Yayoi Kusama, born 22 March 1929, is a Japanese painter, sculptor and installation artist who focuses on protest, sexuality and the communication of her psychological experiences. With over 80 years of obsessive creation, Kusama's extensive collection of artworks inspires generations of artists. She came to fame during the 1960s
alongside artists such as Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock.
Kusama was born into a strict traditional family in the Matsumoto province of Japan, who wanted her to follow their conservative norms by marrying and becoming a housewife.
Kusama started painting around age 10 after experiencing a vivid hallucination of a field of dots. She "came to understand and explain her own work and obsessions as intrinsically linked to hallucinatory episodes during her childhood that resurfaced in later recurrent mental breakdowns… [and to a] psychological disorder dating from childhood and related to memorable traumatic incidents in her early years, from her father's philandering to her mother's alleged violence towards her daughter." (Morris, F. p14)
She recalls how her mother would frequently throw away her inks and paints - materials which, in post-war Japan, would have been expensive and hard to source. This did not discourage her, and she frequently used materials she found around the home.
Eventually, Kusama managed to move to Kyoto to study Art in 1948, but in response to the bombing of Pearl Harbour in 1941, there was a 'state of policy of deploying culture to create fanatic nationalism during its aggressive colonial campaign called the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Scheme. - Midori Yumamura" (Morris, F. p14). This affected Kusama's artistic studies as Nihonga painting became the prevalent style of wartime dictatorship, directly contrasting her own ideas of freedom of expression and political activism. Nihonga Painting was "tainted by association with Nationalist rule… [and] was the preferred style of wartime dictatorship - Chris Dercon." (Morris, F. p11) This change in artistic culture made Kusama feel constrained, so in response she worked to develop her own avant-garde style, studying European techniques and materials, eventually leading up to her first solo exhibition in Japan in 1952.
Lingering Dream is the largest of Kusama's Nihonga works.
Despite clawing some success in her home country, Kusama believed "the 'future lay in New York' and aspired 'to grab everything that went on in the city and become a star'" (C. Morris, F. p12), eventually moving there in 1958. She brought with her a variety of paintings to sell and burnt the rest by the river.
"Staying in Japan was out of the question. My Parents, the house, the land, the shackles, the conventions, the prejudice… For art like mine - art that does battle at the boundary between life and death, questioning what we are and what it means to live and die - this country was too small, too servile, too feudalistic, and too scornful of women. My art needed a more unlimitied freedom, and a wider world. Yayoi Kusama, Mignon Nixon" (Morris, F. p177)
When arriving in New York, Kusama plucked up the courage to contact Georgia O'Keefe for advice and mentorship, building a lasting and supportive relationship. While O'Keeffe observed and communicated the external world around her, contrasting Kusama's internal expressions, the two formed a strong bond due to the patriarchal difficulties faced by female artists of the time. "O'Keeffe represented an independent female artist who had forged a successful career in the predominantly male art world." (Morris, F. p52)
Kusama also spent time neighbouring with sculptor Donald Judd until the summer of 1964, considering him her first friend in the New York art world. At the time, Judd was supporting himself as an art critic. He wrote favourably about Kusama's work, praising her painting from her first solo exhibition at the Brata Gallery in 1959, and became the first collector to buy an Infinity Net painting. By 1961, the two artists became close and supportive colleagues. Judd's sculptural works utilize repetition and shape to reveal similarities in his thinking.
In the early 1960s, she met Joseph Cornell, with whom she formed a close bond that she describes as passionately romantic but platonic. Understanding her financial hardships, Cornell occasionally gave works to Kusama for her to sell, allowing her to earn commissions to support the costs of her own art practice. In 1973, she saw the opportunity to extend this kind of work, selling Western art to wealthy Japanese clients. This led to Kusama directly influencing Eastern culture with an influx of Western art.
Kusama inserts herself into her polka dots, phallic soft sculptures and mirrored room, combing performance with installation.
Affectionately known as the 'Princess of Polka Dots', Kusama's relation to the polka dot is described as a "shorthand signifying her hallucinatory visions. Covering a room in psychedelic polka dots might be read as Kusama's attempt to visualise and restage the experience of her own hallucinatory episodes, during which she senses the physical world is overtaken by endlessly repeated forms. The artist's articulation of her inner world results in an installation that is fantastical and potentially unsettling for the viewer." (Morris, F. p147)
"Kusama explained that her approach to making her sculptural and collage accumulations was her philosophy of 'self-obliteration'. She has written:
Artists do not usually express their own psychological complexes directly, but I use my complexes and fears as subjects. I am terrified by just the thought of something long and ugly, like a phallus entering me and that is why I make so many of them. The thought of continually eating something like macaroni, spat out by machinery, fills me with fear and revulsion, so I make macaroni sculptures. I make them and make them and then keep on making them, until I bury myself in the process. I call this 'obliteration'." (Morris, F. p14)
Yayoi Kusama's repetition embraces the infinite as a means to control and understand these experiences, which resonates with my own work and study of similar themes. "Writing about her earliest white-on-black Infinity Nets, she describes 'white nets enveloping the black dots or silent death against a pitch-dark background of nothingness'… The incessant quality of this gesture is both obsessive and meditative." (Morris, F. p53). Having experienced vivid intrusive thoughts and hallucinatory episodes, I can relate to the overwhelming impact of such psychological experiences, and the impact repetition can have in soothing these encounters. The manifestation of infinity in mirrored environments offers a glimpse into this concept, but it also adds limitations. Kusama's time-constrained mirrored rooms, showcased at the Tate Modern, cut short the endlessness she was trying to portray.
