The World of Yayoi Kusama
yayoi kusama ‘pumpkin’, 2000 15.8 x 22.7 cm acrylic on canvas
For nearly 70 years, Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama has made a massive impression on the art world. Her avant-garde work has a bold, distinctive visual style and spans a variety of media -- from sculpture to fashion, performance art to the written word. With several exhibits and permanent installations showcasing Kusama's art, aesthetes have many ways to introduce themselves to this innovative creator.
Early Days
Yayoi Kusama was born in 1929 in Nagano, Japan. Her childhood was difficult: her mother was physically abusive, and she frequently encountered her father in sexual liaisons with other women. She occasionally would hallucinate floral patterns or fields of dots, or would be consumed by the belief that she was melting into these patterns. All of these had a powerful effect on her artistic expression.
After World War II, she began to pursue art in earnest. She shied away from traditional Japanese artistic forms, and began to explore American and European avant-garde work.
In the 1950s, she began covering canvases, surfaces, household items, and sometimes people with dense fields of psychedelic polka dots she termed "infinity nets". She eventually moved to the United States, where she kept up relationships with Eva Hesse, Donald Judd, and Georgia O'Keefe. She started to take photographs alongside her art -- often wearing a colorful bob wig, and a mod dress with a pattern that matched her work.
Kusama's Influence
From the '50s through the '70s Kusama established a reputation for a near-ceaseless output of work. This was also when she pioneered her most arresting work, including her famous Mirror/Infinity spaces, which created disorienting and apparently infinite spaces using mirrors and light. She also began working in sculpture, and would cover household objects with unsettlingly phallic protrusions.
During this time, she began to experiment with performance art, by (for example) painting nude figures with her trademark polka dots and having them pose in various stereotyped ways. Much of her work was a remark on the commodification of art -- such as Narcissus Garden, a happening where she sold components of an installation for $2 apiece (until the venue forced her to stop).
In the late '70s she fell ill and returned to Japan, where she focused on the written word. However, she eventually turned to visual art and the United States, where her career experienced a renaissance in the 1990s. During this period, she created her trademark polka-dotted pumpkin figures, which she uses to depict herself.
Despite being in her late 80s, Yayoi Kusama remains incredibly prolific, and is a highly-regarded artist whose work has impacted artists like Yoko Ono, Andy Warhol, and George Segal. Kusama continues to work closely with museums and galleries around the world, showcasing art both old and new.
Experience Kusama's Work
A number of museums have Kusama's works in their permanent collection, including MOMA, the Tate, Tokyo's National Museum of Modern Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She's also designed a number of her Infinity Rooms to serve as permanent installations, and the curious can find them at locations like the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, the Broad in L.A., and the Phoenix Art Museum. Her exhibits continue to be huge draws at art galleries around the world, and serve as a fine introduction to her strange, enervating work.
