Yayoi Kusama, innovative Japanese artist, pictured in front of some of her work.
Yayoi Kusama has been hailed by some as the world’s most successful living female artist, and she’s widely considered to be one of the most important Japanese artists of the past century. Her work is a bizarre and eclectic mixture of mediums and aesthetics that is often inspired by hallucinations, and it’s extremely popular in today’s market.
Kusama is primarily an installation artist and a sculptor, but she’s worked in a huge amount of mediums, including painting, video, fashion, performance, and printmaking. It is in fact prints that dominate her market, accounting for 45% of her work sold at auction, and the majority of them sell for between £10,000 and £50,000.
Yayoi Kusama has had a complex personal life beset by mental health problems, and she has stated numerous times that art has, essentially, saved her life. Read on to discover seven things you might not have known about Yayoi Kusama.
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She Had A Difficult Childhood
Born in Japan in 1929, Yayoi Kusama has spoken openly about her traumatic childhood.
She’s claimed her mother just wanted her to marry well, and that when she found her daughter drawing or painting, she would remove the paper and art supplies to discourage her, prompting Kusama to try and work as fast as possible so she could complete the image before her mother saw her.
Kusama’s father, meanwhile, was serially unfaithful to his wife, who would force their young daughter to spy on his affairs. The experience left lifelong scars on Kusama, who has had a complex relationship with men and sex ever since, stating “my sexual obsession and fear of sex sit side by side in me.” Much of her work expresses this, especially some of her early soft sculptures, in which she covered everyday household items and furniture in fabric phallic-like protrusions.
Her Most Expensive Prints Sold For Over £268,000
Amour Pour Toujours is a set of 10 screenprints in colours with glitter from 2000, and it was sold by Phillips in October 2021 for £268,137, more than £85,000 above its top estimate. The prints bring together several of Kusama’s best-known motifs, including pumpkins and flowers, and they exude positivity. As Kusama once said, “My love for humanity and for the world has always been the driving force and energy behind all that I do.”
Amour Pour Toujours sold by Phillips in 2021
She Experiences Hallucinations
Yayoi Kusama has experienced hallucinations since she was ten years old. Usually, these appear as “flashes of light, auras, or dense fields of dots”, though they can also manifest in other ways. Instinctively, Kusama tried to cope with these by turning to art and drawing what she saw in her sketchbook; she’s described how “recording them helped to ease the shock and fear of the episodes”. In her own words, these drawings are “the origin of my pictures”, and they’ve continued to inspire her artwork all her life, including in more recent prints such as Waves (TWXZO) and A Dream I Dreamed Yesterday.
She Organised Happenings
In 1957, Yayoi Kusama left Japan for the United States, where she eventually settled in New York. During the 1960s, Kusama worked, exhibited her art, and socialised in the New York arts scene, though she was not financially successful. She also organised several happenings in prominent New York locations, often in protest against the Vietnam War. Many of these events involved nudity, with Kusama often painting polka dots directly onto the skin of the participants.
Yayoi Kusama at a “Happening”
She Loves Pumpkins
Kusama has vividly recalled her first experience of seeing a pumpkin as a child in Japan, describing how, “It immediately began speaking to me in a most animated manner.” Pumpkins have been a central motif in her artwork ever since, in sculptures, installations, printmaking, and more, including Pumpkin-Black and Amour Pour Toujours. The artist tends to anthropomorphise the vegetable, saying: “I love pumpkins because of their humorous form, warm feeling, and human-like quality.”
She’s Famous For Her Polka Dots
Polka dots are one of Kusama’s obsessions, and they have been ever since she saw them in her childhood hallucinations. At various times in her life, she has covered everything in polka dots, from surfaces such as walls and floors to everyday objects and even naked people. For Kusama, polka dots represent the potential for unity, eternity, and infinity, and they symbolise how the Earth is “only one polka dot among the million stars in the cosmos.” They have appeared in her art throughout her career, including in pieces made in the last two decades, such as A Dream I Dreamed Yesterday and Mt. Fuji In Seven Colours.
Yayoi Kusama surrouned by polka dots
She Has No Intention Of Slowing Down
Kusama returned from the United States to Japan in 1973, and in 1977, she checked herself into the Seiwa Hospital for the Mentally Ill in Tokyo, where she has lived ever since. She has a studio nearby, and, now a nonagenarian, she continues to work obsessively. In her own words, “Every day I am creating a new world by making my work. I am determined to live to be 100 years old and continue to struggle with my art.”
