Brief Biography:

Yayoi Kusama is a multi-media artist and writer who was born in Matsumoto, Nagano in central Japan in 1929. She came from a wealthy family of seedling merchants.

Her family opposed her plans to become an artist. According to an interview in Bombsite, she stated that her mother was "extremely violent. She hated to see me painting, so she destroyed the canvases I was working on. I have been painting pictures since I was about ten years old when I first started seeing hallucinations.

 I made them in huge quantities. Even before I started to paint, I was different from other children. My mother beat me and kicked me on the derriere every day, irritated that I was always painting. She forced me to help the employees, even when I had to study for my term exam. I was so exhausted that I felt very insecure at times."

Kusama then left home to attend school in Kyoto. Dissatisfied with the conservative art scene in Japan, she moved to New York City at the age of 29 in the late 1950s. She immersed herself in the avant-garde art scene of the early 1960s, becoming as well-known an artist as Andy Warhol.

Kusama received a lot of press from both art publications and daily newspapers for her staged happenings, paintings, sculptures, installations, film-making and performances. When she returned to Japan in 1973, it was as is she had disappeared. It was not until the 1990s with major US exhibitions of her art, that Kusama received the international recognition that she and her art so rightly deserved.

Education:

Kusama studied Nihongo painting, a traditional style of Japanese painting, at an art academy in Kyoto.

Signature Artworks and Art Genre:

Kusama has worked in a large range of media and genres, and is best known for her polka-dot covered installations. She is also well-known for her early white-on-white infinity net paintings; her fabric sculptures of chairs, ladders, and shoes encrusted with phallic-shaped growths; and her mirrored-room infinity installations.

Summary of Artist's Artworks:

Yayoi Kusama has been praised for her artwork which transcend numerous genres such as Pop Art, Feminism, Conceptual Art, and Minimalism.

Important Art Exhibitions and Collections:

Kusama has had solo exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world. In the late 1990s, she had a major retrospective of her work at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art;the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo. Kusama has also participated in prestigious group exhibitions such as international biennials including Venice and Singapore.  

Key Publications:

Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama  by Yayoi Kusama and Ralph McCarthy (Jan 30, 2012)

Kusama Orgy, Vol. 1, No. 2  by Yayoi Kusama   (Jan 1, 2001)

Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama, 1958-1968 by Lynn Zelevansky, Laura Hoptman, Yayoi Kusama and Akira Tatehata (Apr 2, 1998)

Quotes

"My art originates from hallucinations only I can see. I translate the hallucinations and obsessional images that plague me into sculptures and paintings. All my works in pastels are the products of obsessional neurosis and are therefore inextricably connected to my disease. I create pieces even when I don’t see hallucinations, though."

"When I arrived in New York, action painting was the rage, de Kooning, Pollock and others. I wanted to be completely detached from that and start a new art movement. I painted obsessional, monochromatic paintings from morning till night. They were huge paintings that had no composition like a 33-foot white infinity net painting."

 

Sources and Further Reading:

Biographical, Art and Exhibition Information Courtesy of the Following Sites:

Yayoi Kusama's website

Kusama's relationship with Joseph Cornell

Quotes by Kusama:

Bombsite