Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama was born on March 22, 1929 in Nagano Prefecture, Japan. She is a painter, sculptor, writer, installation artist and performance artist. In her childhood she experienced hallucinations of polka dots and net patterns. She also had austere obsessive thoughts. Her hallucinations as a child were basically the mold to her art later in life. Polka dots became the trademark of her work. During her career, she covered surfaces such as walls, floors, canvases, household objects and naked assistants with polka dots, which had revolved around her hallucinations. Her work could be best described as repetitive as well as full of patterns. She referred to herself as the “obsessive artist.”

           

Kusama produced her first amazing “Net” paintings in 1959 in New York. The canvases measured up to thirty-three feet and were covered in small and thickly painted loops. The message of the painting was that “infinity” could be quantified and could actually be put in a limited amount of space.

I personally think it is amazing how Yayoi Kusama could produce such interesting work when the source is negative. All of her work is based on dots, which come from her hallucinations. She claims that her hallucinations stem from physical abuse as a child from her mother. I think this makes her artwork even more powerful because it shows how she overcame the abuse and was able to turn it into thought provoking artwork. Kusama has dedicated her life to art. She often says, “If it weren't for art, I would have killed myself a long time ago.”