sammlung Goetz, Munich -Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, Shizuoka City, Japan

-Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota Whitney Museum of American Art, NewYork

-Sogetsu Foundation, Tokyo

-Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

-Städtisches Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, Germany

-Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

-Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York

-Taipei Fine Arts Museum

-Tate Gallery, London

-Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Toyota, Japan

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Yayoi Kusama Biography

Yayoi Kusama is one of the most well-known contemporary Japanese artists around the world today. Born in Matsumoto, Nagano, Japan, on March 22nd, 1929, she mainly works in sculpture and installation. Based mostly in conceptual art, Kusama explores themes of feminism, pop art, abstract expressionism, minimalism, Art Brut, and surrealism.

Born in Matsumoto, Nagano, Japan, on March 22nd, 1929, Yayoi Kusama is one of the most well-known contemporary Japanese artists around the world today. Kusama’s art spans many mediums, including painting, performance, film, fashion, poetry, fiction, but she mainly works in sculpture and installation. Based mostly in conceptual art, Kusama explores themes of feminism, pop art, abstract expressionism, minimalism, Art Brut, and surrealism. Much of her work delves into her world view, exploring psychological and sexual subjects as well as her mental illness.

Yayoi Kusama describes seeing vivid hallucinations of light flashes, auras or fields of dots as early as ten years old. She also describes seeing flowers that would speak to her, patterns in fabrics that she stared at would come to life, multiply and engulf her. This process of engulfing she calls “self-obliteration,” and would become an important influence on her art throughout her life. Kusama cites smooth white stones that covered the riverbed near her family home as a cause for her fascination with polka dots which became an integral part of her artwork.

Kusama moved to New York City in 1958 after studying nihonga, traditional Japanese painting, at the Kyoto School of Arts and Crafts. She was frustrated with the experience of being a woman in Japan, stating she considered Japanese society “too small, too servile, too feudalistic, and too scornful of women” (Frank, HuffPost). She was interested in the American Abstract impressionism and she became part of the pop-art movement and the hippie counterculture that dominated the art scene in New York throughout the 1960s. In the later years of the decade, Kusama gained notoriety for her series of “happenings” that featured naked people who were painted with brightly colored polka dots.

In 1963, Kusama began creating her series of Mirror/Infinity rooms. The rooms are created through the use of walls lined with mirrored glass and scores of various illuminated hanging objects, from neon-colored balls and little colored lights to larger hanging lanterns and glowing pumpkins. The viewer stands on a small platform and the effect creates a feeling of infinity as the objects are reflected a million times over in the mirrors. Throughout the rest of the 1960s, Kusama was extremely productive, landing in the hospital multiple times from overworking herself. Her work was plagiarized by many male artists in New York City during this time, who gained fame while she remained relatively unknown. This combined with financial stress and insecurity led her to attempt suicide. Kusama would later attempt again after facing severe shame from her family for her nudity in her art and lifestyle.

Kusama returned to Japan in 1973, where she voluntarily checked herself into a hospital for the mentally ill in Tokyo. She still lives there today by choice. Her studio is a short distance from the hospital and this is where she continues to work in a variety of artistic mediums, as well as exploring her literary career through novels, poetry and an autobiography. Kusama has long been considered one of Japan’s most important living artists and it is clear when looking at Kusama’s monumental and influential oeuvre why. She is an artist who is unapologetically original and exploratory who creates larger than life installations that immerse the viewer in her fantastic creative vision.

Kusama’s work has been exhibited in museums and private institutions around the world, including the Venice Biennale, a major retrospective in four museums Scandinavia, the Broad Museum, the Whitney, the Museum of Modern Art New York, and in 2017 the Yayoi Kusama Museum opened in Tokyo, Japan.

Bibliography:

Frank, Priscilla (9 February 2017). " Japanese Artist Yayoi Kusama Is About To Make 2017 Infinitely Better ". HuffPost. Retrieved 11 March 2017.

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Yayoi Kusama

Works by yayoi kusama at sotheby's.

Yayoi Kusama Biography

Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama is known for her installations, sculptures and paintings and numbers among the most influential living contemporary artists. Born in Nagano in 1929, Kusama began creating art and writing poetry at a young age. Soon after relocating to Seattle in 1957, she headed to New York City where she became friends with the artists Donald Judd and Joseph Cornell. It was during these years that she originated her Infinity Net paintings, intricate webs of paint comprising repetitive brushstrokes.

In the early 1960s Kusama rose to prominence through a series of Happenings and Pop performances, but, suffering from exhaustion, she returned to Japan at the beginning of the 1970s, retreating from the art world until the 1993 Venice Biennale. In the Japanese Pavilion, she installed her Mirror Room (Pumpkin) , a mirrored room filled with her signature dotted pumpkin sculptures.

