The Life of Yayoi Kusama

A Visual Chronology

Produced by M+

‘The gap between me, and my parents and society was maddeningly irritating and unreasonable. Probably I already had the sense of despair all about me and the world around me when I was in my mother’s womb.’

— Yayoi Kusama

Early Years in Japan

1929  

Kusama is born on 22 March in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, Japan.

Her family operates a successful plant nursery in Matsumoto, selling primarily seeds, seedlings, and flowers. The business offered relative financial stability to the Kusama family during the worldwide economic depression of the 1930s.

Monochrome photograph of Kusama’s parents, both appearing to be in their twenties to thirties. Seated on zabutons in seiza position, they are looking into the camera with a solemn expression. The artist’s mother is dressed in an embellished kimono with her hair drawn into a topknot, while her father is in a black kimono holding a fan on his lap.

Kusama's parents, Kamon and Shigeru Kusama, 1923. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Kusama's parents, Kamon and Shigeru Kusama, 1923. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Monochrome photograph showing a stretch of flower field in the foreground, skirted by trees and tiled roof houses at the back. A sign erected in the field signifies the location of the photograph in Japanese, which can be roughly translated to 'seed nursery of Chinese Milk Vetch, joint venture, Nakatsutaya Farm'.

A flower field in the plant nursery owned by Kusama’s family in Matsumoto, Japan. © YAYOI KUSAMA

A flower field in the plant nursery owned by Kusama’s family in Matsumoto, Japan. © YAYOI KUSAMA

1930s 

Kusama grows up in the beautiful Japanese Alps. Her love of nature, together with a sense of alienation from her conservative environment, drive her towards art as a young child. Several extant childhood drawings show objects and people covered in polka dots.

Monochrome portrait photograph of Kusama in the age of around ten, sporting an ear-length bob and fringe above brows. Clutching a stem of four fully bloomed dahlia flowers in her hand, she shows no distinct expression in the photograph.

Kusama, aged around ten, ca.1939. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Kusama, aged around ten, ca.1939. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Pencil on paper depicting an elaborate botanical arrangement on a plinth at the corner of a room. The plinth appears decorative and has a polygonal base. A meshwork pattern of circles and lines is scribbled on the walls and the floor, with geometric, flower-like structures dotted across the walls.

Untitled childhood drawing, ca.1939. Pencil on paper. Collection of the artist. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Untitled childhood drawing, ca.1939. Pencil on paper. Collection of the artist. © YAYOI KUSAMA

‘During the dark days of war when I felt I could no longer go on as a young girl, behind my house was a river upon which lay millions of white stones, the basis for a mysterious vision confirming their ‘being’ one by one under the glistening sun. Aside from this direct revelation from nature, I was also possessed by a strange world inside my psyche with images of an immaterial drive.’

— Yayoi Kusama

1944

Kusama is conscripted to work in a parachute factory in November alongside many of her high-school classmates. She becomes ill with pneumonia from the poor working conditions, but also learns to sew—a skill that will later become important in her work. She has described the discovery of her creative obsession as an outlet during these difficult times:

‘Painting pictures seemed to be the only way to let me survive in this world, and was rather like an outburst of my passion in desperation.’

Monochrome portrait photograph of Kusama, aged around fourteen, who is donning a short blazer with a badge pinned to its collar and standing at an angle with a hand on her waist. A shadow of a bird cage can be seen in the background. The photograph is faded at the bottom right corner.

Kusama, aged fourteen, ca.1943. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Kusama, aged fourteen, ca.1943. © YAYOI KUSAMA

1945

Kusama, who is sixteen years old, creates Harvest, one of her earliest surviving artworks. It depicts millet and corn, which are widespread substitutes for rice in Japan during post-war shortages.

Pigment on silk depicting crops diagonally placed on top of a blossoming branch of rusty orange clusters. The artist’s signature and seal can be seen on the lower left side of the work.

Harvest, ca.1945. Pigment on silk. Collection of the artist. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Harvest, ca.1945. Pigment on silk. Collection of the artist. © YAYOI KUSAMA

1948–1950

Kusama’s parents disapprove of her desire to become an artist but allow her to move to Kyoto to attend the Shiritsu Bijutsu Kōgei Gakkō, a preparatory school for the Kyoto University of the Arts. Kusama’s surviving sketchbooks from this time contain many life studies of animals and plants, but she is frustrated by the conservative nature of her education and begins to teach herself oil painting.

Pencil on a double-page spread of a notebook depicting sketches of two flowers. The left page shows a chrysanthemum with drooping petals, with three lines of Japanese texts scribbled around it, while the right page displays a close-up outline of another flower.

Untitled (Flower Sketches), ca.1945. Pencil on notebook. Collection of the artist. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Untitled (Flower Sketches), ca.1945. Pencil on notebook. Collection of the artist. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Pencil, pastel and watercolour on a double-page spread of a notebook, depicting pencil sketches of monkeys in various postures and expressions. A detailed drawing of a monkey in pencil and brown pastel occupies much of the left page, while two drawings of the primate’s hands showcasing different gestures make up the centre of the right page. The bottom of the pages is labelled ’No 12’ (left) and ’No 13’ (right) respectively.

Untitled (Monkey Sketches), 1948. Pencil, pastel, and watercolour on paper, in a paper-bound notebook. Collection of the artist. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Untitled (Monkey Sketches), 1948. Pencil, pastel, and watercolour on paper, in a paper-bound notebook. Collection of the artist. © YAYOI KUSAMA

‘I would be more than happy as an artist, if my little piece of art could, in some way or another, reach out to as many people as possible, and eventually act as a means to cultivate critical eyes.’

— Yayoi Kusama

1948–1950 

In the aftermath of the war, art materials remain expensive, and many of Kusama’s earliest works in oil, including Accumulation of the Corpses (Prisoner Surrounded by the Curtain of Depersonalization) and Earth of Accumulation (both 1950), are painted on jute-seed sacks or cardboard instead of canvas. 

Oil and enamel on seed sack depicting a spiralling body of red and black stripes that closes in on a focal point where two bare trees stand against a glowing backdrop. In blue paint at the right bottom a small text reads, ‘1950 · YAYOI KUSAMA’.

Accumulation of the Corpses (Prisoner Surrounded by the Curtain of Depersonalization), 1950. Oil and enamel on seed sack. The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Accumulation of the Corpses (Prisoner Surrounded by the Curtain of Depersonalization), 1950. Oil and enamel on seed sack. The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Oil and enamel on seed sack, depicting roughly two main colour blocks – a textured sand-coloured section occupying three fifths of the image sits above an abstract maroon section where branch-like structures protrude from its surface. In blue paint at the right bottom a small text reads, ’1950. YAYOI · KUSAMA’.

Earth of Accumulation, 1950. Oil and enamel on seed sack. The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Earth of Accumulation, 1950. Oil and enamel on seed sack. The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. © YAYOI KUSAMA

1952  

In March, just before her twenty-third birthday, Kusama’s first solo exhibition is held at the First Community Centre in Matsumoto. Featuring more than one hundred drawings and paintings, the show includes Accumulation of the Corpses (Prisoner Surrounded by the Curtain of Depersonalization), but under a different title.  

