"Childhood Hallucinations of Dots and Light Became Masterpieces... Yayoi Kusama Never Put Down Her Brush Until 97"

Yayoi Kusama Passes Away at 97
Covered the World with "Polka Dots and Pumpkins"
Died at a Tokyo Hospital on August 14; News Announced on the 27th
A Master of Japanese Contemporary Art Who Transformed Hallucinations into Art of 'Infinity'
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Yayoi Kusama, the world-renowned Japanese avant-garde artist who created some of the most powerful images in contemporary art with her dots, pumpkins, and endlessly repeating mirrored rooms, has passed away at the age of 97.

Yayoi Kusama. Reuters Alliance

The Yayoi Kusama Museum and Foundation issued an official statement on the 27th, announcing that Kusama passed away at a hospital in Tokyo on the 14th. The foundation stated, "She dedicated her 97-year-long life entirely to artistic creation," and added, "She continued to work, never putting down her brush until her very last day."

Kusama was one of the leading artists not only in Japanese contemporary art but also in the postwar global art scene. ‘Polka dots’—her signature motif of repeated dots—‘Infinity Net’ series with canvases covered in intricate nets, ‘Infinity Mirror Room’ installations that extend space infinitely through mirrors and light, and her yellow pumpkins spotted with black dots have become images synonymous with her name. Her creativity spanned genres, including painting, sculpture, installation, performance art, film, novels, and poetry.

Born in 1929 in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, Japan, Kusama experienced visual hallucinations filled with dots, light, and flowers from an early age and began expressing them through art. The concept of 'self-obliteration', in which she erased the boundaries between herself and the world by multiplying a single repeated motif, became the central theme of her oeuvre. Her personal suffering was transformed into a universal visual language recognizable to all.

In 1957, she left Japan for the United States and settled in New York the following year. From the late 1950s, she debuted her ‘Infinity Net’ series, filling entire canvases with small semicircular brushstrokes. In the 1960s, she pioneered ‘soft sculpture’, populating furniture and everyday objects with phallic forms made of cloth, and staged installations using mirrors as well as radical performances—establishing herself at the heart of New York avant-garde art. Her 1966 work ‘Narcissus Garden’, which featured 1,500 mirrored spheres installed outside the Venice Biennale venue, remains a landmark in art history.

However, Kusama’s status in the art world during her lifetime differed greatly from today. As a woman and an Asian immigrant, she remained on the periphery of mainstream art history for a long time—even as she shared the same stage as contemporaries like Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg. Kusama herself claimed on multiple occasions that her ideas had been appropriated by male artists.

After returning to Japan in the 1970s, her direction in life also changed significantly. Beginning in 1977, she voluntarily lived in a psychiatric hospital in Tokyo, continuing her artistic work by moving back and forth from a nearby studio. Rather, her creative output endured and flourished there; her large-scale painting series ‘My Eternal Soul’, produced between 2009 and 2021, consists of approximately 900 works alone.

Kusama’s international reappraisal began in earnest in the late 1980s. In 1993, she was officially invited to represent Japan at the Venice Biennale, where she presented an installation combining mirrors and pumpkins. This was followed by large-scale retrospectives at major museums worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, Tate Modern in London, and Centre Pompidou in Paris. In particular, her ‘Infinity Mirror Room’—which endlessly multiplies even the viewer’s own reflection—has drawn crowds around the world in the 21st century, embedding Kusama’s legacy among the public far beyond the art world.

Her influence on the art market was also immense. Her 1959 work ‘Untitled (Nets)’ sold for 10.5 million dollars at a New York auction in 2022, setting a new high for any Kusama work at auction according to Sotheby’s records. Her pumpkin pieces have repeatedly fetched between 7 million and 8 million dollars.

In Korea as well, Kusama stood out as an overseas artist with exceptionally strong market appeal. Her 1981 piece ‘Pumpkin’ was sold at Seoul Auction in November 2021 for 5.45 billion won, setting a then-record for the highest price of an artwork at a Korean auction. Her signature yellow pumpkins have become among the most recognized images of contemporary international art in Korean exhibitions, art fairs, and auctions.

She was awarded the Order of Culture by Japan in 2016. Even in her later years, Kusama never stopped working; after 2021, she continued with a new series of paintings titled ‘EVERY DAY I PRAY FOR LOVE’, and according to the foundation, she kept painting until the very end.

Rather than hiding the recurring hallucinations that plagued her throughout her life, Kusama made them the most important ingredient in her art. The dots and nets that once threatened to consume her expanded beyond the canvas to rooms, buildings, cities, and even commercial objects. Once an avant-garde artist on the fringes of the art world, she became, by the late 20th century, one of the most recognizable contemporary artists globally.

The Yayoi Kusama Museum announced that the ongoing ‘KUSAMA’s POP’ exhibition will remain open as scheduled through the 30th.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.