Kusama has continued to develop an expansive and prolific practice, cultivating her specific visual lexicon that is at once whimsical, erotic and participatory. In 2017 the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC, organized the highly acclaimed Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors, an exhibition featuring six of her iconic Infinity Rooms, which opened to overwhelming public success. The Broad in Los Angeles has two Infinity Rooms in its collection; elsewhere, Kusama’s works may be found in the Museum of Modern Art , New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art , Los Angeles; and the National Museum of Modern Art , Tokyo. For those owning Kusama, the market is decidedly strong. According to Sotheby’s Mei Moses, the average compound annual return for Yayoi Kusama resold at auction between 2003 and 2017 was 26.2%. 92.3% of 65 such works increased in value.

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Yayoi Kusama
Yayoi Kusama (born March 22, 1929, Matsumoto, Japan) is a Japanese artist who is a self-described "obsessional artist," known for her extensive use of polka dots and for her infinity installations. She employed painting, sculpture, performance art, and installations in a variety of styles, including Pop art and Minimalism.. By her own account, Kusama began painting as a child, at about the ...
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Summary of Yayoi Kusama. Yayoi Kusama's life is a poignant testament to the healing power of art as well as a study in human resilience. Plagued by mental illness as a child, and thoroughly abused by a callous mother, the young artist persevered by using her hallucinations and personal obsessions as fodder for prolific artistic output in various disciplines.
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Yayoi Kusama in Speaking Portraits. Yayoi Kusama (草間彌生, Kusama Yayoi, born 22 March 1929) is a Japanese contemporary artist who works primarily in sculpture and installation, and is also active in painting, performance, video art, fashion, poetry, fiction, and other arts.Her work is based in conceptual art and shows some attributes of feminism, minimalism, surrealism, Art Brut, pop ...
Biography of Yayoi Kusama, Japanese Artist
Yayoi Kusama (born March 22, 1929 in Matsumoto City, Japan) is a contemporary Japanese artist, best known for her Infinity Mirror Rooms, as well as her obsessive use of colorful dots. In addition to being an installation artist, she is a painter, poet, writer, and designer. Fast Facts: Yayoi Kusama. Known For: Considered one of the most ...
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Yayoi Kusama. Born in Nagano Prefecture. Avant-garde sculptor, painter and novelist. Started to paint using polka dots and nets as motifs at around age ten ,and created fantastic paintings in watercolors, pastels and oils. Went to the United States in 1957. Showed large paintings, soft sculptures, and environmental sculptures using mirrors and ...
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Yayoi Kusama (草間彌生, Kusama Yayoi, born 22 March 1929) is a Japanese contemporary artist who works primarily in sculpture and installation, and is also active in painting, performance, video art, fashion, poetry, fiction, and other arts. Her work is based in conceptual art and shows some attributes of feminism, minimalism, surrealism ...
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Yayoi Kusama is the biggest-selling female artist in the world. And in her bright-red wig and quirky polka-dot ensembles, she is also one of the most instantly recognisable. At almost 90 years old ...
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Biography. Yayoi Kusama (草間彌生, Kusama Yayoi, born 22 March 1929) is a Japanese contemporary artist who works primarily in sculpture and installation, and is also active in painting, performance, video art, fashion, poetry, fiction, and other arts. Her work is based in conceptual art and shows some attributes of feminism, minimalism ...
An Introduction to Yayoi Kusama
Yayoi Kusama was born in 1929, the youngest daughter of family from the mountainous region of Matsumoto in central Japan. Her family made their living from the cultivation of plant seeds. There is still a plant nursery on the site of Kusama's childhood home. She had a conventional upbringing, and when Kusama began to express enthusiasm in ...
Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors
The first publication to focus on Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Mirror Rooms, this richly illustrated volume includes insightful essays by Mika Yoshitake, Alexander Dumbadze, and Gloria Sutton, as well as an interview with the artist by Melissa Chiu, the Hirshhorn's director. A luminary in the cultural sphere, Yayoi Kusama is one of the most ...
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Yayoi Kusama 's (b. 1929) work has transcended two of the most important art movements of the second half of the twentieth century: pop art and minimalism. Her highly influential career spans paintings, performances, room-size presentations, outdoor sculptural installations, literary works, films, fashion, design, and interventions within ...
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Biography Yayoi Kusama. 1929-1944. Yayoi Kusama is born, the youngest of four children, in the small provincial city of Matsumoto about 200 km west of Tokyo. Her upbringing is marked by conservative values and the cold relationship between her parents. Kusama starts painting and drawing at an early age.
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Yayoi was born in Japan in 1929. She loved drawing and painting and although her parents didn't want her to be an artist, she was determined. When her mum tore up her drawings, she made more. When she could not afford to buy art materials, she used mud and old sacks to make art. This is a drawing she made of her mum when she was 10-years-old.
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Yayoi Kusama is one of the most well-known contemporary Japanese artists around the world today. Born in Matsumoto, Nagano, Japan, on March 22nd, 1929, she mainly works in sculpture and installation. Based mostly in conceptual art, Kusama explores themes of feminism, pop art, abstract expressionism, minimalism, Art Brut, and surrealism.
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