Monochrome photograph depicting Kusama, in her twenties and in winter attire, standing in front of her works at her solo show at the First Community Centre in Matsumoto. The work behind her, Lingering Dream, features a nightmarish landscape, in which the foreground is packed with sunflowers with contorted stems.

Kusama in front of Lingering Dream (1949) at her solo show at the First Community Centre, Matsumoto, 1952. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Kusama in front of Lingering Dream (1949) at her solo show at the First Community Centre, Matsumoto, 1952. © YAYOI KUSAMA

‘For art like mine—art that does battle at the border of life and death, questioning what we are and what it means to live and die—[Japan] was too small, too servile, too feudalistic, and too scornful of women. My art needed a more unlimited freedom, and a wider world.’

— Yayoi Kusama

1955  

Kusama takes part in her first exhibition in the United States, the International Watercolor Exhibition, 18th Biennial, organised by the Brooklyn Museum in New York. In November, she writes to American artists Kenneth Callahan and Georgia O’Keeffe, expressing admiration for their work and asking for guidance on securing a solo exhibition in their country. 

Letter dated ‘November 15, 1955’ from Kusama to Georgia O’Keeffe. Written by a typewriter, the one-page letter starts with Kusama’s self-introduction after which she goes into detail about her encounter with O’Keeffe’s work as well as her eagerness to seek friendship and exchange with the American artist. Attached with the letter under separate cover, Kusama mentioned that she would send her paintings to O’Keeffe and asked for advice in approaching the life of an artist.

Letter from Kusuma to Georgia O’Keeffe, 15 November 1955. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Letter from Kusuma to Georgia O’Keeffe, 15 November 1955. © YAYOI KUSAMA

1957  

Kusama destroys most of her work before leaving for America.

‘I plan to create revolutionary work that will overturn the art world. This will show the New York art world a decisive direction for the future.’

— Yayoi Kusama

An Avant-garde in New York

1958  

Kusama arrives in New York in the summer. She rents a studio space in the East Village and begins to make new, larger oil paintings that she hopes will make an impact within the New York scene The artist’s new, all-white paintings were inspired by the patterns of the Pacific Ocean as seen during her flight from Japan. Later that year, O’Keeffe visits New York and meets with Kusama in her studio. 

Monochrome photograph of Kusama in her New York studio, leaning on a horizontal, framed work which is marked by bold, abstract colourisations. In the back, the wall is covered by her works which feature a prominence of the dot motif, while a few canvases are set on the floor. Dressed in black top and work trousers, the artist is peering at the right.

Kusama in her New York studio, 1958. © YAYOI KUSAMA. Image courtesy of Ken Van Sickle

Kusama in her New York studio, 1958. © YAYOI KUSAMA. Image courtesy of Ken Van Sickle

1959  

Kusama has her first solo exhibitions in New York, at Brata Gallery, and Boston, at Nova Gallery. At both exhibitions, she debuts a series of paintings that will later be known as Infinity Nets. Tiny loops are painted in white over a black background, uniformly covering the canvas in a net-like pattern. A thin wash of white over the top makes the impression even more subtle, so that the paintings appear like blank canvases from a distance, while close up they reveal thick, organic accumulations of paint. The works are a notable critical success, garnering positive reviews in numerous publications. Many critics interpret the all-over abstractions as an expression of Eastern or ‘Zen’ aesthetics, but are also impressed by their subtle nuance and systematic restraint. 

Diptych oil on canvas depicting an intricately convoluted pattern of undulating pale blue-grey forms, highlighted by continuous white loops. The pattern grows in complexity towards the centre.

Pacific Ocean, 1960. Oil on canvas. Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Pacific Ocean, 1960. Oil on canvas. Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo. © YAYOI KUSAMA

‘I work as much as fifty to sixty hours at a stretch. I gradually feel myself under the spell of the accumulation and repetition in my “nets” which expand beyond myself, and over the limited space of canvas covering the floor, desks and everywhere; all of the universe which is actually visible.’

— Yayoi Kusama

1961  

Kusama’s first solo exhibition at Stephen Radich Gallery in New York includes the 10-metre-long Infinity Net painting , which is larger than any of Jackson Pollock’s monumental poured paintings. The critical response is tepid, however, with Stuart Preston writing in the New York Times that ‘economy of means leads to economy of results’. Disappointed by a lack of resultant sales and exhibition opportunities, Kusama explores new media. She creates Accumulation of Letters, a repetitive collage of her own name cut from leftover postcards for her November 1960 solo exhibition at Gres Gallery in Washington DC, possibly as a wry reflection on self-promotion. 

Monochrome photograph showing Kusama in front of her 10-metre-long Infinity Net painting. The artist is dressed in white top and black work trousers covered in paint. At the bottom of the photograph in blue ink writes, ’1961 Yayoi Kusama at one man show N.Y.C., with 33 feet painting of black and white’.

Kusama in front of her 10-metre-long Infinity Net painting at Stephen Radich Gallery, New York, 1961. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Kusama in front of her 10-metre-long Infinity Net painting at Stephen Radich Gallery, New York, 1961. © YAYOI KUSAMA

No. H. Red
1961

Kusama made some of her Infinity Nets paintings, including this one, titled No. H. Red, by painting on a canvas laid over a large flat table. She propped larger pieces against the wall in her New York studio and worked standing on a stepladder.

As you look at the painting, imagine the repetitive movements of Kusama’s hand as she worked on the entire surface. Envision how she developed textures by varying the thickness of the paint. With looping brushwork, Kusama created an intricate lace-like red pattern on a dark background.

If you shift your focus to the negative spaces between the individual loops that form the ‘net’, the black background starts to emerge.

It appears like a field of tiny dots. With this inverse relationship, you can see how the net and the dots are interconnected. To Kusama, the interrelationship between the dots and the net represents the boundless universe and our position within it.

Painting can be physically demanding, and Kusama was obsessed with creating. Sometimes, she painted continuously for three or four days without sleeping.

In addition to losing her sense of time, Kusama’s connection to reality frayed. She recalled waking up one day to find her infinity nets stuck on the windows. As she reached to touch them, the net appeared to crawl onto her hands. These hallucinations led to repeated hospitalisations.

Oil on canvas depicting a fine net of vivid, red swirly lines that fill the entire picture. Tiny, rounded pockets of black paint peek through the dense brushstrokes. The canvas is encased within a black frame.

No. H. Red, 1961. Oil on canvas. The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. © YAYOI KUSAMA

No. H. Red, 1961. Oil on canvas. The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. © YAYOI KUSAMA

1962  

Kusama produces her first major sculptures by covering pieces of furniture with stuffed-fabric protuberances, painted white, producing monstrous but recognisable forms. The repetitive form of the sculptures echoes the repetitive motif of the looping net in her paintings. Two early examples of this series are an armchair (Accumulation No. 1) and a couch (Accumulation No. 2), both of which are shown at Green Gallery in New York, in a group show later considered to be one of the formative exhibitions of the Pop movement.  

Monochrome photograph of a group exhibition at a gallery space with multiple sculptural and canvas works. At the right corner, a two-seater sofa is covered in stuffed and sewn protrusions, beside which hangs a painting composed of bank notes. A work featuring a composition of different objects can be seen on the left wall. In the foreground a dark rectangular slab is seen lifted off the ground. A sheet with a wrinkly risen sac hangs on the right wall. At the bottom in blue ink writes, ’1962 SCULPTRES BY ACCUMULATION NO.2, green Gallery’.

