Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese artist, who creates paintings, sculptures and installations. She is mostly known for her extensive use of polka dots and for her infinity installations. Yayoi's works show some features of Feminism, Minimalism, Surrealism, Art Brut, Pop Art and Abstract Expressionism. Also, her oeuvre is infused with autobiographical, psychological and sexual content. Moreover, Kusama is active in poetry, fashion and film industries.
Background
Yayoi Kusama was born on March 22, 1929 in Matsumoto, Nagano, Japan. She grew up as the youngest of four children in an affluent family. However, Yayoi's childhood wasn't happy — her absent father spent most of his time away from home womanizing, leaving his angry wife to physically abuse and emotionally torment her youngest child. In addition, Yayoi's mother often sent her to spy on her father's sexual exploits and this experience left her with a mental trauma, which caused Kusama to have a permanent aversion to sex and the male body.
Education
Yayoi had little formal training, studying art only briefly during the period from 1948 till 1949 at the Kyoto Municipal School of Arts and Crafts (present-day Kyoto City University of Arts).
Career
In her early years, Kusama worked in a military factory, sewing parachutes for Japan's World War II efforts. It was a harsh time for her, which she spent, 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 also to 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 1960's.
In 1957, Yayoi left for the United States, settling down in New York City in 1958. There, she showed large paintings, soft sculptures and environmental sculptures, using mirrors and electric lights. In the 1960's, the artist held body painting festivals, fashion shows and anti-war demonstrations. Also, at that time, Kusama launched media-related activities, such as film production and newspaper publication.
In 1968, Kusama established Kusama Fashion Company Ltd, and began selling avant-garde fashion pieces in the "Kusama Corner" at Bloomingdales. Later in her career, she would design a handbag-shaped cell phone, entitled "Handbag for Space Travel, My Doggie Ring-Ring", a pink dotted phone in accompanying dog-shaped holder, and a red and white dotted phone inside a mirrored, dotted box, dubbed "Dots Obsession, Full Happiness With Dots". Each phone was limited to 1000 pieces.
It was in 1973, that the artist came back to Japan. Kusama's artistic output during this 16-year period was prolific and diverse, as she experimented with various mediums, such as drawing, painting, sculpture, performance, fashion, writing and installation. She would sometimes work up to 50 hours without rest.
Upon arrival to her native country, Kusama would seek treatment for her mental exhaustion and declining physical health. Also, it was at that time, that 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.
In 1986, Yayoi held solo exhibitions at the Musée des beaux-arts de Dole and the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Calais, France. In 1989, she had one-man shows at the Center for International Contemporary Arts in New York City and the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, England. In 1993, Kusama was invited to participate in the 45th Venice Biennale.
In 1994, the artist started to create open-air sculptures. She produced such type of work for different institutions and museums, including Fukuoka Kenko Center, Fukuoka Municipal Museum of Art, Kirishima Open-Air Museum, Matsumoto City Museum of Art and others.
From 1998 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 City, the Walker Art Center and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo.
In recent years, Kusama has created large public sculptures on commission, and has made several films and documentaries. In 2008, Kusama became the best-selling living female artist, with works, breaking record prices at auction. In 2012, her work was the subject of a major retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, and a traveling exhibition attracted record crowds at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., in 2017. Also, the same year, Kusama opened a museum, dedicated to her work — Yayoi Kusama Museum, Tokyo.
Currently, she continues to live and work in the Seiwa Mental Hospital in Tokyo. Her own studio is located not far from the medical institution.
Views
Quotations:
"I am just another dot in the world."
"My art originates from hallucinations only I can see. I translate the hallucinations and obsessional images that plague me into sculptures and paintings. All my works in pastels are the products of obsessional neurosis and are therefore inextricably connected to my disease."
"I fight pain, anxiety, and fear every day, and the only method I have found that relieves my illness is to keep creating art. I followed the thread of art and somehow discovered a path that would allow me to live."
"I wanted to start a revolution, using art to build the sort of society I myself envisioned."
"I don't consider myself an artist; I am pursuing art in order to correct the disability which began in my childhood."
"I did not have any purpose. I felt that art and life were useless. I painted boredom, which is more important in life than the effect of sunlight, which is what the Impressionists painted."
"I want to become more famous, even more famous."
"One day, I suddenly looked up to find that each and every violet had its own individual, human-like facial expression, and to my astonishment they were all talking to me. Suddenly things would be flashing and glittering all around me. So many different images leaped into my eyes that I was left dazzled and dumbfounded."
"If it were not for art, I would have killed myself a long time ago."
"A polka-dot has the form of the sun, which is a symbol of the energy of the whole world and our living life, and also the form of the moon, which is calm. Round, soft, colorful, senseless and unknowing. Polka-dots become movement ... Polka dots are a way to infinity."
Personality
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.
Yayoi had a troubled childhood and artmaking became an essential survival mechanism for her. It was her sole tool for making sense of a world, in which she dwelt on the periphery of normative experience.
Kusama is sometimes called "the princess of polka dots". Although, she makes lots of different types of art – paintings, sculptures, performances and installations – they have one thing in common — dots.