Japanese contemporary art icon Yayoi Kusama, famed for her polka dots, infinity rooms and immersive installations, has died aged 97
TOKYO: Japan’s Yayoi Kusama, one of the world’s most celebrated contemporary artists, has died aged 97, her company said Thursday, triggering tributes from around the world.
The “polka dot queen” channelled hallucinations and battles with mental health into vibrant art featuring her trademark dots, nets and infinity motifs over a career spanning decades and continents.
“Throughout an extraordinary lifetime devoted entirely to artistic creation, Kusama pursued an internationally acclaimed career as a pioneering avant-garde artist whose creative practice encompassed visual art, performance, fiction, and poetry,” a statement said, announcing her death on August 14.
“She continued to paint until her final days, never setting aside her brush, and continued exploration of forever love and eternal soul,” it added.
Born in 1929 to a wealthy and conservative family — by her account with a domineering mother and philandering father — Kusama began producing her unique signature art aged 10.
“One day, after seeing a tablecloth with a red flower pattern on a desk, I saw the same red flower pattern all over the ceiling, windows and pillars. It filled the room, and covered my body,” she wrote in her autobiography.
After studying art in Japan, Kusama moved to the United States in the late 1950s, and — encouraged and helped by Georgia O’Keeffe — quickly made a splash in New York’s avant-garde scene.
Despite facing discrimination as not just Japanese but also a woman in a male-dominated scene, she won fame for bold, big paintings and provocative 1960s “happenings” featuring body painting and polka dots.
She also launched a fashion line, established a “Church of Self-Obliteration” and styled herself the “High Priestess of Polka Dots” to officiate at a gay wedding.
Returning to Japan in the 1970s, Kusama checked herself into a Tokyo psychiatric hospital, where she lived — and churned out work — for the rest of her long life.
‘Self-obliteration’
Her fame enjoyed a renaissance from the 1980s.
Instantly recognisable in her bright red wig and bold spotted outfits, her pumpkin sculptures — including one on Japan’s “art island” Naoshima — infinity rooms and immersive installations attracted huge crowds and sold for millions of dollars.
“She formulated a philosophy of art she dubbed ‘self-obliteration’ based on simple motifs of obsessive repetition and proliferation,” according to her website.
Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, called Kusama a “true visionary who showed us the power of boundless imagination. Yayoi Kusama’s creativity pushed the art world forward and left behind a brighter, more vibrant world for us all.”
“I have seen her paintings and works several times. Bold, delicate, and beautiful. Her world was a world I had never known. And to me, she was a lovely person. May she rest in peace,” said one Japanese X user.
Kusama’s company said she died in hospital in Tokyo.