Installation views of a group exhibition at Green Gallery, New York, June 1962. Among the works on show is Kusama’s Accumulation No. 2. © YAYOI KUSAMA. Photo: © 2021 Estate of Rudy Burckhardt / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Installation views of a group exhibition at Green Gallery, New York, June 1962. Among the works on show is Kusama’s Accumulation No. 2. © YAYOI KUSAMA. Photo: © 2021 Estate of Rudy Burckhardt / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

1963  

Kusama writes to her Washington DC dealer, Beatrice Perry, saying that she wants to create an ‘Accumulation Room’, or an installation of all her objects covered in soft sculpture, inspired in part by Claes Oldenberg’s installation The Store (1961). Later the same year, she has a solo show at the Gertrude Stein Gallery in New York featuring her first immersive installation, Aggregation: One Thousand Boats Show. At the centre of the exhibition space sits a rowing boat covered in soft sculptural forms, one of her largest Accumulation sculptures to date. Surrounding the boat on the walls, floor, and ceiling of the exhibition space are 999 screen prints depicting the sculpture itself, which create a dizzying, repetitive impression.  

Poster for Kusama’s exhibition ’Aggregation: One Thousand Boats Show’ at Gertrude Stein Gallery, New York from 17 December 1963 to 11 January 1964. Emerging from the black background in the centre is a boat sculpture, in which its entire body as well as two oars are covered in white, sewn and stuffed fabric protrusions. The gallery’s address and opening hours are also included at the bottom of the poster: ‘24 E. 81 ST. N.Y.’ and ‘Tuesday – Saturday 11 – 5’.

Poster for Aggregation: One Thousand Boats Show at Gertrude Stein Gallery, New York, 17 December 1963–11 January 1964. The same image of Kusama’s boat sculpture was used to cover the walls, floor, and ceiling of the gallery. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Poster for Aggregation: One Thousand Boats Show at Gertrude Stein Gallery, New York, 17 December 1963–11 January 1964. The same image of Kusama’s boat sculpture was used to cover the walls, floor, and ceiling of the gallery. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Sculpture consisting of white, sewn and stuffed fabric protrusions enveloping a four-legged chair.

Untitled (Chair), 1963 . Sewn stuffed fabric, wood, and paint. Collection of the artist . © YAYOI KUSAMA. Photo courtesy: YAYOI KUSAMA FOUNDATION

Untitled (Chair), 1963 . Sewn stuffed fabric, wood, and paint. Collection of the artist . © YAYOI KUSAMA. Photo courtesy: YAYOI KUSAMA FOUNDATION

‘I find myself being put into a uniform environment, one which is strangely mechanised and standardised… In the gap between people and the strange jungle of civilised society lies many psychosomatic problems. I am always deeply interested in the background of problems involved in the relationship of people and society. My artistic expressions always grow from the aggregation of these.’

— Yayoi Kusama

1964  

Kusama suffers from severe anxiety and exhaustion as she continues to produce her labour-intensive Accumulation sculptures at a rapid pace. Her April solo exhibition, Driving Image Show, at Richard Castellane Gallery in New York, is conceived as a total environment of her artistic vision and labour. Not only is the gallery filled with aggregation sculptures approximating a domestic environment, but also the walls are hung with net paintings, and macaroni is strewn across the floor. 

Poster for Kusama’s ’Driving Image Show’ at Castellane Gallery, New York from 21 April to 9 May 1964. The top part is made up of repeated images of the artist holding up a dress coated in macaroni, as well as female mannequins covered with polka dots. The foreground contains sofas and chairs covered in stuffed fabric protrusions. Under the title of the show, a few lines of smaller texts read, ’SEX - FOOD - OBSESSION’, ‘COMPULSION - FURNITURE’, ’REPETITIVE - VISION’, ’MACARONI - ROOM’, ‘AIR - QUANTA’, ‘INTERMINABLE - NETS’ and ‘PERSEVERATION - FORMS’.

Poster for Driving Image Show, 1964. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Poster for Driving Image Show, 1964. © YAYOI KUSAMA

1965 

Kusama’s work is exhibited in Stockholm (a group show at Moderna Museet), Amsterdam, The Hague, and Bern. She is invited by Argentine-Italian artist Lucio Fontana to be part of the group exhibitions he is curating in Milan and Venice within the network of the ‘New Tendencies’, an international avantgarde movement characterised by experimental media including installation and optical art, as well as concern for spatial dynamics. However, it is her November solo show at Richard Castellane Gallery in New York that features Kusama’s most experimental work to date: a mirrored installation entitled Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli’s Field. The mirrors multiply her sculptural forms in an infinite optical regress. With this work, the integration of performance and self-image in Kusama’s practice is also heightened, as seen in the dramatic portraits of the artist inside the installation, taken by Tokyo-based avant-garde photographer Eikoh Hosoe at Kusama’s studio.  

Photograph showing Kusama in red bodysuit, standing in a room with her hands behind her head. Wall-height mirrors are installed in the room and stuffed protrusions covered in red polka dots blanket the entire floor.
Photograph showing Kusama in a red bodysuit, lying on stuffed protrusions covered in red polka dots in a mirror room.

Image above: Kusama in Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli’s Field. Installation view, Floor Show at Richard Castellane Gallery, New York, 1965. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Image above: Kusama in Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli’s Field. Installation view, Floor Show at Richard Castellane Gallery, New York, 1965. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Monochrome photograph of Kusama sprawled on stuffed protrusions covered in polka dots, taken in a mirror room.

Kusama with Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli’s Field in her studio, New York, ca.1965. © 1964 Eikoh Hosoe / Courtesy of amanaTIGP

Kusama with Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli’s Field in her studio, New York, ca.1965. © 1964 Eikoh Hosoe / Courtesy of amanaTIGP

‘When people see their own reflection multiplied to infinity they then sense that there is no limit to man’s ability to project himself into endless space.’

— Yayoi Kusama

1966 

In March, Kusama’s Peep Show / Endless Love Show opens at Richard Castellane Gallery in New York . The work features a single hexagonal chamber lined entirely with mirrors on the inside that reflect flashing carnival lights. By peering through the peep holes on the chamber’s sides, viewers encounter a cosmic scene described by critic Peter Schjeldahl as ‘a depthless, receding blaze of lights—in the farthest distance a shimmering Milky Way’. 

Photograph showing Kusama peering into the Infinity Mirror Room at Castellane Gallery from a rectangular opening in one of the mirror walls. The hexagonal room is lit with multicoloured lightbulbs dotted across the ceiling, resulting in a dizzying effect. The reflection of this picture’s photographer can be seen in another wall in the background, in which the photographer is taking picture from another opening.

Kusama peering into her Infinity Mirrored Room—Love Forever at Richard Castellane Gallery, New York, 1966. © YAYOI KUSAMA. Photograph by Peter Moore. Peter Moore Photography Archive, Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections, Northwestern University Libraries. Photo: © Northwestern University

Kusama peering into her Infinity Mirrored Room—Love Forever at Richard Castellane Gallery, New York, 1966. © YAYOI KUSAMA. Photograph by Peter Moore. Peter Moore Photography Archive, Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections, Northwestern University Libraries. Photo: © Northwestern University

In June, Kusama creates her first outdoor installation, Narcissus Garden, an unofficial display at the Venice Biennale. Lucio Fontana provides financial support for the work, which consists of 1,500 mirrored plastic balls displayed on the grass outside the Italian pavilion. Kusama sold the balls for two US dollars each, a low price intended as a critique of the art market’s escalating prices. Biennale organisers draw the line, telling Kusama that she must stop selling art ‘like hot dogs or ice cream cones’.  