The post-war boom projected New York onto the global stage for economic growth. The juxtaposition of wealth and glittering skyscrapers with poverty and urban decay created a landscape which was rich with multi-cultural artistry and rebellion, challenging traditional norms. The 1960s saw the rise of bold artworks with the style of pop art and counter-cultural influences, which questioned the industrialised consumerist culture and capitalist agendas.
In Walking Piece, Kusama appears adrift and homeless in a harsh foreign landscape, presenting herself as an exotic, visible symbol of otherness. "Walking Piece is a vision of alienation in the modern western city, with the artist playing the role of an innocent abroad, her colourful presence a manifestation of vulnerable creativity at the mercy of the crass, commercial metropolis. This work is one of the first expressions of a subjective approach to mapping the city that has come to be defined as 'psycho-geography.'" (Morris, F. p109)
Psycho-geography takes its roots from surrealism and dadaism and later gained popularity in the 1990s with artists such as Iain Sinclair and Patrick Keiller, who similarly explored locations through walking.
Walking Piece, Yayoi Kusama, 1966
Japan similarly experienced rapid industrialization and economic growth in the 60s, which brought along a range of environmental challenges. During this time, the country was still recovering from World War II. In the latter part of the century, there was a growing indulgence in luxury and wealth due to these rises in economic prosperity.
The art world underwent a significant change that allowed for the fusion and harmony of Eastern and Western cultures. Artists like Kusama played a leading role in this transformation, but it correlated to feelings of alienation from both sides since their work didn't adhere to either aesthetic and challenged the status quo of the time.
Later, Japanese-born artists were clearly influenced by Kusama's obsessive expression of her lived experiences and bold colour palette.
Rachel Perry is a Tokyo-born multimedia artist who explores consumer culture and materialism through various mediums, including installation, performance, photography, video, and drawing. She frequently camouflages herself within carefully arranged scenes of everyday detritus, much like Kusama would often insert herself into her own installations. Perry's piece Lost in My Life (Fruit Stickers Standing with Round), 2018, pertains a direct resemblance to Kusama's Obliteration Room or Accumulation series. Perry’s work is often categorized between Minimalism and Pop art, much like Kusama's own work.
However, while Kusama's work adopts a minimalist approach to mark-making, Perry introduces an additional layer of consumerist observation and chaotic organization through the use of fruit stickers bearing brand names.
Rachel Perry, Lost in my Life
Yayoi Kusama Obliteration Room
As Kusama presented in her political protests, the looming presence of the post-WWII era and the reignition of moral urgency during the Vietnam War offered a chasm of enquiry to contemporary artistry. Experiences of death and detachment are present throughout most of Kusama's earlier work and offer an insider's perspective on the Eastern experience in these times of great conflict.
Anti-war performance
"Kusama actively embraced protest culture… She was in her element with the advent of counterculture, a groundswell of anti-authoritarian utopian energy in open rebellion against the establishment. This is where the comparisons to Andy Warhol, who in other respects is her closest peer on the New York scene, falter. Both artists experimented with designating the workshop to a kind of factory and exploited serial production, underlining the exhaustion of expressionism and the affective resonance of exhaustion… Both courted and exploited fame as a means by which to operate in the wider culture. But Kusama 'failed' where Warhol prospered precisely because hers was a protest art. Remaining aloof from the contradictions his art exposed, Warhol could hardly be held responsible for them. - Mignon Nixon" (Morris, F. p184)
Andy Warhol's own Cow Wallpaper exhibit was uncredited as directly inspired by Kusama's
Aggregation: One Thousands Boats Show, which he had visited 3 years prior. "Kusama would go on to have more ideas stolen from her by her peers… When Kusama visited Claes Oldenberg’s exhibit and saw he’d taken her idea of soft sculpture, his wife approached her and apologized. Then, Kusama watched these ideas–her ideas–manifest in wealth and success that she could not herself achieve. She became paranoid and isolated herself, hiding her art. Her mental health deteriorated. This culminated in a suicide attempt. " (Serrano, J.)
This reflects the white, patriarchal culture prevalent in the art world at that time, underscoring the risks associated with using another artist's work as inspiration without proper attribution. This issue is particularly acute in the context of female or marginalized individuals who may not have the strength or ability to advocate for themselves regarding plagiarism.
