Yayoi Kusama

b. 1929

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Yayoi Kusama, Fireflies on the Water, 2002 2003.322a-tttttttt

Yayoi Kusama, Fireflies on the Water, 2002. Mirror, plexiglass, 150 lights, and water, 111 × 144 1/2 × 144 1/2 in. (281.9 × 367 × 367 cm) overall. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from the Postwar Committee and the Contemporary Painting and Sculpture Committee and partial gift of Betsy Wittenborn Miller 2003.322a-tttttttt

Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese artist who lived and worked in the United States from 1957 until 1973. A hallmark of much of her work is an almost obsessive interest in repetition. In her paintings she carefully fills every inch of the canvas with intricate dot or net patterns. She made this collage with hundreds of air mail stickers. Kusama covers the surfaces of furniture, clothing, or canvases with repeated images and makes mirrored spaces that seem to go on forever as a way to create a sense of what she calls “self-obliteration .”

Yayoi Kusama and Georgia O’Keeffe

Before moving to the United States, Kusama wrote a letter to artist Georgia O’Keeffe asking for advice on developing her career as an artist in America: “I should like to ask you would [you] kindly show me the way to approach this life.”

O’Keeffe wrote back, “When you get to New York take your pictures under your arm and show them to anyone you think may be interested.” The two artists had a lot in common: both women’s work was inspired by forms in nature, and both painted flowers. Kusama and O’Keeffe remained friends for many years.

About the Artist

Kusama at age 10, 1939. Collection of Yayoi Kusama. Image courtesy Yayoi Kusama Studio Inc.; Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo; Victoria Miro Gallery, London

Yayoi Kusama was born in Matsumoto, Japan, in 1929. As a child she would take her sketchbooks to her family’s seed nurseries to draw the budding flowers for hours on end. During World War II, like other school-age children in Japan, Kusama worked in a factory where she sewed parachutes to support the war effort. She continued to paint and exhibited her work while still in her teens.

Kusama’s mother thought that the life of an artist was unsuitable for a girl of her upbringing and wanted her to marry into a wealthy family, but Kusama was determined to become an artist. After the war she studied Japanese Nihonga painting in Kyoto. Unable to get art supplies, she experimented with ordinary house paints mixed with sand and used seed sacks from her parents’ business as a surface to paint on. In the early 1950s she made hundreds of drawings, many featuring abstracted, natural forms such as eyes, dots, and tadpole-like shapes.

Kusama moved to the United States in 1957. At that time, it was unusual for a young Japanese woman to move to another country, but Kusama has always been a rule breaker and a risk taker. In New York she began to make a name for herself with her paintings and installations in which she placed objects in mirrored rooms to create the illusion of an endless environment. She also staged Happenings, fashion shows, and festivals where people painted polka dots on one another’s bodies!

After she returned to Japan in 1973, Kusama had a difficult time settling back into life there. Four years later she chose to enter a care center in Tokyo, where she has lived ever since so that she can focus on making her artwork. Each day Kusama goes to her studio across the street and works on her art with a team of assistants.

Yayoi Kusama, 2011. © Yayoi Kusama. Photograph by Yayoi Kusama Studio Inc. Image courtesy Yayoi Kusama Studio Inc.; Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo; Victoria Miro Gallery, London; and Gagosian Gallery New York

Materials

Air mail stickers

Inspiration

Kusama’s inspiration comes from her desire to make art as a way of healing herself. In her autobiography she wrote: “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.”

MORE WORK BY Yayoi Kusama

2 WORKS

Yayoi Kusama

b. 1929

Yayoi Kusama and Georgia O’Keeffe

Inspiration

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