Monochrome photograph of Kusama smilingly shaking hands with a visitor at her Narcissus Garden. Standing amongst bounteous mirror orbs, the artist is holding one of the orbs in a gesture that seems to suggest a subsequent delivery to the visitor. Another visitor in the background also has a mirror orb in his hands.

Kusama with Narcissus Garden installation at the Venice Biennale, 1966. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Kusama with Narcissus Garden installation at the Venice Biennale, 1966. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Photograph of Kusama, dressed in red bodysuit, lying down with her hands spread among mirror orbs at her Narcissus Garden installation.

Kusama in her Narcissus Garden installation at the Venice Biennale, 1966. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Kusama in her Narcissus Garden installation at the Venice Biennale, 1966. © YAYOI KUSAMA

‘My performances are a kind of symbolic philosophy with polka-dots.’

— Yayoi Kusama

1967 

Kusama begins to produce multimedia performances based on her emergent concept of self-obliteration. In June, she hosts an event called Self-Obliteration: An Audio-Visual Light Performance at the Black Gate Theater, an experimental venue in New York City’s East Village neighbourhood that forms an important node of the international expanded cinema movement. Models dance in silver bikinis as Kusama paints their bodies with Day-Glo polka dots that become fluorescent under strobing blacklights. Throughout the summer, Kusama holds a series of public body-painting performances (Body Festivals) in New York’s Tompkins Square and Washington Square parks. 

Flyer for Kusama’s Body Festival on 20 August 1967 at Washington Square featuring a monochrome illustration of the artist covered in polka dots and lying on her stomach with her legs up. Short lines of text are strewn across the lower half of the flyer – ‘EXPLORE ALL POSSIBILITIES OF OUR TIME’, ‘THIS NOW LIFE IN INFINITE ORDER OF THE SUN, MOON, STARS AND EARTH WITH THE APPLE OF EVE’, ‘LIFE THE PUZZLE?’, ’LEARN, UNLEARN, RELEARN’, ’LET US AMUSE OUR SELVES FOR A TIME, IN OUR TIME’, ‘MASK IN PAINT’, ‘FORGET THE ONENESS, LONENESS, FOR A TIME’, and ‘TOGETHER IN THE POLKA DOT TIME’.

Flyer for one of Kusama’s Body Festivals, Washington Square Park, New York, 1967. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Flyer for one of Kusama’s Body Festivals, Washington Square Park, New York, 1967. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Monochrome photograph of Kusama on a sofa enveloped in stuffed fabric protrusions, against a wall covered in an intricate meshwork of convoluted loops. Sporting long black hair, the artist is peppered with polka dots and lying on her stomach with her legs up. Various types of macaroni can be seen strewn across the floor in the foreground.

Photocollage from a portrait of Kusama by Hal Reiff, ca.1966. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Photocollage from a portrait of Kusama by Hal Reiff, ca.1966. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Kusama collaborates with Jud Yalkut on an experimental film entitled Kusama’s Self-Obliteration. 

Film still depicting the arm and head of the Statue of Liberty. The scene is sepia-tinted. Five white polka dots have been superimposed across the top of the statue’s upper torso.
Film still depicting a superimposition of two scenes depicting people adorned with painted polka dots. One person has their face towards the camera. They wear darkened sunglasses. Multiple other people are visible in with their backs turned.
Film still showing a woman, Yayoi Kusama, in a red flowing robe riding a horse across a sunny patch of grass. The horse and Kusama have white, adhesive polka dots stuck to them. Darkened foliage is visible in the background.
Film still depicting a woman, the artist Yayoi Kusama, waist-deep in what looks like a lake. She’s observing red polka dots floating on the water.

Images above: Jud Yalkut, Yayoi Kusama, Self-Obliteration (stills), 1967. 16mm film transferred to digital video (colour, sound), 22 min. 30 sec. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Images above: Jud Yalkut, Yayoi Kusama, Self-Obliteration (stills), 1967. 16mm film transferred to digital video (colour, sound), 22 min. 30 sec. © YAYOI KUSAMA

1968

Kusama stages dozens of happenings in public locations in New York and in her own studio. In most of these performances, the artist paints polka dots on nude performers. The happenings scandalise the invited news media, and on several occasions Kusama and her performers are detained by police for public indecency. 

Photograph depicting a happening within a room where its walls are lined with various sized, stuffed protrusions sprinkled with red polka dots. Kusama can be seen standing in a sheer veil looking down at an entanglement of three or more people on the floor, all of whom are naked and painted in polka dots.

Homosexual Orgy happening at Kusama’s studio, New York, 1968. Bill Baron © All rights reserved

Homosexual Orgy happening at Kusama’s studio, New York, 1968. Bill Baron © All rights reserved

Photograph depicting Kusama with four people in a mirror room. Wearing a straw hat with red polka dots, Kusama is in a pink tie-dye dress with stuffed protrusions bespeckled with black dots attached. Two colourfully dressed people sit on the foreground. A person in a profusely dotted dress with orange and yellow circles stands on the right, while another person holds a few stuffed soft sculptures on his palm.

Rooftop happening featuring Kusama fashions, New York, 1968. Photograph: Shunk-Kender © J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2014.R.20)

Rooftop happening featuring Kusama fashions, New York, 1968. Photograph: Shunk-Kender © J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2014.R.20)

Self-Obliteration
1966–1974

Looking at this installation, you might imagine that one of Kusama’s Infinity Nets has exploded off the wall, speckling every nearby person and object with multi-coloured dots.

Kusama made Self-Obliteration in the late 1960s when she was living in New York and actively participating in the counterculture. Kusama led dozens of happenings during which she painted dots onto performers’ naked bodies. The polka dot–covered mannequins represent an extension of this practice.    

If you look closely, you can notice that the mannequins, all female, sport wigs styled to reflect the fashions of the late 1960s.    

The intense and someone ominous title of this work, Self-Obliteration, contrasts playfully with the colourful scene before our eyes. Kusama has explored the concept of ‘obliteration’ throughout her career. It is rooted in the idea of the negative and positive becoming one. Kusama has said:

‘Polka dots can't stay alone. When we obliterate nature and our bodies with polka dots we become part of the unity of our environments.’

When we look at this work we see the way the individuals represented by the mannequins appear to become parts of a larger whole.

Installation artwork in which six wigged, adult female mannequins stand around a grouping of four chairs and a table on which potted plants, fruits and tableware are placed, resembling a social setting. All objects are painted in Kusama’s infinity nets, a repeating pattern of convoluted loops rendered in bold colours.