"Other Mirrored rooms, such as the infinity room by Lucas Samaras (Mirrored Room no. 2, 1966) bear striking resemblance to Kusama's own works, such as Peep Show and Infinity Mirrored Room. When asked by Damien Hirst about the resemblance, Kusama commented that “Lucas Samaras is always copying other artists’ work. His work lacks originality, I think. He made the mirrored room series inspired by my work. Therefore, my infinity room has nothing to do with his vision.” (Tatehata, A.)
Mirrored Room, Lucas Samaras 1966
While Kusama may have been the inspiration for Samaras's work, the concept of infinite mirrors has been documented for centuries. Kusama's 'The Chandelier of grief' shares similarities with The Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles, which was completed in the early 18th century.
The Chandelier of Grief, Yayoi Kusama 2016
Hall of Mirrors, Palace of Versailles.
Damien Hirst may have drawn similarities to Samaras's mirrored rooms, but his own polka dot creations also bear resemblance to Kusama's work. While Kusama's are a reflection of her lived hallucinatory experiences, Hirst describes his as wanting "the Spots to look like they were painted by a human trying to paint like a machine. Colour Space is going back to the human element, so instead you have the fallibility of the human hand in the drips and inconsistencies. There are still no two exact colors that repeat in each painting, which is really important to me. I think of them as cells under a microscope". (Maier, G.) This version offers a contemporary interpretation of the polka dot, emphasizing how modern technologies shape human existence and influence our self-perception. It will be interesting to see where this concept leads with the introduction of AI to the creative toolbox.
Colour Space Painting, Damien Hirst, 2018
While Kusama's works contain her own original mark-making techniques, influences from her teachers and cultural background seep into her art. Her anti-protest ventures clearly express her experiences with the sufferings of war and oppression, and the influence her mental health had on her work pushed the boundaries from mere painting to obsessional flow - to the point of self-obliteration. Her acclaimed style remains influential, especially relevant in a world which is now faced with an abundance of war, mental health issues, and the infinites of advanced technologies.
Kusama still manages to push out work into her 90s between her studio and home in a psychiatric institution in Tokyo. Her openness to her struggles has resulted in “a growing literature around the role of mental illness in art as well as pathological interpretations of creativity." (Morris, F. p14) She shows that creating art through repetitive actions is as much a part of her artistic process as it is a way of expressing her hallucinations and trauma, and paves the way for contemporary artists to confidently explore their own experiences of mental health and adversity using similar techniques and processes.
References
1. Francis Morris, (2012). Yayoi Kusama. Tate Publishing and D.A.P.
2. Francis Morris, (2012). Yayoi Kusama. Tate Publishing and D.A.P.
3. Francis Morris, (2012). Yayoi Kusama. Tate Publishing and D.A.P.
4. Francis Morris, (2012). Yayoi Kusama. Tate Publishing and D.A.P.
5. Francis Morris, (2012). Yayoi Kusama. Tate Publishing and D.A.P.
6. Francis Morris, (2012). Yayoi Kusama. Tate Publishing and D.A.P.
7. Francis Morris, (2012). Yayoi Kusama. Tate Publishing and D.A.P.
8. Francis Morris, (2012). Yayoi Kusama. Tate Publishing and D.A.P.
9. Francis Morris, (2012). Yayoi Kusama. Tate Publishing and D.A.P.
10. Francis Morris, (2012). Yayoi Kusama. Tate Publishing and D.A.P.
11. Francis Morris, (2012). Yayoi Kusama. Tate Publishing and D.A.P.
12. Jay Serrano, That time Andy Warhol plagiarized Yayoi Kusama, (2021). Cicada Creative Magazine. https://cicadacreativemag.com/blog/warhol-kusama/
13. Akira Tatehata, (2017). When Yayoi Kusama met Damien Hirst. Phaidon. https://www.phaidon.com/agenda/art/articles/2017/september/11/when-yayoi-kusama-met-damien-hirst/
14. Gerhard Maier, (2018). Contemporary Art: Damien Hirst`s New Dot Paintings @ Gagosian New York. DrivebyCursiosity. https://drivebycuriosity.blogspot.com/2018/05/contemporary-art-damien-hirsts-new-dot.html
15. Francis Morris, (2012). Yayoi Kusama. Tate Publishing and D.A.P.
Bibliography
Gerhard Maier, (2018). Contemporary Art: Damien Hirst`s New Dot Paintings @ Gagosian New York. DrivebyCursiosity. https://drivebycuriosity.blogspot.com/2018/05/contemporary-art-damien-hirsts-new-dot.html
Francis Morris, (2012). Yayoi Kusama. Tate Publishing and D.A.P.
Jay Serrano, That time Andy Warhol plagiarized Yayoi Kusama, (2021). Cicada Creative Magazine. https://cicadacreativemag.com/blog/warhol-kusama/
Akira Tatehata, (2017). When Yayoi Kusama met Damien Hirst. Phaidon. https://www.phaidon.com/agenda/art/articles/2017/september/11/when-yayoi-kusama-met-damien-hirst/
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