Self-Obliteration, 1966–1974. Paint on mannequins, table, chairs, wigs, handbag, mugs, plates, pitcher, ashtray, plastic plants, plastic flowers, and plastic fruit. M+, Hong Kong. © YAYOI KUSAMA. Photo: M+, Hong Kong

Self-Obliteration, 1966–1974. Paint on mannequins, table, chairs, wigs, handbag, mugs, plates, pitcher, ashtray, plastic plants, plastic flowers, and plastic fruit. M+, Hong Kong. © YAYOI KUSAMA. Photo: M+, Hong Kong

Return to Japan

1973–1974  

Kusama moves to Tokyo at the start of 1973. Kusama also struggles psychologically as she processes the death not only of Joseph Cornell but also of her father, Kamon, who dies in June 1974.  

Monochrome photograph of Joseph Cornell and Kusama against foliage backdrop. In the photograph, Kusama is seen leaning on Cornell’s chest, whose hand is placed on her head.

Joseph Cornell and Kusama in Westhampton, New York, ca.1971. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Joseph Cornell and Kusama in Westhampton, New York, ca.1971. © YAYOI KUSAMA

1975  

Nonetheless, she opens a solo exhibition in December at Tokyo’s Nishimura Gallery featuring a new series of mixed-media works on paper. They are intimate works that, in their small scale, most closely recall her mystical abstractions of the early 1950s. Incorporating many cut-out images of animals and plants, they seem in part a homage to Cornell, who was known for his intimate photocollages. In a later interview reflecting on this pivotal shift in her work, Kusama connects the lyrical intimacy of the collages to her depression, the cultural differences between New York and Japan, and her emerging writing practice: ‘In Japan, I write poetry. In New York, there was no mood for poetry; every day was a struggle with the outside world.’

Now That You’ve Died (For My Late Parents), 1975 

Now that you’ve died 
your soul, above cotton-rose clouds 
mingles with powedered [sic] rainbow light 
and disappears forever 
And you and I 
at the end of our endless battles 
of love and hatred 
have parted 
never to meet again 
To me, born a child of people 
parting is like the quiet footsteps 
on the path of flowers 
Beyond the clouds of sunset 
a soundless hush 

Handwritten on verso of Now That You Died, 1975; translated by Ralph McCarthy 

Collage with ink and pastel on paper depicting a landscape that can be roughly divided into two components – a bird is splayed on a coarse ground in the foreground, and in the background which occupies two thirds of the image, rounded shapes with black radiating lattice bubble out of a tree that sprouts from the horizon. These elements are lit in an eerie red glow against a dark background. The artist’s signature and the year 1995 are dictated in a red glow in the top left corner.

Now That You Died, 1975. Collage with ink and pastel on paper. Setagaya Art Museum. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Now That You Died, 1975. Collage with ink and pastel on paper. Setagaya Art Museum. © YAYOI KUSAMA

‘I am very dissatisfied with American art. Although it has opened up new genres or new categories, and has contributed to the art of the world, it is backed by American nationalism … and I am against that materialistic culture which considers art as something to be consumed, a commodity.’

— Yayoi Kusama

1976–1977  

Nearly four years after her return to Japan, Kusama looks back on the American art world critically, expressing frustration with its nationalism and consumerism. She now embraces her role as an avant-garde artist in Japan. Feeling that contemporary Japanese art remains highly conservative and culturally undervalued, she desires to lead a change in this area. She begins creating large-scale sculptures again, holding a solo exhibition at Osaka Formes Gallery in Tokyo in 1976. 

Photograph of Kusama with Shūzō Takiguchi sitting on the floor surrounded by stuffed, red dotted fabric lying in loosely tangled piles. Kusama is wearing a chunky beaded necklace and looking into the camera, whereas Takiguchi is formally dressed holding a walking stick and looking at her.

Kusama with Shūzō Takiguchi at the exhibition Obsessional Art, A Requiem for Death and Life, Osaka Formes Gallery, Tokyo, 1976. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Kusama with Shūzō Takiguchi at the exhibition Obsessional Art, A Requiem for Death and Life, Osaka Formes Gallery, Tokyo, 1976. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Installation artwork in which an elongated piece of stuffed fabric dangles at various hanging points and cluster in a loose muddle on the floor.

Death of a Nerve, 1976. Mixed media with stuffed fabric. Lito and Kim Camacho Collection. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Death of a Nerve, 1976. Mixed media with stuffed fabric. Lito and Kim Camacho Collection. © YAYOI KUSAMA

‘I cannot give up my existence. Also I cannot escape from death. This languid weight of life!’

— Yayoi Kusama

1980–1981  

Kusama has seven solo exhibitions between 1980 and 1981, including The Puzzle Art of Yayoi Kusama at the Seibu Department Store in Shibuya, Tokyo. These stores became an important site for international art in Japan in 1961, when the flagship store in Ikebukuro, Tokyo, hosted an exhibition of work by the European Expressionist Paul Klee.  

Kusama is selected for several major group shows that further solidify her place in the narrative of Japanese art, including The 1960s—A Decade of Change in Contemporary Art, organised by the National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo in 1981. The show features several works by Kusama, including the three-panelled Net Accumulation (1958), which subsequently enters the collection of the National Museum of Art, Osaka. 

Flyer for Kusama’s exhibition consisting of a pumpkin covered in black polka dots against a dark green polygonal meshwork. ‘Pumpkin No. 100’ is marked in Japanese on the bottom left corner.
Flyer for the exhibition ’The Puzzle Art of Yayoi Kusama’ at Seibu Department Store from 26 February to 3 March 1981.

Flyer for the exhibition The Puzzle Art of Yayoi Kusama at Seibu Department Store, Shibuya, Tokyo, 1981. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Flyer for the exhibition The Puzzle Art of Yayoi Kusama at Seibu Department Store, Shibuya, Tokyo, 1981. © YAYOI KUSAMA

1982  

Kusama begins exhibiting at Tokyo’s Fuji Television Gallery in 1982 with an eponymous solo exhibition of old and new works, her largest gallery show since returning to Japan.

1983–1984  

Kusama stages her first successful happening in Japan in February 1983 at Video Gallery SCAN in Tokyo. Titled Self-Obliteration, it is screened on Japanese television and named by NHK (Japan’s public television network) as one of the year’s most notable art events. In her second solo show at Fuji Television Gallery, in 1984, she debuts new paintings and sculptures of pumpkins, as well a new series of soft sculptures. Her characteristic ‘phallic’ sculptural forms no longer encrust recognisable pieces of furniture but instead are conglomerated into biomorphic figures like monstrous plants, marking a clear departure from her earlier Accumulations. 

Installation consisting of a symmetric, to some extent, composition of sculptures and paintings. A horizonal 32-grid shelf is placed against a white wall, each shelf holding a black-dotted yellow pumpkin sculpture. A painting of black-dotted yellow pumpkin is displayed above the shelf. On the left of the painting hangs a triptych of vertical panels consisting of repetitive black horizontal stripes against a yellow background, whereas a similar triptych featuring vertical stripes is positioned on the right of the pumpkin painting. Several yellow pumpkin sculptures of various sizes and shapes scatter along both sides of the shelf.

Installation view of Kusama’s second solo exhibition at Fuji Television Gallery, Tokyo, 20 April–16 May 1984. © YAYOI KUSAMA. Photo: © Estate of Shigeo Anzaï, courtesy of Zeit-Foto

Installation view of Kusama’s second solo exhibition at Fuji Television Gallery, Tokyo, 20 April–16 May 1984. © YAYOI KUSAMA. Photo: © Estate of Shigeo Anzaï, courtesy of Zeit-Foto

Sculpture consisting of wriggly stuffed fabric protrusions wrapped around a black stand in an ascensional manner, all of which are painted in yellow with black polka dots. A bright yellow, fuzzy cloud of synthetic fibre erupts at the top. The artist’s signature and the year 1986 are marked on the feet of the stand.

Pollen, 1986. Sewn stuffed fabric, synthetic fibre, and paint. Collection of Ota Fine Arts. © YAYOI KUSAMA. Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts

Pollen, 1986. Sewn stuffed fabric, synthetic fibre, and paint. Collection of Ota Fine Arts. © YAYOI KUSAMA. Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts

1985 

In April, Kusama stages a happening titled Flowers of Basara in the cherry orchard at Jōshin-ji Temple (Kuhonbutsu) in Tokyo, her first public outdoor performance in about a decade. It was commissioned by Tadashi Yokoyama, professor of architecture at Tokyo University, to reinterpret the fourteenth-century celebration of cherry blossoms by the extravagant lord Dōyo Sasaki. Dressed in flowing red robes, Kusama weaves a huge ‘web’ of red and white plastic streamers around blossoming cherry trees in a symbolic gesture of sumptuous interconnectedness.

A film still depicting a woman, the artist Yayoi Kusama, wearing a flowing red knee-length robe and a black wide-brimmed hat holding a long thread of ribbon. The ribbon has been encircled around the trunks of trees in wheat appears to be a park setting.
A film still depicting a woman, the artist Yayoi Kusama, wearing a flowing red knee-length robe and a black wide-brimmed hat holding a long thread of ribbon.
A film still depicting a woman, the artist Yayoi Kusama, wearing a flowing red knee-length robe and a black wide-brimmed hat. She is surrounded by threads of ribbon that winded around the trunks of trees. She is holding what looks like large, white fabric sheets.
A film still depicting a woman, the artist Yayoi Kusama, wearing a flowing red knee-length robe and a black wide-brimmed hat pulling a long thread of ribbon. The ribbon has been encircled around the trunks of trees in what appears to be a park setting.
Item 1 of 4
A film still depicting a woman, the artist Yayoi Kusama, wearing a flowing red knee-length robe and a black wide-brimmed hat holding a long thread of ribbon. The ribbon has been encircled around the trunks of trees in wheat appears to be a park setting.
A film still depicting a woman, the artist Yayoi Kusama, wearing a flowing red knee-length robe and a black wide-brimmed hat holding a long thread of ribbon.
A film still depicting a woman, the artist Yayoi Kusama, wearing a flowing red knee-length robe and a black wide-brimmed hat. She is surrounded by threads of ribbon that winded around the trunks of trees. She is holding what looks like large, white fabric sheets.
A film still depicting a woman, the artist Yayoi Kusama, wearing a flowing red knee-length robe and a black wide-brimmed hat pulling a long thread of ribbon. The ribbon has been encircled around the trunks of trees in what appears to be a park setting.

Images above: Flowers of Basara (stills), performance at Kuhonbutsu Jōshin-ji temple, Tokyo, 1985. Digital video (colour, silent), 1 min. 20 sec. Collection of the artist. © YAYOI KUSAMA

‘The world is contaminated with nuclear power, wars and violence. I wish to leave behind the evidence for the future that we did our utmost as artists to shine in this polluted world.’

— Yayoi Kusama

1987  

Kusama’s first retrospective, organised by Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, opens in March. Featuring seventy-nine works from 1948 to the present, the exhibition is received positively by the Japanese media, increasing public familiarity with her work. 

Installation consisting of three rows of sculptures from the foreground to the back. In the foreground sitting on plinths are four box-shaped sculptures in red, yellow and black, within which minute, finger-like filaments are carved out. In the middle row stands four white and red sculptures resembling sea anemones and enveloped in stuffed protrusions. At the very back, large paintings and sculptures are visible.

Installation view of Kusama’s first retrospective exhibition, Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, 1987. © YAYOI KUSAMA. Photo: © Estate of Shigeo Anzaï, courtesy of Zeit-Foto

Installation view of Kusama’s first retrospective exhibition, Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, 1987. © YAYOI KUSAMA. Photo: © Estate of Shigeo Anzaï, courtesy of Zeit-Foto

Monochrome photograph of Kusama, in her late fifties, in her studio. The artist is seated and looking into the camera, with a bottle and brush in her hand. Her works lean against the wall and her tools are laid out in a rack beside her. The artist seems to be working on a painting on a table.

Kusama in her studio, 1987. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Kusama in her studio, 1987. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Imagery of Human Beings
1987

Titled Imagery of Human Beings, this painting expresses Kusama’s view of our interconnected existence. Round white dots of various sizes cover a purple field. Most of the dots have tiny tails that are sometimes linked to other white dots. Each dot might resemble tadpoles or sperms.  

If you step back to view it, the composition could be an image of a galaxy. Scanning the work from left to right you can see how the density of the dots varies from panel to panel: the dots on the left are larger and closely spaced. As you move your eyes across the panels, the dots seem to disperse, adding to an impression of movement. Let your eyes roam in this field of dots and lines. 

If you think of a single dot as representing one life, this work could be understood as a larger image of cosmic oneness in which we are all connected. The Buddhist concept of reincarnation informs Kusama’s worldview. Buddhist teaching describes how we have lived countless lives from beginningless time. This also means we have all been related to everyone else over the course of our many lifetimes. Looking at this painting, you might feel that our lives are just a moment in a longer existence, like a speck of dust in the galaxies. 

For Kusama, the dot is charged with spiritual significance. She often refers to the form as ‘polka dot’, which symbolises a spirit of rebirth generated through transformation of energy and constant movement. Says Kusama:

‘Polka-dots can’t stay alone. Like the communicative life of people, two or three and more polka-dots become movement. Our earth is only one polka-dot among a million stars in the cosmos. Polka-dots are a way to infinity.’   

As you look again at this painting, Imagery of Human Being, what kind of image does Kusama offer? It is a representation of cosmic oneness. In the same way all living beings are made up of cells, the whole of humanity is part of one being, and the entire universe in one single cell. 

Triptych acrylic on canvas depicting white rounded bodies with curly tails lavishly dotted across a background rendered in violet tones. The concentration of white dots is heaviest on the leftmost panel.

Imagery of Human Beings, 1987. Acrylic on canvas, triptych. Lito and Kim Camacho Collection. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Imagery of Human Beings, 1987. Acrylic on canvas, triptych. Lito and Kim Camacho Collection. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Global Culture Icon

1989  

Kusama’s first international retrospective, organised by the Center for International Contemporary Arts (CICA) in New York, opens in September and asserts her influence on American art in the 1960s. Curator Alexandra Munroe evaluates Kusama’s status as both an influential insider and an eccentric outsider in relation to international contemporary art movements.  

‘If there is a chance that in 100 years’ time, there will be just one person who will look at my work and be touched by it, then I must continue to create art for that person.’

— Yayoi Kusama

1991–1992  

Kusama’s Fuji Television Gallery show Between Heaven and Earth presents Mirror Room (Pumpkin), the first mirror room that Kusama has created since the 1960s. While retaining her characteristic all-over abstraction, new paintings such as Sex Obsession (1992) also feature more complex motifs reminiscent of biological patterns. 

Installation artwork in which black-dotted yellow pumpkin sculptures of various shapes and sizes sit on the floor of a mirror room, resulting in an infinite tunnel of reflections.

Mirror Room (Pumpkin), 1991/1992. Foundation Arc-en-Ciel／Hara Museum Collection. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Mirror Room (Pumpkin), 1991/1992. Foundation Arc-en-Ciel／Hara Museum Collection. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Acrylic on canvas depicting an entanglement of tentacular bodies spotted with yellow dots.

Sex Obsession, 1992. Acrylic on canvas. Lito and Kim Camacho. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Sex Obsession, 1992. Acrylic on canvas. Lito and Kim Camacho. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Shooting Stars
1992

Let your eyes roam between the rectangular frames that make up this giant installation, titled Shooting Stars. Kusama filled each of the eighty-four frames with hand-sewn fabric sacs that extend in all directions, taking over this orderly structure as if they are wild parasitic vines. The silvery entangling forms resemble synapses within the nervous system and evoke a flow of electric currents. The assemblage forms an expanding universe. It can represent something as small as cells and as big as the stars in the sky.   

After returning to Japan from New York in 1973, Kusama focused on coping with psychological distress and deteriorating mental health. However, she gradually embraced her identity as a leading figure in Japan’s avant-garde and received increasing attention from the international art world in the 1980s.

She created this work in 1992, one year before she represented Japan at the Venice Biennale, the most important recurring global exhibition. The installation seems to radiate energy, symbolising her ambition and explosive creativity.

Sculpture consisting of 84 silver rectangular block stacked in four rows in an orderly manner, and within each block is an intricate openwork that resembles an entanglement of branch-like forms.

Shooting Stars, 1992. Mixed media. Niigata City Art Museum. © YAYOI KUSAMA. Photo by Norihiro Ueno, 1992. Image courtesy of Niigata City Art Museum

Shooting Stars, 1992. Mixed media. Niigata City Art Museum. © YAYOI KUSAMA. Photo by Norihiro Ueno, 1992. Image courtesy of Niigata City Art Museum

1993

At the forty-fifth Venice Biennale, Kusama is the first artist to have a solo exhibition in the Japanese pavilion. Commissioner Akira Tatehata includes some important works of the 1960s while emphasising Kusama’s ongoing innovation with a selection of recent biomorphic sculptures and Mirror Room (Pumpkin) (1991/1992). Tatehata describes the exhibition as ‘an attempt to accurately reassess the quality of [Kusama’s] achievement without undue emphasis on her legendary eccentricity’. 

Photograph of Kusama in her sixties in a room coated in yellow with black polka dots. The artist is sitting on the floor dressed in a yellow and black-dotted dress with a pointy hat in the same pattern.

Kusama in the Japanese pavilion at the 1993 Venice Biennale. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Kusama in the Japanese pavilion at the 1993 Venice Biennale. © YAYOI KUSAMA

1994

Kusama installs her first permanent outdoor sculpture, Pumpkin, as part of the exhibition Open Air ’94, ‘Out of Bounds’: Contemporary Art in the Seascape at Benesse Art Site Naoshima, Japan. Developed in 1989, the privately funded Benesse Art Site Naoshima is intended to make connections between art, nature, and the local communities of Naoshima, Teshima, and Inujima—three islands in the Seto Inland Sea in Western Japan—as a form of philanthropic capitalism.

Sculpture of a yellow pumpkin with vertical strips of black polka dots between its ribs sitting at the seaside.

Pumpkin, 1994. ©YAYOI KUSAMA. Image courtesy of Benesse Art Site Naoshima (Photo: Shigeo Anzai)

Pumpkin, 1994. ©YAYOI KUSAMA. Image courtesy of Benesse Art Site Naoshima (Photo: Shigeo Anzai)

1998–1999

The exhibition Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama, 1958–1968 is organised by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Japan Foundation in collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This show, which travels to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, examines Kusama’s singular contributions to the international art movements of the 1960s, as well as her pioneering use of media. In 1999, an exhibition organised by the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo—titled In Full Bloom: Yayoi Kusama, Years in Japan and curated by Naoko Seki—surveys Kusama’s career in Japan both before and after her decades abroad.  

Photograph of a performance in which Kusama, dressed in red, places her hand on the back of a performer. With red polka dots painted on the performer’s body, the person is looking and pointing into the camera with spread arms.

Untitled performance at Hotel Chateau Marmont, Los Angeles, in 1998, for the opening of Love Forever at Los Angeles County Museum of Art. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Untitled performance at Hotel Chateau Marmont, Los Angeles, in 1998, for the opening of Love Forever at Los Angeles County Museum of Art. © YAYOI KUSAMA

2002 

Kusama publishes Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama. The book synthesises texts she has been working on since the early 1970s, as well as even earlier writings. 

2004–2005  

The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, organises Kusama’s most comprehensive retrospective to date, an exhibition titled Yayoi Kusama: Eternity-Modernity. The exhibition was well received by critics. 

Meanwhile, Kusama continues to exhibit new work, also opening Kusamatrix in 2004 at Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum. The installations Hi, Konnichiwa! and Love Forever: Girls! Adolescence is on the Way (both 2004) feature huge, cartoonish, doll-like human figures, some of which are called ‘Yayoi-chan’, lending them a nostalgic, autobiographical dimension.  Kusamatrix is seen by more than half a million visitors. 

Photograph of Kusama surrounded by the installation of three girl-like sculptures and three dog-like sculptures. All sculptures are covered in polka dots of different colours. The artist is wearing a red bob wig and yellow dress with red dots. Multiple drawings of mini figures are attached to the wall at the background.

Kusama with the installation Hi, Konnichiwa! at Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2004. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Kusama with the installation Hi, Konnichiwa! at Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2004. © YAYOI KUSAMA

‘What does living a life mean? I lose myself in this thought every time I create artwork.’

— Yayoi Kusama

Force of Life

2009  

Kusama starts a new series of paintings titled My Eternal Soul. Extending the simplistically drawn, semi-representational style that characterises her Love Forever drawings, she begins producing colourful acrylic paintings on square canvases. The prevalence of such objects as faces, flowers, and eyes in these drawings and paintings constitutes an apparent departure from her earlier, more austere style of abstraction. 

Acrylic on canvas depicting a primarily pink background where several smiling faces, eye motif and profile faces lay. Concentric circles are seen strewn across the painting, while a stream of doodle-like lashed eyes flows above a blue spiky line at the top part.

My Heart with Many Worries, 2013, Acrylic on canvas. Collection of the artist. © YAYOI KUSAMA. Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts, Victoria Miro, and David Zwirner

My Heart with Many Worries, 2013, Acrylic on canvas. Collection of the artist. © YAYOI KUSAMA. Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts, Victoria Miro, and David Zwirner

Acrylic on canvas depicting an assortment of shapes and colours laid on a bright yellow backdrop, some of which have black spikes radiating from them. The image is bounded by a multicoloured border.

Pound of Repose, 2014. Acrylic on canvas. Collection of the artist.  © YAYOI KUSAMA. Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts, Victoria Miro, and David Zwirner 

Pound of Repose, 2014. Acrylic on canvas. Collection of the artist.  © YAYOI KUSAMA. Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts, Victoria Miro, and David Zwirner 

Acrylic on canvas depicting a composition of irregular colour blocks outlined by black borders filled with red polka dots. Tentacular forms painted in pop yellow, green and blue marked with irregular scale-like pattern sprout from different directions. A figure resembling a sun glows in a yellow rim against a blue backdrop at the top right.

We Who Are Captivated by the Utmost Beauty of Everything We Know and Shed Tears as We Were Monstrously Touched by the Mystery of the Beauty, 2019. Acrylic on canvas. Collection of the artist. © YAYOI KUSAMA. Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts, Victoria Miro, and David Zwirner

We Who Are Captivated by the Utmost Beauty of Everything We Know and Shed Tears as We Were Monstrously Touched by the Mystery of the Beauty, 2019. Acrylic on canvas. Collection of the artist. © YAYOI KUSAMA. Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts, Victoria Miro, and David Zwirner

2011–2012  

A major retrospective, Yayoi Kusama, at Tate Modern in London, was toured to (the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid in 2011, moves to the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and arrives at Tate Modern in 2012, finally travelling to the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York later that year.  

Installation consisting of several pieces of sofas covered in stuffed fabric protrusions and painted in white or cream colour. A few coats hang on the wall, while high heels crammed with stuffed protrusions and a suitcase sit on the floor in the foreground.

Installation view of the exhibition Yayoi Kusama at Tate Modern, London, 2012. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Installation view of the exhibition Yayoi Kusama at Tate Modern, London, 2012. © YAYOI KUSAMA

2017

The Yayoi Kusama Museum opens in the Shinjuku ward of Tokyo, in a building designed by Japanese architectural firm Kume Sekkei. Kusama’s longtime advocate Akira Tatehata is named director. The first exhibition of the artist’s personal collection, titled Creation Is a Solitary Pursuit, Love Is What Brings You Closer to Art, includes works from My Eternal Soul, drawings from the preceding series, Love Forever, and a new pumpkin installation. 

Photograph of the entrance of Yayoi Kusama Museum, featuring glass walls covered in the artist’s signature white polka dots. Long exposure results in blurry images of moving people.

Yayoi Kusama Museum in Tokyo. Image courtesy of YAYOI KUSAMA FOUNDATION. Photo by Shintaro Ono (Nippon Design Center, Inc.)

Yayoi Kusama Museum in Tokyo. Image courtesy of YAYOI KUSAMA FOUNDATION. Photo by Shintaro Ono (Nippon Design Center, Inc.)

The North American touring exhibition Infinity Mirrors, organised by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC, surveys Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms, featuring six mirrored environments. Public enthusiasm for the tour is unprecedented. Reviews of the show centre on the mirror rooms as social-media phenomena. Los Angeles Times critic Christopher Knight says of the rooms that ‘looking at the ubiquitous photos of them is as fulfilling as actually being there—which may be a first for art’.  

2020 

Kusama issues a public message banishing the virus and calling for love and peaceful redemption:

‘Now is the time to overcome, to bring peace
We gathered for love and I hope to fulfil that desire
The time has come to fight and overcome our unhappiness
To COVID-19 that stands in our way
I say Disappear from this earth.’

The statement is accompanied by her own painting When Life Boundlessly Flares Up to the Universe (2014).

Triptych acrylic on canvas depicting a snow-topped orange Fuji Mountain at the centre with a few houses nestling in its foot. A smiling sun reminiscent of a child’s drawing sits on the left of the mountain top. In the background the blue sky is densely packed with white dots.

When Life Boundlessly Flares Up to the Universe, 2014. Acrylic on canvas, three panels. Collection of the artist. © YAYOI KUSAMA

When Life Boundlessly Flares Up to the Universe, 2014. Acrylic on canvas, three panels. Collection of the artist. © YAYOI KUSAMA

2021  

A large retrospective of Kusama’s work is held for the first time in Germany, organised by the Gropius Bau in Berlin. In the United States, a major exhibition of Kusama’s outdoor sculpture, KUSAMA: Cosmic Nature, opens at the New York Botanical Garden. 

Photograph depicting a sun or flower-shaped sculpture standing over a still body of water in a park. In the middle of the statue is a stylised, drawn face. Trees, lawns and two people walking by the water are visible in the background.

Kusama's I Want to Fly to the Universe (2020) on display during KUSAMA: Cosmic Nature at New York Botanical Garden. Photo by Liao Pan/China News Service via Getty Images

Kusama's I Want to Fly to the Universe (2020) on display during KUSAMA: Cosmic Nature at New York Botanical Garden. Photo by Liao Pan/China News Service via Getty Images

2022

Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now is presented at M+, Hong Kong. It is the largest retrospective of the artist in Asia outside Japan.

A soft sculpture featuring sewn tubes of suspended fabric in a cavernous concrete-walled exhibition space. The tubes are vibrant colours of red, purple, blue and yellow; black polka dots cover them. Two figures, blurred, walk past the sculpture.

Yayoi Kusama, Death of Nerves, 2022. Collection of the artist. Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts. © YAYOI KUSAMA. Photo: M+, Hong Kong

Yayoi Kusama, Death of Nerves, 2022. Collection of the artist. Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts. © YAYOI KUSAMA. Photo: M+, Hong Kong

Two sizeable yellow pumpkin sculptures, one squat, one tall, featuring vertical strips of black polka dots along their shells.

Yayoi Kusama. Pumpkin, 2022. Collection of the artist. Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts. © YAYOI KUSAMA. Photo: M+, Hong Kong

Yayoi Kusama. Pumpkin, 2022. Collection of the artist. Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts. © YAYOI KUSAMA. Photo: M+, Hong Kong

‘Oh my dearest art.
With the challenge of creating new art,
I work as if dying;
these works are my everything.’

— Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now, is on view at M+ from 12 November 2022 to 14 May 2023.

The exhibition is the largest retrospective of renowned artist Yayoi Kusama in Asia outside Japan, featuring more than 200 works from major collections from museums and private collections in Asia, Europe, and the United States, the M+ Collection, as well as from the artist’s own collection.

Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now is supported by HSBC, Lead Sponsor, together with HKT as Major Sponsor, Louis Vuitton, Sino Group and The Macallan as Supporting Sponsors and Cathay Pacific Airways as Airline Partner of the exhibition.

Lead Sponsor

Credits

Produced by M+

Text compiled by Alex A. Jones

Producers: Chris Sullivan, Amy Leung
Editors: Amy Leung, William Smith, LW Lam, Yuling Zhong
English to Chinese translations: Ho Kuai Sim, Luisa Ku, Cecilia Kwan, Erica Leung, Amy Li
Japanese to English translations: Ralph McCarthy
Japanese to Chinese translations: Ikeda Lily Chenran
Curatorial research: Isabella Tam, Kary Woo
Artwork-feature texts: Winnie Lai, Ruby Ho, Chris Sullivan
Rights and reproductions: Jacqueline Chan

A very special thank you to: Yayoi Kusama, Doryun Chong, Mika Yoshitake, William Smith, Keri Ryan, Flavio Trevisan, Lucia Lo, Ada Hung, YAYOI KUSAMA Inc., Ota Fine Arts